10/11/2026
I remember the first time my son repeated something that I said that came directly from my mouth. He was only a couple years old, and it made me disgusted.
Not disgusted with him; it made me disgusted with myself because it shined that mirror directly back on who I was.
The thing he said was something I repeated in a moment of frustration by myself in the kitchen a month earlier, when he was in a different room, but it just bounced around in his head the entire time. During his waking hours and sleeping hours, his memories of the day are bouncing around his brain. Thinking about his parents, everything he sees and hears, he's absorbing it all.
Why did it disgust me? Because he used my tone, my inflection, the same words. So what I did was I started writing down words and phrases I commonly used that I wanted to eliminate and what I wanted to replace them with. I have a list in my Google Drive. It says words I want to cut out and words I want to add. How do I want to look when I'm speaking to my kids? How do I not want to look? How do I want to make them feel?
Since then, I've been on a journey to be the warm, positive, accepting father that they deserve. The scary thing is... if he absorbed my words that quickly. Just imagine how many actions he was absorbing, or emotions, or moods. My emotional state, my discipline, my joy or depression. That shines the mirror directly on me and is a calling for me to build myself every single day. Having kids forces us to accept that reflection or change it while there is still time. We change it by changing ourselves.
RISE for them
Chris Rodack
