Building Up

A few weeks ago Jed went to an early morning priesthood meeting for our ward. The speakers were Cliff and Brandon Doman. They both happen to be our neighbors on either side of the street. From what I gathered from the little information Jed gave me, they both spoke a lot about family unity and some of the things they did growing up and do now as parents to build family unity.
One of the things Jed took away from the talks was to reinforce building up behavior in the family, especially with the boys. Kids today face so many challenges and have so much negativity thrown at them every day. They don't need to get that at home either. Sometimes as parents we are guilty of this and don't even realize it. Jed explained to the boys that we will no longer tolerate tearing down behavior and that we as a family will now focus on building up. We will no longer tolerate someone saying to a sibling or cousin or anyone for that matter that they are "stupid, or weird, or ugly or crazy". Even if it is in jest. One day I was watching the kids play Wii and noticed that Will had created a Mii by the name of WEIRDO Will . I asked him about it and he said it is what kids at school call him. I asked him to delete the Mii from the game and reminded him that we don't do things that tear down(even to ourselves) because it doesn't make us feel good about ourselves. When we hear comments that are tearing down someone we now say to the offender: does that build up or tear down? It usually doesn't take them long to think about what they just said and how it affects the person it was directed at. We are slowly seeing changes in the boys behavior when they are with us. I don't notice as much fighting or screaming at each other. It still happens, but seems to be less often now.
I'm also finding that I have work to do in this area as well. It is a constant battle not to beat ourselves and others around us up with the words we speak. But I know we will be stronger, happier and kinder people if we keep trying to build each other up.