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Words have power. The right ones guide us. The wrong ones can warp and misdirect our thinking. You already know that I like to look at word origins. It isn’t just a harmless hobby of mine. It’s because the origin of a word tells us something about its deep meaning — the ideas that lie at its start. There’s a famous dictum: “You can’t not communicate.” (For example, refusing to talk is communicating, just as much as talking.) We could say “You can’t not affect your child.” As parents, we all have an effect on our children — we have absolutely no choice. If we abandon them the day they’re born, we have an effect on them. If we spend our days getting in their face, we have an effect on them. Every interaction has its effect. So, what are you up to when you mess with your child’s Intelligence River? The words you decide to use will profoundly affect how you conceptualize your goals, what you do and how you do it: Modify suggests that we are changing the basic form or nature (mode) of something. I don’t think that’s our job with our kids, or a good idea, or even possible, except at a considerable cost. Impress isn’t bad. The origin of the word says we’re leaving a mark in the thing we press into. Are you comfortable with that? I am, but I also take a bit of warning from it. I want to leave my mark, but I don’t want it to be a scar. Make?!?! Save me from the whole idea that I’m going to make my child more intelligent! Anyhow, it’s an absurd idea: It gives us an image that there is some external thing we can do that will automatically, mechanically affect our child. Growth only comes from inside. We can set conditions, but we cannot force. We can’t open their heads and dump in what we think should be there. If we act as though we can, we’re finished before we start. Increase seemed like a natural word to tie to intelligence when intelligence was a test score — a single number — that you might try to make bigger. But it doesn’t catch the multi-current complexity of the Intelligence River. Develop seems like a good word to use. My wonderfully chunky old first edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, which I depend on for good etymologies, says that develop means “to expand or realize the potentialities of; bring gradually to a fuller, greater, or better state.” The origin of the word carries a beautiful image for us: It refers to something that you unwrap. (It’s the opposite of envelop, which is what an envelope does. That’s why we have to “push the envelope,” so it doesn’t envelop us.) This seems a fine way to think about helping our children reach their fullest potential! Influence implies a force that acts indirectly, without actually touching, at a bit of a distance. I like the origin of the word: It refers to one thing flowing into another, as rivers do. I like the gentle sound of that — the stream of my intelligence flowing into the stream of my child’s intelligence — even though I know I eventually have to “flow out” of my children’s lives to some extent. (Maybe that process, happening to me and my children now, is when I become an “exfluence.”) Influence also has a built-in warning for me: It does imply that I’m controlling what I influence. That reminds me that even if I soft peddle that aspect, I am trying to control my kids’ development. That needs to be done with care, restraint, and respect for them. Tricky business. Because of that built-in warning, influence works for me, so I’m going to use it alternately with develop to describe the vital work we do to prepare our children for success. |
