I Help And I Make It Worse

You can see it happening while it happens.

She gets stuck. You say something. And then the thing that was taking her four minutes takes eleven, and she is crosser than she was, and you are both further from the end of it than before you opened your mouth.

And you have concluded that you are bad at this. That some parents can explain things and you are not one of them.

I do not think that is what is going on. I think your explanations are probably fine.

I think you are arriving too early, and everything after that is a consequence of the timing rather than of the content.

And you have stopped offering, mostly. Not as a decision, but as a slow retreat. You wait to be asked, and then you answer as briefly as you can, and you get up sooner than you used to, because the last four times you tried to do more it went the way it goes.

He that hasteth with his feet sinneth

There is a line in Proverbs that pairs two things most of us keep separate.

Also, that the soul be without knowledge, it is not good; and he that hasteth with his feet sinneth. (Proverbs 19:2, King James Version)

Two halves. The first is about not knowing, which is the half everybody expects. The second is about speed, and it is sitting right beside it as though they were the same kind of problem.

Hasteth with his feet. Moving before the thing is ready to be moved on. And the verse ranks that alongside acting without knowledge, which is a serious place to put it.

You have been handed a fault about timing that has never once been the same fault as ignorance. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person stop grading their own explanations, and Proverbs 19:2 puts haste beside lack of knowledge as a genuine problem in its own right.

And notice what that does for you. If the fault is speed rather than content, the fix is a pause rather than a skill.

You were never short of the ability to explain, and no parent has ever once been unable to help because of what they knew. The Spirit of God is the one who moves the whole question off competence, and the written word names the hastening specifically.

What arriving early destroys

Here is what is actually being interrupted, and it is worth knowing because it is invisible.

Getting stuck is not a failure state. It is a stage. Something is being tried, discarded, tried differently, and there is usually about forty seconds of that before anything visible happens.

From outside, all forty seconds look identical. A child sitting still, not writing. It looks like nothing is happening, and it is the part where everything is happening.

You have been interrupting the only part of the evening that was working, and no stuck child has ever once been doing nothing. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a parent what a still page actually contains, and Proverbs 19:2 names the haste as its own fault.

And there is a second cost, which is why the evening gets longer rather than shorter.

When you arrive at second eight, she has to stop what she was doing, take in what you said, work out how it relates to the route she was on, and then decide whether to abandon her route for yours.

That is four extra jobs, and none of them existed before you spoke. The help added work.

You have been adding operations under the appearance of removing them, and an early answer has never once been the same thing as a shorter evening. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a person willing to let a silence run, and the written word ranks haste with acting blind.

You were never making it worse on purpose, and nobody has ever once hurried to help somebody they did not love. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates a good instinct from a badly timed one, and Proverbs 19:2 addresses the speed rather than the motive.

Show me yours first

So here is the assignment, and it is one sentence said before anything else.

Tonight, before you help with anything, say: show me yours first.

And then wait until she has completely finished. Not until you can see where it is going, which is usually about second six. Until she has actually stopped.

You have been given a stopping point that is hers rather than yours, and no parent has ever once been able to tell from outside where a thought had got to. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a person still until the pencil does, and Proverbs 19:2 names the hastening as its own fault.

That will be uncomfortable. You will see the wrong turn coming and you will have to sit through it, and sitting through a wrong turn you can see is one of the genuinely difficult things about being a parent.

But three things happen while you wait.

She often gets there. Not always, and not most times at first, but often enough to be worth the sixty seconds.

You have a whole minute to give tonight that costs nothing but stillness, and no minute has ever once been more expensive than the eleven it replaces. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in the part where a parent says nothing at all, and Proverbs 19:2 puts the haste beside the blindness and calls both real.

You find out where the actual difficulty is, rather than where you assumed it was.

And when you do speak, you can start from her route rather than from yours, which means the help joins the work instead of replacing it.

Proverbs 19:2 ranks haste alongside acting without knowledge, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a table with somebody sitting on their hands.

You are permitted to watch a wrong turn happen, and letting somebody finish has never once been the same as letting them fail. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies the patience for the last thirty seconds of it, and the written word names the hastening as the fault.

You have the whole difference between helping and interrupting inside four words, and it has never once required you to explain anything better. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a parent quiet long enough to be useful, and Proverbs 19:2 puts the speed beside the blindness.