The King’s Speech and the Cheesedoodle

I just watched The King’s Speech. Yes, I’m the 2nd to last person in civilization to see it. Jonathan will be the last. We’re trend setters.

Anyway, I just watched The King’s Speech and it was as excellent as everyone had told me it would be. For one thing, how can you go wrong with Colin Firth? It was also refreshing to see Helena Bonham Carter using her admirable and considerable acting  skills for good instead of weirdness. I was thrilled that Edward (“David” – that confused me for a while) was portrayed as a selfish, weak man instead of the romanticized version of a man forced to resign from his calling for love; and Mrs. Wallace was portrayed in a most unpleasant, yet historically accurate, light.

There was something, however, that really stuck with me about the story itself.

As I watched King George V impatiently commanding his son Bertie to step up and face the microphone like any good Brit would, I heard my own impatience and frustration with my own children. I wonder if some of my anxiety and impatience with the Cheesedoodle’s lack of verbal skills is contributing to the slowness of his verbal development. Referring to him as my non-verbal child in front of him when he can hear me can’t be helpful, and may actually be counter productive and even harmful. I hardly stand over him saying, “Come on boy, spit it out!” but I have been known to say, in frustration, “I don’t know what you want, because you don’t have words!” Am I potentially creating a problem where none should actually exist? Am I planting the idea in his mind that he can’t speak, or that he’s deficient in that area?

It’s easy to watch a movie, or to look back on something in a friend’s past and think “How could they not have known how harmful that would be?” but it’s not so easy, in the moment, as a parent, to look forward in time and know which of our foibles will be irrelevant and which will be indelible.

It is moments like this that I rest in the sovereign Lord, knowing that He has ordained all things. Even a lesson in parenting from The King’s Speech.