I know. That seems obvious to anyone who is awake. Hold on there. Think about it. When was the last time you complimented your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife? Girlfriends compliment each other regularly, a lot. That’s part of being a girlfriend. People in other relationships, not so much. When was the last time your partner complimented you?

I began thinking about this at the end of my “Tuesdays with grandchildren day” today. Every Tuesday I load up the car and take the youngest grandchildren to the movies or swimming or on a picnic, something to put some grandmother memories into them. As they get older, grandchildren have better things to do than hang out with grandma, especially once they have a drivers license. Fortunately I’ve had a steady stream of young grandchildren for the past twenty-five years so I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a lot of cartoon movies.

This afternoon a little voice piped up from the back seat, “Oma, do you know you’re pretty?” Nine year old Logan was either looking for an ice cream before being delivered back home or he’s a natural and he’ll do well in relationships, probably the former but it did make me think because even though I know I probably look a thousand years old to a nine year old and it wouldn’t take much to convince him I actually had a pet dinosaur “in the olden days,” he did make me smile. Even thousand year old dinosaur owning grandmothers like a compliment now and again.

It’s such a simple thing to do to tell someone they’re pretty, handsome, smart, appreciated, hard working, a good lover, funny, interesting and so on. In less than a minute you can brighten someone’s day. Even if they pooh pooh you or claim it’s not true (self-effacing in another blog) they will like hearing it from you and when people feel appreciated or noticed or valued they feel closer to the person handing out the compliment.

Like I said above, girlfriends are very good at giving each other compliments. The rest of the world isn’t and it’s not because they don’t want to. It’s because they don’t think about it. Everyone has a little kid inside that loves being appreciated. Everyone is nicer when they are being treated like they’re valuable. If you care about someone make sure you let them know what you value in them. It’s also a way to teach people how to treat you. If you do it to them they are much more likely to do it to you. And yes, Logan got that ice cream.