A Parent’s Guide to Speaking Life to Your Kids

Not being very athletic, I was never involved in sports as a kid.

(Unless you include playing my flute in the pep band. Which I’m guessing you probably don’t. Yeah, me neither.)

Having a few of my own kids playing football and soccer this fall, I’m starting to realize that nothing reveals a parent’s true colors quite like youth sports.

Can anyone relate?

A recent experience at my sons’ football game prompted me to grab some earplugs and start pondering the ways we speak to our kids.

I shared that incident, plus six keys to speaking truth and encouragement to our kids, at Intoxicated on Life. Here’s an excerpt:

I wore earplugs to my sons’ most recent youth football game.

Now I should let you know that while I tend to be on the reserved side, I’m not opposed to high-volume cheering at sporting events. Especially when my kids are participating, I can cheer my head off with the best of them.

But during the first game of this season, I noticed that while there was a lot of shouting happening in the stands, very little of it was actually cheering.

The crowd shrieked commands and censure.

“Get the ball!”

“Get your head in the game!”

“We can’t win like this, guys!”

“Keep your hands on the ball!”

“You HAVE to BLOCK!”

It pains me to say there was even cursing involved.

If “death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21), how can we make sure we’re speaking life to our kids?

Read the rest here, just a click away!