The Power of the Tongue

 Recently, I decided to bring affirmations back into our Children’s House classroom. It wasn’t because I wanted another cute morning routine or because I believe children can simply repeat a few positive sentences every morning and magically become confident people. If confidence worked that way, adulthood would be a whole lot easier. I brought them back because the older I get, the more I understand just how powerful the words we repeatedly say about ourselves can become true.

There is a biblical principle that has always stuck with me: there is power in the tongue. Our words carry weight, and what we continually speak about ourselves, about other people, and into the lives of our children matters. You certainly don’t have to share my faith to recognize the practical wisdom behind that idea. Most of us know what it feels like when the voice inside our head starts saying, “I can’t do this,” “I’m not good enough,” “I always mess this up,” “I hate Mondays,” or “Everyone else knows what they’re doing except me.” Sometimes the stories become much deeper than that, especially when we begin allowing experiences from our own childhood to determine the kind of adults or parents we believe we have to become. We may tell ourselves, “My parents did this to me, so I’m going to swing the pendulum completely in the opposite direction. I’m only going to be sweet with my children. I’m never going to show anger.” The intention behind that may be beautiful, but it also isn’t realistic because we are human, and being human means experiencing the entire range of emotions that comes with it.

That’s the part I think we sometimes underestimate. The language we repeatedly use doesn’t stay neatly contained inside our heads. When certain thoughts become habitual, they can begin shaping the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what we’re capable of, how we interpret other people, and even how we parent our children. The goal isn’t to pretend difficult emotions or negative thoughts don’t exist, because they do. The goal is to become aware of the language we’re allowing to become our internal voice and to recognize when that voice is helping us grow or quietly convincing us that we cannot.

That is one of the reasons I don’t simply want our children to hear these affirmations from us. I want them to say them for themselves. There is something different about an adult looking at a child and saying, “You are strong,” and that child learning to say, “I am strong.” The first voice comes from someone else, while the second begins to become their own. Eventually, our children will leave our classrooms, their parents’ homes, and all of the environments where adults are constantly available to reassure them. When that happens, I want some of the encouragement they once heard from us to have already become part of the way they speak to themselves.

Of course, the words alone aren’t enough, and I think that distinction is incredibly important. I don’t want to teach children that saying “I am strong” somehow magically makes them strong. I want them to say “I am strong,” encounter something difficult later that morning, work through it, and slowly gather evidence that the words they spoke have meaning. I want them to speak about wisdom and then have opportunities to make thoughtful choices. I want them to speak about respect and then practice respecting themselves and the people around them. The words give children language, while their experiences give those words meaning.

That is where affirmations begin to make sense to me within Montessori.

The other thing I’ve realized since bringing them back is that none of these affirmations are exclusively for children. They’re for us adults, too. Somewhere along the way, we become remarkably good at carrying insecurity without anybody noticing. We go to work, raise children, maintain relationships, pay bills, make difficult decisions, run businesses, and handle responsibilities while simultaneously wondering underneath it all whether we’re doing any of it correctly. Sometimes we speak to ourselves in ways we would never dream of speaking to a child, which makes me wonder why we believe we somehow stop needing the lessons we work so hard to teach them.

So when I stand with our children in the morning and hear these words, I’m not only thinking about who I hope they become. I’m thinking about who I’m still becoming, too.

I Am Calm

Every morning, we begin in the same place: I am calm. After we have gone through every other affirmation, we return to those words once more before moving into our day. That is intentional because I believe almost everything else becomes harder when we don’t know how to return ourselves to a place of calm.

Being calm doesn’t mean we don’t experience emotions. I don’t want children believing anger is bad, sadness should be hidden, frustration means something is wrong with them, or excitement needs to disappear. Those emotions are part of being human, and what I want them to understand is that experiencing an emotion and being controlled by that emotion are two different things. A child can become angry and learn to return to calm, just as a child can become frustrated with a work and learn to regulate their body before deciding what to do next. They can experience disappointment and gradually discover that the feeling will pass without needing someone to immediately remove the disappointment for them.

I think adults need that reminder just as much. How many times have we allowed one frustrating interaction in the morning to follow us around for the rest of the day, or responded while angry and wished ten minutes later that we had simply given ourselves a moment before speaking? Calmness isn’t the absence of emotion; it is learning how to find yourself again within it.

I Am Strong

When our children say, “I am strong,” we aren’t simply talking about muscles. I want them to understand that they can be mentally strong, emotionally strong, and physically strong, because all three forms of strength will be necessary throughout their lives.

Physical strength is probably the easiest for children to recognize because they can feel their growing bodies becoming capable of carrying something heavier, climbing a little higher, balancing more carefully, or completing a physical task that once required help. Mental strength appears when the Trinomial Cube isn’t coming together, when a puzzle piece doesn’t fit, when writing a letter feels difficult, or when a mathematical concept doesn’t immediately make sense, and the child chooses to stay with the problem rather than immediately walking away from it.

Emotional strength may be the hardest of all because it requires children to experience things we sometimes instinctively want to protect them from. They will hear “no,” they will lose sometimes, someone will hurt their feelings, and they will make mistakes that leave them frustrated, disappointed, embarrassed, or angry. Our job isn’t to somehow create a childhood where none of those things happen, because eventually life will make that impossible anyway. Our job is to help them develop the tools to move through those experiences and discover that difficult feelings and difficult moments do not have to become permanent states.

Strength doesn’t mean that nothing affects us, nor does it mean that we never cry, struggle, ask for help, or feel overwhelmed. Being strong means discovering that struggle doesn’t have to stop us, and that is a lesson I hope our children carry long after they’ve forgotten where they first learned to say the words.

I Get Better Every Day

This may be the simplest affirmation we use, but I think it carries one of the most important lessons because every morning comes with another opportunity.

If yesterday wasn’t a good day, you have another chance to get better today. Maybe you weren’t particularly respectful, maybe you struggled to listen, became frustrated with someone, made a poor choice, or simply had one of those days where nothing seemed to go right. Yesterday happened, and we should learn from it, but yesterday doesn’t get to decide who we are today.

The same principle applies when yesterday was wonderful. If you had a great day yesterday, today still gives you another opportunity to become even better, and tomorrow will give you that opportunity again. There will always be something new to learn, another way to help someone, another skill to practice, or another part of ourselves that still has room to grow.

I think adults sometimes need this affirmation even more than children because we have a tendency to turn mistakes into identities. Instead of saying, “I made a bad decision,” we begin thinking, “I’m bad at this,” and instead of saying, “That didn’t work,” we decide, “I can’t do it.” Maybe we need to give ourselves the same grace we’re trying to teach our children and remember that yesterday can teach us without owning us, while every new day gives us another opportunity to get better.

I Have Wisdom

One of the changes I recently made was replacing “I am smart” with “I have wisdom.” The more I thought about it, the more important that distinction became to me.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with intelligence, but I don’t want our children growing up believing that being smart means always knowing the answer. Children can quickly begin categorizing themselves and one another by thinking, She’s good at reading. He’s good at math. I’m not good at writing. She’s the smart one. Eventually, some children can become so attached to being “smart” that difficult work becomes threatening because struggling feels inconsistent with the identity they’ve developed.

Wisdom asks something different of us because wisdom isn’t simply knowing something; wisdom is learning what to do with what you know. It requires us to think about our decisions, consider how our actions affect other people, recognize when we’ve made a mistake, ask questions when we don’t understand something, and have enough humility to change our minds when we learn something new.

For a young child, wisdom can appear in moments adults might easily overlook. Should I interrupt someone who is speaking? Should I put this material away even though nobody is watching me? What should I do after I hurt my friend’s feelings? Should I continue trying independently, or is this the moment when asking for help would actually be the wiser choice? These may seem like small decisions to us, but they are the beginnings of something much larger.

Wisdom requires knowledge, but it also requires judgment, humility, patience, and reflection. Perhaps that’s another reason I prefer it to “I am smart.” I don’t want children who spend their lives trying to prove they’re the smartest people in the room; I want children who grow into adults wise enough to recognize that there will always be something they don’t know.

I Am Important

When we say, “I am important,” we aren’t teaching children that they’re more important than anyone else. We’re teaching them that their presence matters and that they have something meaningful to contribute to the people and environment around them.

Montessori gives children a beautiful opportunity to actually experience this rather than simply hearing adults tell them they’re important. The classroom isn’t a place where adults do everything while children consume what has been prepared for them. Children clean spills, restore materials, prepare food, care for their environment, help classmates, solve conflicts, and contribute to their classroom community, which allows them to gradually recognize that they aren’t simply people who need to be cared for; they are capable of caring for other people and the world around them as well.

When children recognize that the classroom is different because they’re part of it, the words I am important stop being an empty compliment and begin describing something they have actually experienced. That realization becomes another small piece of confidence because the child begins understanding, I have something to contribute, my choices matter, and my presence matters.

I Am Respectful

You may notice that we say “I am respectful” instead of “I am kind.” That change was intentional. Kindness is incredibly important and remains something we practice every day, but I wanted language that went a little deeper and gave our children something they could apply not only to the way they treat other people, but also to the way they treat themselves. That is why when we say, “I am respectful,” we follow it with, “to myself and to others.”

Children hear a lot about respecting adults, respecting teachers, respecting their friends, and respecting rules, but I think we sometimes forget to teach them that they are included among the people deserving of their respect. Respecting yourself means caring for your body, recognizing your feelings, communicating when something makes you uncomfortable, developing appropriate boundaries, caring for your belongings, and learning to speak to yourself with the same dignity you would offer someone else.

Respect for others appears throughout our Montessori environment in equally practical ways. We listen when someone is speaking, respect another child’s workspace, return materials so they are ready for the next person, care for our shared environment, communicate when something bothers us, and recognize that our choices affect the people around us. This is woven throughout Montessori’s Grace and Courtesy lessons because respect shouldn’t exist only as an instruction handed down by an adult; children need opportunities to practice what it actually looks and feels like within a community.

I also want our children to understand as they grow that respect and obedience are not necessarily the same thing. Being respectful doesn’t mean never disagreeing, never saying no, or believing another person’s wishes are automatically more important than your own. We can disagree respectfully, advocate for ourselves respectfully, establish boundaries respectfully, and learn to accept and honor the boundaries other people establish with us.

That’s ultimately why I chose respectful instead of kind. Kindness remains incredibly important, but respect gives us a broader foundation because it asks children to consider how they treat their friends, their teachers, their environment, and themselves. We spend so much time teaching children to respect everyone around them that we sometimes forget to teach them about one of the people they’ll have a relationship with for the rest of their lives: themselves.

I Will Soar

When our children say, “I will soar,” I want them to think about possibility. They are still discovering who they are, what interests them, what comes naturally, what requires tremendous effort, and what they are ultimately capable of becoming, which is why I don’t want adults placing ceilings above children before they’ve even had an opportunity to discover how high they can go.

Some things will come naturally to them, while other things will require tremendous effort. They’ll fail sometimes, succeed sometimes, surprise us often, and hopefully surprise themselves even more. The three-year-old struggling with something today isn’t showing us the limit of their ability; they’re simply showing us where they are today, and there is an enormous difference between those two things.

Our responsibility isn’t to decide in advance how high a child is capable of going. It is to give them enough independence, opportunity, responsibility, perseverance, and confidence to eventually discover that for themselves.

I Am Valued

This affirmation matters deeply to me because value and achievement are not the same thing. A child doesn’t become more valuable because they’re doing advanced mathematics, nor do they become less valuable because they’re struggling to recognize a letter. Their value doesn’t increase because an adult praised them or disappear because someone was disappointed in a choice they made.

Achievement changes, behavior changes, and abilities develop. We all have days when we’re proud of ourselves and days when we know we could have done better, but our worth shouldn’t rise and fall with those things.

Adults struggle with this constantly because somewhere along the way we begin attaching our value to careers, income, appearance, relationships, accomplishments, businesses, homes, and the opinions other people have of us. We can become so accustomed to measuring ourselves that we forget there are parts of our worth that aren’t reflected on a résumé, paycheck, report card, or social media page. When our children say, “I am valued,” perhaps the adults standing nearby need to quietly say it with them.

I Go After My Dreams

This affirmation is probably the most personal one for me because years ago, when I started telling people that I wanted to open my own school, people laughed. Friends laughed, family questioned it, and even parents doubted whether it was realistic. I remember thinking to myself, Damn, that sucks. These were people whose opinions mattered to me, and something I could see so clearly in my own mind sounded ridiculous to some of the people around me.

For a while, their doubt bothered me more than I wanted to admit, but eventually I learned something about doubt that I wish I had understood much earlier in life and that I want our children to understand while they are still young: when someone doubts what you are capable of, you do not automatically have to make their doubt your own.

That doesn’t mean we should ignore everyone who questions us, because sometimes doubt contains information we genuinely need to hear. Someone may see a weakness in our plan that we haven't considered, recognize that we aren't prepared yet, or challenge us in a way that ultimately makes us better. Wisdom means being confident enough to listen without becoming defensive, because believing in yourself should never require believing that everyone who disagrees with you is wrong.

There will also be times, however, when another person’s doubt has very little to do with what you are actually capable of doing. All of us view possibility through the lens of our own experiences, fears, failures, successes, and understanding of the world. If someone cannot imagine themselves taking a particular risk, surviving a particular failure, making a particular sacrifice, or accomplishing something that feels impossible to them, they may have a difficult time imagining you doing it either. Sometimes when someone says, “You can’t do that,” what they may actually be revealing, whether they realize it or not, is “I can’t imagine myself doing that.”

Those are two very different statements, and learning the difference can change the way we receive doubt.

Throughout our children’s lives, someone will eventually question them. Someone may tell them their dream is unrealistic, that they aren’t talented enough, that they’re aiming too high, or that they should choose something safer. I don’t want our children becoming angry every time someone doubts them, and I certainly don’t want them spending their lives desperately trying to prove other people wrong. What I want is for them to develop enough wisdom to examine the doubt, take whatever truth might be inside it, and then decide for themselves what belongs to them and what doesn’t.

If someone’s doubt reveals that you need to prepare more, then prepare more. If it exposes a weakness, strengthen it. If it shows you something you hadn't considered, learn from it. But if, after examining it honestly, you realize that the doubt is simply someone else’s inability to imagine what you can see for yourself, then let that doubt become fuel rather than allowing it to become your ceiling.

There were moments when people's doubt about my school became exactly that for me. It became fuel, not because I wanted my entire life to turn into some giant “I told you so,” but because their questions forced me to examine how deeply I actually believed in what I was building. If I truly believed in it, then somebody else's inability to see it couldn't be enough to make me stop. Their doubt could make me prepare harder, learn more, improve the plan, and become better at explaining what I was trying to create, but it didn't have to become doubt in myself.

So I kept going, and today I’m sitting inside the Montessori school that once existed only in my imagination.

That is what I mean when I want our children saying, “I go after my dreams.” I’m not teaching them that every dream will come true simply because they believe hard enough, because that isn’t how life works. Dreams require preparation, discipline, patience, sacrifice, failure, adjustment, humility, and sometimes years of work before anyone else understands what you’re trying to accomplish. Some dreams will work exactly as imagined, some will change along the way, and some may ultimately lead us somewhere entirely different from where we thought we were going.

What I want our children to understand is that someone else’s doubt is information, not a verdict. They can hear it, consider it, learn from whatever truth exists within it, and even use it as motivation to work harder, but they don’t have to automatically allow another person’s fear about what they could accomplish to become the ceiling for what you believe you can accomplish.

Sometimes the people around you will see your vision immediately, sometimes they’ll understand it only after you’ve built it, and some may never see it at all. Our children will eventually leave this little Montessori classroom and enter a much bigger world that will have plenty to say about who they should be, what they should pursue, and what they are supposedly capable of accomplishing. I want them to be wise enough to listen, confident enough to discern what is worth carrying with them, and strong enough to keep moving when someone else’s limitations simply don’t belong to them.

Let doubt sharpen you, challenge you, and sometimes even fuel you, but never automatically allow it to define you.

That is what I mean when we say, “I go after my dreams.”

We Return to Calm

After we’ve spoken about strength, growth, wisdom, importance, respect, possibility, value, and dreams, we return to exactly where we began and say once more, “I am calm.”

I’ve come to appreciate that sequence because confidence, at least the kind of confidence I want our children to develop, isn’t particularly loud. It doesn’t require constant reassurance, being the smartest person in the room, winning every argument, succeeding at everything we attempt, or proving ourselves to everybody around us. The confidence I’m interested in is much quieter than that. It’s being able to encounter something difficult without immediately deciding we’re incapable, make a mistake without deciding we’re a failure, hear somebody else’s opinion without automatically making it our own, pursue something meaningful even when other people don’t completely understand it, and experience enormous emotions while trusting that we can eventually find our way back to ourselves.

The affirmation cards themselves won’t create that person, and I would never pretend they could. Life will help shape that person through experience, responsibility, relationships, failure, success, disappointment, perseverance, and countless opportunities to try again. Montessori simply gives our children a carefully prepared environment where they can begin experiencing responsibility, independence, challenge, correction, success, and community while they’re still small, while the affirmations give them language for what those experiences are slowly teaching them about themselves.

That’s why the power of the tongue matters so much to me here. I don’t only want children surrounded by adults telling them who they are. At some point, the voice has to become their own. We can spend years saying, “You’re capable,” but eventually I want the child to believe, “I am capable.” We can tell them they’re valued every morning, but eventually I want that value to exist inside them even when nobody is standing nearby to remind them.

Perhaps that’s ultimately why I brought these affirmations back into our Children’s House. They aren’t only reminders of the people we hope our children will become. Every morning when we say them together, they’re reminders of the people we adults are still becoming, too. We are still learning how to regulate ourselves, becoming stronger, developing wisdom, learning to respect ourselves and others, and recognizing that every new day gives us another opportunity to become better than we were yesterday. We still have dreams worth pursuing, and we still have to learn how to hear the voices around us without automatically allowing those voices to become our own.

So, we say the words, and then we spend the day trying to live them:

I am calm. I am strong. I get better every day. I have wisdom. I am important. I am respectful to myself and to others. I will soar. I am valued. I go after my dreams.

And after everything else has been said, we return once more to where we started, reminding ourselves that whatever today brings, we can meet it from a grounded place within ourselves:

I am calm.