Has someone ever raised their voice at you? How about heard some harsh words about yourself? I personally have, I can assume you have too. Maybe you are one of those people that really got a good life lesson and came out with more respect for the yeller. I wasn’t one of those individuals and research is showing that many people aren’t. 

When raising a child with a Neurodiversity language can often times be a struggle, therefore, it is even more important how we model appropriate communication. At some point parent’s decided it was their right of passage to give a stern tone in order to teach what is appropriate and what is not. Let’s challenge that thought… So we are teaching them that a stern tone is used to communicate what we don’t want to see as parents, but in later years how dare our children use a stern tone with us… hmmm. Instead of associating a stern tone with the results we want to see lets pair a normal voice with the results we want to see. Let’s model functional communication and maybe our children will learn from our example. 

Our words have power, our tone has power, and the volume in which we choose to say it has power. And the power rests in our hands. Is it so frustrating when you’ve repeated yourself 15 times? Without a doubt, but if we model a calm tone maybe when our children get frustrated they will also use a calm tone. What about when our child decide to play WWE in the living room? Take a deep breath and play ref!  I mean hey, if you can’t beat them at least teach them to play fair ;) 

Colossians 4:6 

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.