17 LABEL BEHAVIORS, NOT CHILDREN.

“You’re a bad boy,” said the mother.

“Son, you’re stupid,” scolded the dad.

Labeling the child conveys the wrong message. We are building children up, not tearing them down. We either speak blessings or curses over our children.

What we speak over children becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. Call children “bad” and they will become bad. Label children “stupid” and they will become stupid. One gets what one speaks.

A physics teacher once told a class of just average students that they were the best students ever in that grade. All semester, the teacher reinforced that message. At the end of the term, everyone passed the course with flying colors. Why? They fulfilled the affirmation and blessing spoken over their lives.

“Child, you are a blessing, a gift from God, a wonderfully and fearfully made person whom God loves and wants the very best for,” affirms the godly parent.

We need to label behaviors, not children. We speak to a child’s potential and destiny. We correct a child’s attitudes and behavior. “What you have done is wrong,” instructs the godly parent who then describes the wrong behavior and what can be done to correct it.

Call forth the God-given possibilities in your child. Let this be your child’s affirmation learned from your lips:

For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well (Ps. 139:12–14).