This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

When my LDS ward let out last Sunday, parents came by to pick up their children from the nursery where I'm assigned as referee.

As the kids waved goodbye to me and ran out to meet their parents, I overheard the following conversation.

Mom: "Did you have a good time in nursery with Brother Kirby?"

Kid: "Yeah. He'll bite off our ears if we hit with toys."

Clearly I shouldn't have said that out loud. Threatening to maim small children goes against everything Jesus taught, right?

Cool. Release me.

Won't happen. Do you know how hard it is to find someone who actually likes working in a room filled with snot weasels? Don't get me wrong. I love my Sunday kids. They make far more sense than their parents.

However, because of that ear-biting threat (which, incidentally, works), I've been studying up on how to better communicate with children.

There are things you should never say to your children, assuming of course you have some. If you do but they've grown up, chances are you've already said some of these hurtful things.

In the latter case it would be easy to say that the damage is already done, but I'm not going to. The fact that my parents said some of this to me contributed significantly to my still being alive.

"Just wait until your father gets home."

This one I don't get. By the time I was 11, my mother couldn't spank hard enough to hurt me emotionally or physically. I'd just think about something else until she wore herself out. Once, when she heard me humming a song in the middle of a whacking, she started to cry.

But "two more hours and your father will be home" was cause for serious concern. That wasn't nearly enough time to get out of the country. I'd weep and plead for mercy then.

"Because I said so" is another potentially harmful phrase. Maybe it emotionally scarred normal kids, but it didn't hurt me. In fact, it kept me from getting hurt.

Incessantly demanding an alternate answer as to why I couldn't have a real tiger drove my parents crazy. When they got to the point of shouting "because I said so" I knew that I was one more demand away from being locked in the broom closet.

"You know better than that!" According to parenting experts, this phrase is a way of shaming a child for not being smart enough to understand the consequences of a particular action.

Let's suppose 50 years ago that a kid got into the family car, put the gear shift in "neutral" and released the parking brake. Let's also suppose the car rolled backwards out of the driveway, across the street, through a fence, over a garden and into the side of a house.

Bellowing "you know better than that!" at this particular kid was a waste of breath because he DID know better. And since it wouldn't have happened if you'd locked the car doors as you swore to do the last two times, why didn't YOU know better?

Speaking of why, another phrase potentially harmful to kids is, "Why can't you be more like [insert name of dork]?"

Comparing the child to another supposedly perfect child — typically one so smarmy that even bugs avoid him — is useless. Any kid who has ever had this demanded of him knows the correct answer is, "Because I'd rather be dead."

Maybe I should just forget it. Whether or not I'm talking to my Sunday kids appropriately is perhaps best measured by the fact that the kids don't cry when their parents drop them off.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.