The other day I was in a grocery store when I noticed a small child giving his mother a run for her money. As I watched the two of them, I could tell the mother was getting very tired; and in a moment of desperation, she directed a few unkind remarks toward her small son. As she did so, I wanted to say, “Please don’t. You may not mean what you just said, but your little boy will believe you! If he believes you, and such exchanges between you and him continue, I may find him in my office years later as a teenager or a grown man, wondering why he is such a failure and why he is never good enough.” I think sometimes we forget how very powerful words are. For example:
