During our tenure as curator of a small business, we were in charge of many children. That is a totally freaking awesome way of saying; during the fourteen plus years my husband and I owned and operated a fleet of fifteen school buses, we took care of a boat load of kids. In all that time, there was one incident that taught me a most valuable lesson.
When one of our drivers retired, I took over his route. On this route was a young man in his teens. He was an angry young man. He didn't like the previous driver and the driver didn't much care for him either. At the time, I'm not sure this kid liked anybody.
I always made it a point to tell each of my riders "Good morning!" and call them by name, because I truly believed that starting your day out on a happy note was better for the rest of the day. Plus, in some cases, I was the first adult they would see and I didn't want to be known as the mean ole' bus driver lady. So that is what I did with this kid. The first day, he scowled at me, gave me a look like 'what planet did you come from' and sunk into the depths of his bus seat.
I didn't quit. Everyday I greeted him this way and even began to ask him mundane questions about his particular neighborhood. By the end of the first week, my oldest daughter came home from school and said, "Mom, I don't know what you've done to Carl, (not his real name) but he's a totally different kid." I'm not going to tell you he had a fairy tale life from that point on, he didn't, but to this day, when I see him, his face lights up and his smile could melt the arctic ice cap.
There is an interesting study that was conducted on the effects words have on water. The scientific community poo poos this, but the results of the study are something to think about. Part of the experiments consisted of putting words on vials of water, freezing them and taking microscopic pictures of the frozen water crystals. The water with words such as love, peace, beautiful, Mother Teresa, showed beautiful structures to the ice crystals. The water with words hate, evil, ugly, etc. had broken patterns and there was nothing pretty about them. Part of the study also brought up the fact that since the human body is 70 to 80% water, words could have the same effect on us.
What if we did that same experiment on ourselves or our children? I'm not suggesting we all run out and get tattoos. I grew up in an era when the belief was tattoos were bad and only for bad people. I know now this is not true, but Mother always told me not to write on my skin. I did that once, once being the key word. I came home from school one day and had inked up my entire arm, obviously because I didn't think I had anything better to do in study hall and I was quite proud of my artwork. She nearly scoured my skin off to the bone, I think the hack saw would have been less painful. But, what if we put words on our self, or the child that has a rough home life, or all children for that matter, that said things like 'I love you', 'you're beautiful', 'yes you can', 'special', 'healthy'?
I think it will work and I'm going to try it myself. There's a few issues I have so I'm going to write the outcome I want on my skin. I will put them where they can't be seen, but I will know they are there and Mom won't be rolling over. Recently I had to renew my driver's license and I did something I thought I would never do, I changed the weight. What's on there still isn't true but that is one of the things I'm going to write on my self. It will be up side down, but unfortunately, when I sit down it no longer will be.
So go ahead, give yourself some kind words and be sure to give them to someone else.
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