I had a great time with my little boy recently when we were writing valentines day poems together. He wanted to write a poem for everybody in our house and we had just discovered all about acrostic poems during school time so we decided to write an acrostic poem for each person. William would tell me all the things he loved or thought was a special quality about each person and I would write them down.

Children often speak straight form the heart. They don’t have a little filter on their brain or their mouth and the words just come tumbling out. What they speak is often the truth and they say it just how it is. Sometimes this can go horribly wrong, like when you are in the supermarket and your child makes a remark about how that man over there looks just like Santa Claus with his belly like a bowl full of jelly! But sometimes it can go so wonderfully right like when William was spilling out wonderful words of love and kindness about his friends and family during our valentines day poem writing activity.

As you can probably gather I love words. Words are powerful and we should use them to build one another up in love, to speak only what is helpful. I remember my mother telling me when I was younger “if you have nothing nice to say then do not say anything at all”.

I love that my little boy was able to come up with so many wonderful things to write about the people he loves and I especially love that he did not say anything negative. He knew that the objective of the poem was to tell us how much he loved us and to say how special we are. To build us up in love and to speak only what is helpful.

So I encourage you to build one another up in love, send someone a little love letter, leave them a sweet comment on social media, don’t just scroll past them but take the time to stop and say hi. I received some sweet words of encouragement recently and it just warmed my heart and soul, put a smile on my face and a spring in my step. Spread the love people!