Shortcomings

Guest post by Jenna

Ever wonder why words mean the things they do? Why do seemingly inconspicuous words, put together mean something completely different? [A random, though not completely tangent thought, is SpongeBob Square Pants. Apart, they are four random nouns. Put together they make a cartoon character.]  Ever thought about the word “shortcomings”? Let’s take it apart:

Dictionary.com defines the noun “short”:  having little height, not tall; having little length, not long. [Seems harmless right?]
And the same website defines the noun “comings”:  approach; arrival; advent. [Also not so harmful.]
But then you put the two words together… “shortcomings”:  a failure, defect, or deficiency in conduct, condition, thought, ability, etc.

Say what? You mean I can take two innocent words and put them together and their end result is Failure?

How many of us feel like this in our parenting sometimes? Your personality as a Mom, coupled with the personality of your Child can lead to drastic mistakes. We can say things we don’t mean to say or do things we never intended to do. Oh, how we can beat ourselves up so much over our faults. We can name them endlessly and talk about them with our friends until we are blue in the face. We can say “I’m sorry” over and over again, hoping to do better next time. But until we take the chemistry apart – take apart the relationship between you and your child and put it back together again in a much more pleasing way – we will never truly succeed in parenting.

Until you realize that you and your child have natural tendencies for dealing with the world, you will have a proverbial butting of heads. Examine your heart. Try to change your heart before you change your child’s heart. If your child has behaviors you want to change, look at his heart, at why she does the things you don’t agree with.

Let’s take another word apart.
“Over”:  above in place or position.
“Flowing”:  proceeding smoothly or easily.
“Overflowing”:  to have the contents flowing over or spilling, as an overfull container.

I hope your love for your child(ren) is overflowing abundantly.

jenna blogs at kevinandjenna.com. She is guilty of finding her faults before finding her successes in parenting, but she tries to focus more on the latter. She is thankful for a wonderful husband and super great kids to help her find her way through life.