I love what the daughter posted at her blog, and I just have to share it.
There are many women who claim that there are few forces as powerful on this earth as the mommy voice. This mythic force compels all persons within hearing range to cease all activity, revert to the mental age of 5, and say to themselves, “my god, I hope she doesn’t mean me.” It is an elusive and hard to describe power. Though God, in all his goodness, bestows this mighty gift on all women who claim young humans as their own.
However, since my child is beyond the scope of normal human children, God has deemed it necessary to provide me with a vocal power that completely transcends the mommy voice. You might call it an obey me or die voice. It is a voice that would put drill sergeants to shame. It is the faintest shadow of the voice that God used to call creation into being. It is even enough to make C stop running away and turn around.
It is a gift I am very grateful to have.
I know all about that voice. Moms generally only bring it out for the “I really mean what I am telling you and you had better pay attention NOW” occasions, because I remember far too many occasions when they would look up and then just go right back to what they were doing.
I did get tickled not too long ago… We had the youngest son in the car–the one who is still in college and has no kids–and the older son’s two boys also in the car taking them for a visit to Gigi and Granddaddy’s. They were goofing around in the back-back seat (it’s an SUV with 3 rows of seats), getting out of their seatbelts and generally misbehaving when “Uncle Bob” turned around in the middle-back seat, pointed at them and roared “Sit your butt DOWN in that seat NOW and put your seatbelt ON your body.”
“Uncle Bob” looks and sounds much like their daddy, so we had instant quiet and scrambling for seatbelts. Meanwhile, our son turned around to look at us with this horrified look on his face and said– “Oh my God–I’m channeling Dad.”
So, yeah. Not only does God give us a mommy/daddy voice–it’s inherited.