When children come to me and tell me that a classmate has said something unkind to them, I think to myself, “You have a whole life ahead of you where people will say unkind things to you or about the people you love, get used to it.” And, quite honestly, that is the sad and ugly truth for most people.
But I have always been one to live with my silly “rose colored glasses” where I think I can change the world even if it is with just making a difference to one person in one way. And so, I have often told the children I’ve taught that with our words and deeds, we can grow flowers or plant weeds. I often start by asking them if they like flowers. Most, if not all of the children say “yes”. Then I ask them if they know what weeds are and in answering, we discuss why weeds are not good for a garden of flowers. I tell the children that our good words and the good things we do are like flowers and that every time we tell something nice, we are planning a flower. When we say something or do something unkind, we are planting a weed. I ask them what would happen if we had too many weeds in our garden….our flowers would die of course. The bad would overtake the good.
To help create a visual reminder for this, I create a bulletin board display with the children’s pictures as the centers of the flowers and important facts about them on the flower petals. As we do and say good things, we add additional smaller flowers to our garden and our garden grows. When students are caught saying or doing unkind things, I simply ask them if they were planting a weed or a flower. They are able to identify which, tell me what they did and how they need to change the situation to plant a flower.
Having taught this before in a religious school, I was able to tie it to the parable of the Sower and the Seed from Luke 8:4-15
The Parable of the Sower
4 And when a great multitude had gathered, and they had come to Him from every city, He spoke by a parable: 5 “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trampled down, and the birds of the air devoured it. 6 Some fell on rock; and as soon as it sprang up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. 7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. 8 But others fell on good ground, sprang up, and yielded a crop a hundredfold.” When He had said these things He cried, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
The Purpose of Parables
9 Then His disciples asked Him, saying, “What does this parable mean?”
10 And He said, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that
‘ Seeing they may not see,
And hearing they may not understand.’[b]
The Parable of the Sower Explained
11 “Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. 12 Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. 13 But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. 14 Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity. 15 But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.
I have hoped that what I have taught them is something that has “stuck” and that they often think back to me and think of planting a garden of flowers and not weeds. I think it is sad to think that the cols slap of reality that “people will say many things about you and your loved ones your whole life” is something we should accept. I really do think that if we all thought of planting flowers with our words and deeds instead of weeds, maybe, just maybe, the whole world would be a beautiful flower garden of people.
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