The family was on the road south from Bethel. They had been travelling for days with flocks and herds, servants and children, and the dust of the hill country was in everyone’s clothes. Rachel was heavily pregnant. The town of Ephrath, which would one day be called Bethlehem, was close. Perhaps they could see its walls on the next ridge.
Then the labour began, there on the roadside, and it went badly. The Bible says simply that “she had hard labour.” Someone put up a covering. The midwife knelt beside her and worked, and when the child finally came, she tried to give the dying mother some comfort: “Fear not; thou shalt have this son also” (Genesis 35:17). Years before, when Joseph was born, Rachel had prayed for another son. Now her prayer was answered, and it was costing her life.
Rachel looked at the baby. With the last of her strength, she gave him a name. Ben-oni. The words mean “son of my sorrow”. It was the cry of a woman in agony, and no one who has watched someone die in pain could blame her for it. But it was a heavy name to lay on a newborn. Every time anyone called that boy for the rest of his life, they would be saying, child of my grief, the one whose birth killed his mother.
Jacob was standing there. He had loved Rachel more than anyone in the world. He had worked fourteen years to marry her. Now she was gone, and he was holding the child whose birth had taken her. If anyone had reason to accept the name, Jacob did.
He would not. “But his father called him Benjamin” (Genesis 35:18). Son of the right hand. The right hand was the place of strength, honour and favour. In one sentence, standing over his wife’s body, Jacob refused to let his son carry his sorrow as an identity. He gave him a different name, and that is the name the boy carried into history.
I have thought often about that roadside. Every child receives a name at birth. But every child also slowly learns another name from the words spoken over him day after day, and that second name can matter as much as the first.
The words that become a child’s inner voice
Children believe what their parents say about them. They have no other mirror at first. A small child does not yet have the ability to look at himself objectively, so he looks at the faces and listens to the voices of the people who care for him, and from those he learns who he is.
That is why repeated words have such power. A single harsh sentence, spoken once in a moment of frustration and later repaired, will rarely define a child. But words repeated over years, at the dinner table, in the car, in front of visitors, after every exam result, become the language the child uses about himself. By the time he is grown, he no longer hears them in his parent’s voice. He hears them in his own.
You may know this from experience. Perhaps you still hear, at forty, the words that were spoken over you at ten. You are a dullard. You are lazy. You are just like your father. You will never amount to anything. Why can’t you be like your cousin? This one is the stubborn one. This one is the problem child. Perhaps you have spent years trying to prove them wrong, or quietly assuming they were right.
Scripture takes the power of words with great seriousness. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). Jesus said that “every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36). And He traced our speech back to its source: “for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh” (Luke 6:45). Words reveal what is inside us, and they shape what grows inside others.
Words that pierce and words that heal
Proverbs offers a sharp contrast:
There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health.
“There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword.” The picture is of a careless, rash speaker. He does not necessarily intend to wound. He simply speaks without thinking, and his words go in like a blade. Many parents speak this way under pressure: in the morning rush, when the school report comes, when the child has embarrassed them in front of relatives. The words come out quickly. The wound remains much longer.
“But the tongue of the wise is health.” The Hebrew word translated health is marpe, which means healing or cure. Wise words do not merely avoid harm. They repair it. They bring strength where there was weakness and soundness where there was injury.
The same book gives us another picture:
Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.
“Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.” Honey in the ancient world was both a delight and a medicine. Pleasant words do the same. They give pleasure, and they bring health deep into a person, “to the bones”, the inner frame of life.
Think of the words a child hears in an ordinary week. How many are piercing, and how many are healing? How many are honey, and how many are swords? Most parents, if they kept an honest count, would be surprised. Much of what we say to children is instruction and correction: hurry up, sit down, stop that, where is your homework, why is this room so untidy. Some of that is necessary. But if almost nothing else is said, the child concludes that his parents mainly see what is wrong with him.
Correct what your child does. Be very careful what you tell him he is. Behaviour can change; a name, once believed, can be very hard to remove.
Correcting the behaviour without naming the child
This is the heart of the matter. Parents must correct their children. Scripture insists on it, and a child who is never corrected is being failed. But there is a world of difference between correcting a behaviour and assigning an identity.
“You told a lie” corrects a behaviour. “You are a liar” assigns an identity.
Punchline“That was careless; you need to check your work” corrects a behaviour. “You are so careless, you will never get anything right” assigns an identity.
“You spoke rudely to your grandmother, and you need to apologise” corrects a behaviour. “You are a rude, ungrateful child” assigns an identity.
The first kind of statement tells the child what he did and implies that he can do differently. It leaves the door open. The second tells the child what he is, and it closes the door. If he is a liar, why should he try to tell the truth? If he is careless, what is the point of checking? Children tend to live up, or down, to the names they are given.
Labels also stick to particular children in a family. One child becomes “the clever one”, another “the troublesome one”, another “the quiet one who doesn’t say anything”. Even positive labels can be a burden: the “clever one” may become terrified of failure, while the sibling who is not called clever may quietly stop trying. Our exam-driven culture makes this worse. When results are read aloud at family gatherings and children are ranked against their cousins, many children learn that their worth is a number on a report card.
Look at how Jesus spoke to people. When Andrew brought his brother Simon to meet Him for the first time:
And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone.
“Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone.” Jesus acknowledged who Simon was. Then He spoke over him what he would become. This was not flattery. Simon was impulsive, unstable and would one day deny his Lord three times. Jesus knew all of that. Yet He named him a stone, a rock, and over time, by grace, Peter grew into the name.
God did something similar with Gideon, who was hiding in a winepress threshing wheat for fear of the Midianites. The angel of the Lord greeted him, “The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour” (Judges 6:12). Gideon protested that he was “the least in my father’s house” (Judges 6:15). But God’s word reached past his fear and called out what He intended to make of him.
Parents can learn from this. You are not called to pretend your child has no faults. You are called to see beyond them, to the person God is forming, and to speak in a way that invites the child to grow toward that.
Words spoken about the child in his hearing
NuggetSome of the most powerful words a child hears are not spoken to him at all. They are spoken about him, to someone else, while he is in the room.
A mother on the phone to her sister says, “This one is my headache. He will not let me rest.” A father introduces his children to a visiting pastor: “This is my first daughter, she is the brilliant one. And this is the second one. We are still praying for him.” A grandmother tells a neighbour, in front of the child, “That girl has a strong spirit. Nobody can control her.” The adults may be half joking. They may not even notice the child listening. But children always notice. Words overheard carry a special weight, because the child assumes they are what the adult really thinks when there is no need to be polite.
Proverbs warns about the whisperer and the talebearer, and we usually apply that to gossip about neighbours. It applies equally to the way we speak about our own children to others. A parent who regularly complains about a child to friends, relatives or the church WhatsApp group is shaping that child’s reputation, and through it the child’s sense of himself.
There is a related danger that deserves particular care. In homes where parents are in conflict, separated or divorced, children often hear one parent speak with contempt about the other. “You are just like your useless father.” “Your mother’s people are all like that.” A child knows that he is made partly from each parent. When one parent is despised, the child hears that part of himself despised too. However real the hurt between the adults, the child should not be made to carry it. Speak honestly about what has happened in a way that fits the child’s age, and refuse to use the child as a channel for bitterness.
The reverse is also true, and wonderfully so. Children who overhear a parent speaking well of them, telling a friend, “I am so proud of how she handled that,” or praying aloud for them by name with gratitude, receive something that a direct compliment cannot quite give. They learn that the good words are not a performance. Make a habit of speaking well of your children to others, honestly and specifically, and do not worry if they happen to be listening. Let them overhear your blessing.
Blessing and cursing from the same mouth
James wrote some of the most searching words in the New Testament about speech:
Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.
“Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.” James is struck by the contradiction. The same tongue that worships God turns round and curses people who bear God’s image. “Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.”
There is a sad picture in many Christian homes. A parent sings and prays fervently at the Friday vigil, then on Saturday morning shouts at a child, “You are a disgrace to this family!” The same mouth blesses God and curses the one God has made. James asks, “Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?” (James 3:11).
Notice the reason James gives. People are “made after the similitude of God.” Your child bears the image of God. When you speak contempt over him, you are speaking contempt over God’s handiwork. That should sober every Christian parent.
In our culture, angry words can take a particularly dark form. A frustrated parent may say, “You will never succeed,” “God will punish you for this,” or even pronounce something like a curse over a disobedient child. Words like these should never come from a believer’s mouth. If you have spoken them, renounce them before God and before your child, and speak blessing instead. Paul’s instruction is simple: “bless, and curse not” (Romans 12:14).
At the same time, we need to keep a sound balance. Words matter, but a child’s life is not sealed by one angry sentence. God is greater than any word spoken in frustration, and His grace is able to overrule what was wrongly said. “As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come” (Proverbs 26:2). Children of believers need not live in fear that a parent’s careless word has doomed them, and parents who have repented need not live in dread of what they once said. What we need is repentance, repair and a new pattern of speech, not superstitious fear.
Speech that ministers grace
Paul gives the positive standard for Christian speech:
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.
“Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth.” The word translated corrupt is sapros, used elsewhere of rotten fruit and spoiled fish. Corrupt speech is rotten speech: words that spread decay, that tear down instead of building up. Paul is thinking of more than vulgar language. Contempt, mockery, sarcasm and constant criticism are also rotten.
Instead, our words should be “good to the use of edifying.” To edify is to build up, like a builder adding blocks to a wall. And Paul adds a purpose that is breathtaking: “that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” Your words can be a channel of God’s grace into your child’s life. When you speak encouragement, truth, comfort and blessing, you are doing more than being pleasant. You are serving your child with the same grace God has shown you.
Notice the phrase “the use of edifying”, which some translations render as “according to the need of the moment”. Good words are fitted to the person and the occasion. “A word spoken in due season, how good is it!” (Proverbs 15:23). The child who has just failed an exam does not need a lecture at that moment. He may need to hear, “I can see you are disappointed. I love you, and we will work out together what to do next.” The lecture can come later, if it is needed at all. The child who has just done something brave needs to hear that you noticed.
Many Nigerian parents already have a rich instinct for this. We pray over our children before examinations, lay hands on them before a journey, and speak blessing at birthdays and naming ceremonies. Build on that instinct and make it ordinary. God gave Aaron words with which to bless Israel: “The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace” (Numbers 6:24-26). A parent can speak a short blessing like that at the school gate every morning, or at the bedside every night. It takes less than a minute. Over the years, a child who has heard it thousands of times will carry it in his memory long after he has left home.
Honest encouragement, not empty praise
Encouragement must be honest. Some parents, having realised how harmful harsh words can be, swing to the opposite extreme and praise everything. Every drawing is a masterpiece. Every result is wonderful. Every opinion is brilliant. Children quickly see through this, and empty praise loses its value. Scripture warns that “A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet” (Proverbs 29:5). Flattery can leave a child unprepared for honest feedback and fragile in the face of failure.
PunchlineThe answer is “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). That means saying true things, kindly. It means being honest about weakness while being clear about worth.
Honest encouragement tends to have certain features. It is specific: instead of “Well done”, it says, “You kept working at that problem even when it was hard. I saw that.” It focuses on effort, character and growth more than on talent or results alone, because effort and character are within the child’s control. It notices the things a child does that nobody else may notice: kindness to a younger sibling, honesty when a lie would have been easier, patience with a difficult classmate. And it separates the child’s worth from his performance. A child should know that his parents’ love does not rise and fall with his grades.
Consider what this sounds like when the report card comes. A child has scored 48 per cent in mathematics. One parent says, “Forty-eight! Are you a fool? Your cousin got eighty.” Another parent says, “That is lower than we hoped. Let us look at where it went wrong. I know you can improve, and I will help you.” Both parents take the result seriously. Only one has assigned an identity, and only one has opened a way forward.
Encouragement can also be spoken over a child’s future. Like Jacob renaming Benjamin, or Jesus naming Peter, a parent can say, “I see a leader in you.” “God has given you a kind heart.” “I believe the Lord has good things for your life.” These are not magic formulas. They are a parent’s faith in God’s work, put into words a child can hold onto.
When you have spoken harmfully
Every parent reading this has said things to a child that should not have been said. “For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man” (James 3:2). None of us is perfect. The question is what we do next.
Jesus gave clear instruction about broken relationships:
Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
Jesus puts reconciliation ahead of worship. If you remember that someone has something against you, go and make it right first. That applies to your children. A child is not too young to be owed an apology, and a parent is not too important to give one.
Many of us were raised to believe that a parent never apologises to a child, because that would undermine authority. But consider what an apology teaches. It shows the child that wrong words can be faced and taken back. It demonstrates humility. It gives the child permission to believe that the harmful words were not true. And it models exactly what you want the child to learn to do when he wrongs others.
A good apology is specific. “I am sorry I said you were stupid. That was wrong. You are not stupid, and I should never have said it. I was angry about the result, and I took it out on you.” It does not excuse itself: no “I’m sorry, but you made me angry.” It retracts the label clearly and replaces it with the truth. And it is usually followed by changed behaviour, because a child will believe the new words only when they are repeated over time.
If you have spoken damaging words over a child for years, one apology will be a beginning, not a cure. The old words were repeated; the new ones will need to be repeated too. Keep speaking blessing. Keep correcting behaviour without assigning identity. Over time, by God’s grace, a new name can take root.
And if you yourself are still carrying the names spoken over you in childhood, bring them to God. Hear what your Father says over you. At the baptism of Jesus, before He had preached a sermon or worked a miracle, the voice from heaven said, “Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). In Christ, that word of acceptance is spoken over you as well. God says to His people, “Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken” (Isaiah 62:4). Instead, they would be called Hephzi-bah, which means my delight is in her, “for the LORD delighteth in thee.” The Father’s voice is truer than any voice from your past, and as you learn to hear it, you will find it easier to speak life to your own children.
Go back to that roadside near Ephrath.
Jacob did not rebuke Rachel. She was dying, and her grief was real. He did not pretend that the day was anything other than a tragedy. Genesis records that he set a pillar on her grave, and it remained for generations. Sorrow was part of Benjamin’s story, and Jacob did not deny it.
But he refused to let sorrow become the boy’s name. He looked at the child whose birth had cost him the woman he loved, and he chose to call him son of my right hand. Every time someone called Benjamin to dinner, or shouted for him across the camp, or spoke of him in the family, they repeated his father’s choice. The name became part of the identity of an entire tribe. Saul, Israel’s first king, came from Benjamin. So, centuries later, did the apostle Paul (Philippians 3:5).
Some of you have children who have been given a hard name, by circumstances, by teachers, by relatives, or by you. Perhaps it was spoken in exhaustion or grief. Perhaps it has been repeated so often that the child has started to believe it.
You can do what Jacob did. Acknowledge the hard thing honestly. Correct what needs correcting. Then give your child a better name to carry, and say it again and again, until it becomes the voice he hears inside himself. Son of my right hand. Daughter of my delight. Beloved. A stone. Let your words be honey and healing, and minister grace to the children God has given you.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- What words were spoken over you as a child that you still hear today? Which are true, and which need to be replaced with what God says?
- Think about the past week. Roughly how much of what you said to your children was correction, and how much was encouragement?
- Can you recall a time when you assigned an identity to your child (“you are lazy”, “you are stubborn”) instead of correcting a behaviour? How could you have said it differently?
- Is there a label in your family, positive or negative, that one of your children is carrying? How might it be affecting them?
- To which child do you owe an apology for something you said? What would a specific, honest apology sound like?
This Week
This week, give each of your children at least one specific, honest word of encouragement every day, naming something you actually saw them do or something good you see in their character. When you need to correct, practise describing the behaviour and not the child. Then, if there is a harmful word you have spoken over a child, choose a quiet moment to apologise specifically, retract the label, and tell them what is true instead.
A Prayer
Father, thank You for the words You speak over me in Christ: beloved, accepted, Your delight. Forgive me for the times I have spoken to my children like the piercings of a sword, and for every label that has wounded them. Set a watch over my mouth. Teach me to correct what they do without crushing who they are, and to speak words that build up and minister grace. Where I have spoken harm, give me humility to apologise and patience to speak blessing until it takes root. Heal the names I received as a child, and let Your voice be the one I hear most clearly. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.