My Child Said They Are Stupid

They said it in an ordinary voice.

That is the part that stayed with you. Not shouted, not crying. Said the way a person says something settled, in the middle of doing something else, as a fact that had been established a while ago and did not need any heat behind it.

And you said something immediately, because of course you did. You said they are not stupid. You said they are clever, you said they are doing really well, you may have got slightly loud about it.

And it went nowhere. You could see it going nowhere while you were saying it.

Here is why, and it is not because they did not believe you. It is because you gave a general answer to a specific belief, and a general answer cannot reach a specific belief. It slides off.

Their belief is built out of particulars. It comes from a moment in a lesson, a thing somebody said in a corridor, a page they could not do while other people finished, and about forty other small events. That is a specific structure made of specific bricks.

And you are throwing you are clever at it, which is a large soft general thing, and it does not fit any of the bricks and it cannot get in.

What reaches it has to be as specific as the thing it is answering.

In thy book all my members were written

There is a verse about how precisely a person was known before anybody saw them, and the detail in it is the point.

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:16, King James Version)

In thy book all my members were written.

All of them. Written down, individually, before any of them existed.

That is an extraordinarily detailed picture. Not God approving of humanity in general. Not a warm feeling toward a person. A record with the parts written in it, specific enough that each one was known before it was made.

And that is the answer to the shape of your child's problem. They do not believe a general bad thing about themselves. They believe a specific one, built out of particulars. And what stands against it is not general approval, it is a God who knows them in that much detail.

Which means the way you speak to them about themselves can be that detailed too. In fact it has to be, because the general version is not landing, and you have watched it not land.

You are the child of a God who wrote the parts down individually, and general approval has never once been how anybody was known. Psalm 139:16 records the members written before they existed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that detail rather than sentiment.

How to be exact

Here is the practical part, and it is the whole gift of this article.

Stop saying you are clever. Say what you have actually seen their mind do.

Specific means: a thing, at a time, that you noticed, that only they do.

Not: you are so good at maths. That is a category, and they will match it against a moment when they were not, and the moment wins.

But: I noticed that when the first way did not work on that puzzle you did not stop, you turned it round and tried a different way, and most adults do not do that.

Or: you remember the middle of a story. Most people remember the beginning and the end and you always ask about what happened in the middle.

Or: when your brother was upset you worked out what was actually wrong before I did.

Notice that none of those are about school. That is deliberate. Their belief was formed at school and you are not going to win an argument on that ground tonight, and you do not need to. A mind is much larger than a curriculum, and the things you have seen their mind do are real evidence about a mind, which is what they have decided is faulty.

And it must be true. Do not invent one. They will know instantly, and an invented compliment confirms the thing it was meant to fight, because it tells them you had to make something up.

You are able to be exact about what you have seen, and a category has never once reached a belief made of particulars. The written word records the parts individually rather than the person generally, and the Spirit of God is the one who gives a parent something specific enough to land.

Say one, out loud, tonight

So here is the assignment.

Say one specific true thing about your child's mind, out loud, to them.

Out loud, to them, in words, tonight or tomorrow. Not thought about them warmly, and not said to somebody else about them, which is lovely and does not do this job.

And do not attach it to homework. Do not say it while they are working, do not use it as encouragement to keep going, and do not follow it with which is why you could do this if you tried. That converts it into a technique, and a child can hear a technique instantly.

Say it at a neutral moment. In the car, doing the washing up, walking somewhere. One sentence, then let it go and talk about something else.

They will probably say nothing. That is normal and it does not mean it missed. Children very often receive these without a visible reaction and then repeat them back to somebody three weeks later, word for word.

Psalm 139:16 has the detail written down long before anybody could see it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a parent says one exact true thing to their own child.

You are able to say one exact thing and let it go, and it has never once needed a visible reaction to have landed. Psalm 139:16 puts the individual parts in the book before they existed, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with you when you say it.