My Praise Has Stopped Meaning Anything

You said well done four times in twenty minutes and none of them registered.

You noticed it on Sunday. Not because anything went wrong, but because you watched your son's face after one of them and there was absolutely nothing in it.

Not ingratitude. Not rudeness. He simply did not hear it, the way a person does not hear traffic.

And it has been like that for a while, and you have half known, and you have been saying it more rather than less, which has made it worse.

Here is what has happened, and it is not a fault and there is nothing to feel bad about.

Praise given continuously stops being information. It becomes the ambient sound of the room, and ambient sound does not carry meaning, and a child who hears well done at everything hears nothing at anything.

I am not going to tell you to praise less, which sounds cold and which is not the point.

I am going to change what one sentence contains, and it will land for the first time in about two years.

He that blesseth with a loud voice

There is a proverb about praise that is uncomfortable enough that people avoid it, and it is exactly about your kitchen.

He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him. (Proverbs 27:14, King James Version)

Nobody in that proverb is insincere.

The person doing the blessing means it. There is nothing false about the blessing and nothing wrong with the words.

The problem is entirely in the delivery: too loud, too early, too much. And the result is not neutral. The proverb says it lands as the opposite of what was intended.

You are a mother with something true to say, and praise that stopped landing has never once been praise that was insincere. Proverbs 27:14 puts the whole failure on the manner rather than on the sincerity, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can hand a woman that without any charge against her warmth.

And notice how strong the language is: it shall be counted a curse to him.

That is not saying the blessing was wasted. It is saying it did something, and the something was the reverse.

You have been giving something that has been quietly doing the opposite, and warmth given constantly has never once landed as warmth. The Spirit of God is the one who names an effect nobody intended, and it is written in Proverbs 27 that the excess is what turns it.

So the problem is not that you praise. It is the volume and the frequency.

You are able to keep every bit of the love and change only the delivery, and a change in how something is said has never once been a change in how much somebody means it. It is written that he that blesseth with a loud voice shall have it counted a curse, and the Holy Spirit is the one who fixes a manner without touching a heart.

What makes a sentence land

Now the practical part, and it is one word: specific.

Well done is not information. It could be said to anybody about anything and it contains nothing about the person hearing it.

That was a good decision to wait rather than take the first one is information. It could only be said to one person about one moment, and it proves you were watching.

You are able to give somebody proof that they were watched, and a specific sentence has never once been the same object as a general one. The Spirit of God is the one who puts a real observation into a woman's mouth, and Proverbs 27:14 puts the failure on a blessing that carried no weight of attention in it.

And here is what your son is actually hungry for, and it is not encouragement.

He wants to know that somebody saw. Encouragement tells him his mother is kind, which he already knows. An observation tells him he was watched closely by somebody who then thought about what she saw.

You have been giving him something he already had, and being noticed has never once been the same gift as being encouraged. It is written in Proverbs 27 that the manner turns the meaning, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a mother what her own child is actually short of.

And one specific sentence in twenty minutes will do more than forty general ones.

You are able to say one thing and have it count for two weeks, and one true observation has never once been outweighed by four well dones. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a single sentence land, and Scripture warns against the blessing that comes too loud and too often.

Then say nothing else

Here is the instruction, and the second half is the harder one.

Say one specific true thing tonight. And say nothing else encouraging for the whole twenty minutes.

Nothing. No well done. No good one. No nice. Not even a warm noise at the right moment.

You are able to be silent and warm at the same time, and a quiet room has never once been an unencouraging one. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in a room where one thing was said and nothing else, and Proverbs 27:14 warns about the frequency as much as about the volume.

Because the silence is what gives the one sentence its weight.

A specific observation surrounded by forty other pieces of praise is just one more piece of weather. The same sentence in a quiet twenty minutes is an event.

You have a way to make one sentence enormous by leaving out thirty nine others, and the space around something has never once made it smaller. The Spirit of God is the one who works in what is not said, and it is written that the loud early blessing turns into its opposite.

And you will feel like you are being cold, which you will not be.

The pull to add another one will arrive about four seconds after the first, and it will feel like withholding. It is not. It is the difference between a sentence and the weather.

You are able to feel like you are withholding and be giving instead, and one thing said in a quiet room has never once been less than four said in a loud one. It is written in Proverbs 27 that too much of a real blessing turns it into something else, and the Spirit of God is the one at work in a mother's restraint.