The 3rd and 4th Generation
This is the second in a 4 part series about creating new patterns in your family that will bless the 3rd & 4th generation.
2) Guard your Tongue and Tone
3) Can Do or Must Do
4) What’s Missing
“The Lord…who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” Exodus 34:7
The decade from 25 years old to 35 are years of insight, reflection, maturing, and hopefully forgiving. This OneFamily Letter continues the deeper dive into traits that travel the generations. At 35 years of age, you are still young, very young. But old enough now to see your life through a more objective prism than at 25. You’ve likely seen and experienced childhood parenting that was less than optimal, but now have a deep enough understanding of life to at least believe there’s a better way. Your children may carry their own baggage into the future, but at least they won’t have to haul THAT particular rock you carried into your adulthood. There is progress through the generations. Sins of past generations can be turned into blessings to the 3rd and 4th generation – with your insightful effort.
Last week’s Letter introduced the Marr example that family dysfunction can and does drift through the generations because behavior is influenced by nature, like a predisposition to alcohol, and nurture, learning from parents’ behavior. When you’re old enough to know right from wrong, good from bad, and better from good, you can put a “Stake in the Ground” to say, “This behavior ends here”. Today’s Letter is the second installment addressing parental behaviors that negatively influence a child’s growth entitled:
- Word Choice and Tone of Voice: We all speak with layers of meaning. Language is infinitely complex. Words have meaning, but so does tone. A phrase can convey meaning that’s bound up with humor, innuendo, love or threat implications, harmony or irritation, resolved strength or indecisive weakness. A phrase can have the exact opposite meaning from the words spoken just by use of tone or inflection. Yes, we speak in layers of meaning, but a child isn’t likely to pick them up. What you say and the way you say it will, without a doubt, be at least somewhat misunderstood.
Dry humor and sarcasm are fairly sophisticated forms of communication. Since words are one of the prime forms of communicating love, unpacking layers of meaning in a sarcastic joke to get an underlying assumption of love is fairly difficult to do. If that dry style is always present and not balanced with overt clarity of love, affection, and appreciation, then self-esteem issues can result. Even when a child is older and an outer shell of confidence is developed and an intellectual layer “understands”, however, there can still be issues with self-esteem.
Sarcasm usually has the effect of a papercut. A comment can be funny, particularly to those not on the receiving end, but the target of the joke has been revealed. Some mistake or character trait, habit or foible, has been exposed to be laughed at by others. Certainly, adults can have developed enough maturity to deflect the joke away from their self-esteem, but how old does a child need to be to do that? Of course, everything depends. But when you feed a child a steady diet of sarcasm or negativity, is it surprising they might become ill? The parental excuse that the child needs to be toughened up for ‘The World’ is a false premise. The child needs to be prepared for the outside world by making the home a safe haven, not more world.
Unlike the last Letter where we provided several personal examples of how a negative trait traveled through the generations, not so here. We have countless family examples of dry humor and sarcasm that undermined self-concept and self-esteem. The real value is in understanding the issue that words and tone matter! The phrase “Guard your tongue and tone” is a call to Words of Life. It’s not absolutely necessary to eliminate all humor and friendly ribbing from family intercourse, but if that’s all there is, then evaluation is probably worthwhile. The world comes all too soon as it is.
Let us be absolutely clear, you our dear friends and readers mean the world to us. We are devoted to your marriage, your children, and your children’s children…to the 3rd and 4th generation.
Many blessings,
Lis and Dave Marr