The 10 Greatest Gifts I Gave My Children

Parenting from the Heart

By Steven Vannoy

Tool 5: Modeling

Remember the first time you heard your words come out of your child’s mouth? Were you so proud your child was repeating something totally amazing you had said, or maybe it wasn’t so amazing, and you thought they hadn’t heard what you said under your breath (oops)? Our words and actions are copied repeatedly by our children. Our children are leaning on us to guide them in navigating everyday life.

 We all know what we say and do is being watched closely by our children, but sometimes, we get caught up in the moment and forget our children are learning EVERYTHING from us. It sounds a bit scary, doesn’t it? As parents, we’re pretty much on the hot seat all the time but thinking ahead of time what we want our children to see and hear helps us to be better prepared, so we’re able to put our best foot forward. And for those times we do misstep, which of course we will, it’s ok to apologize and tell our children that we didn’t handle something so great, or we shouldn’t have said something. Owning up to our mistakes shows our children it’s ok not to be perfect. With that being said, we also need to teach our children how to repair the mistakes we/they’ve made and make things right when we do mess up. Missteps are perfect teachable moments for helping children learn how to take responsibility for their actions and words.

My favorite part of this chapter in Steven Vannoy’s, The Ten Greatest Gifts I Gave My Children is the “HAM STORY.” The story goes like this…. Every year mom would cut off the end of the ham for their holiday meal. Fast forward years later, now it’s the daughter’s turn to host the holiday meals, and she too cuts off the end of the ham. Her new husband sees her doing this and asks her, “Why do you cut off part of the ham?” and the wife answers, “I don’t know why; my mom always did it.” The daughter calls her mother and asks her the same question, to which her mom replies, “I don’t know either, Grandma always did it, so I did.” Mom then picks up the phone and calls Grandma to get to the bottom of this pressing question. When asked, Grandma responds sweetly, “I always cut off the end of the ham to fit in the roasting pan I had.” Wow! See how this “action” was repeated two generations later, and no one “knew” the why, except for Grandma.

This story is a perfect example of how in the busyness of parenting, we do things subconsciously and sometimes don’t even realize little eyes and ears are watching, listening, and learning from us. Cutting off the end of a ham before baking it isn’t going to affect anyone’s life, really. But what do you do that you want passed on to your children and their children that does affect them? To be loving, caring, kind, compassionate, accepting of others, honest, hard-working, independent, resilient? 

Good parenting is all about being intentional with our children. Modeling for our children the kind of adult we are hoping to guide them into begins and ends with us. Vannoy ends this chapter point on. He closes out his chapter on modeling by saying, “What you live is what you get.” 

 Next, we will be unpacking the specific gifts Vannoy’s book is titled after. Hope to see you next time!