Parenting is very hard and heart wrenching at times. The following is a true story about an incredible mother to a little boy and how she handled a difficult situation. It really is a beautiful true story about a mother’s love.

One day, Thomas Edison came home from school and gave a paper to his mother. He told her, “My teacher gave this paper to me and told me to only give it to my mother.”

His mother’s eyes were tearful as she read the letter out loud to her child: “Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have enough good teachers for training him. Please teach him yourself.”

After many, many years, Edison’s mother died, and he had become one of the greatest inventors of the century. One day he began looking through old family things and he saw a folded paper in the corner of a drawer in a desk. He took it and opened it up. On the paper was written: “Your son is mentally ill and cannot think clearly. We won’t let him come to school anymore.”

Edison cried for hours and then he wrote in his diary: “Thomas Alva Edison was a mentally ill child that, by a hero mother, became the genius of the century.”

You remember when you were little you were taught, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Words are powerful, hurtful and can inflict a lifetime of pain but they can also lift up, build up and grow a child into a great adult. When dealing with our children, we as parents should be very careful with words. KT