Your Children Are Listening: Nine Messages They Need to Hear from You

easily to children, and certainly not to her son Rex. Though it is easy to tell him what she doesn’t think worked well (as it is to tell kids what they shouldn’t do), Alma wants to focus him on what he does right. So whenever Rex responds to a potentially negative emotional situation by staying calm and collected, she praises him for the emotional choice he made (“You could have gotten really upset there, but you decided that being positive would work better, and it did!”).
    Gloria grew up in a family where the emotional tone was always negative, filled with pessimism, criticism, and conflict. And it was stifling. When she got married and had children, Gloria was determined to create a very different emotional tone in her family. Sure, some negativity is a natural part of family life, but she wanted to make positivity the “coin of the realm.”
    To that end, Gloria and her husband, Dennis (who was a very positive fellow), made positive emotions, such as happiness, excitement, pride, gratitude, and empathy, a regular part of their daily life. They wanted to highlight the presence of positive emotions for their children. So when their kids were clearly feeling upbeat, they would simply reflect back what they saw, for example, “You look like you’re having so much fun playing together” or “You seem so excited about your school project.” Gloria and Dennis also wanted to model positive emotions. So when they were feeling a particularpositive emotion, they would share it with their kids. For example, after a productive day at work, Gloria might say, “I accomplished so much at work today and I am really proud of my efforts.” Or if Dennis was feeling really contented, he would share this feeling with his family by saying, “I’m sitting here with my favorite people in the world, and I’m one happy guy.”

Afterword
     
    There were three central messages I wanted to communicate to you in
Your Children Are Listening.
The most important is that
your children become the messages they get the most.
Now, more than ever before, you must be intentional and persistent in the messages you send to your children. The reason is that, due to the proliferation of new technology and media, other forces in your children’s world are conveying messages that are not the least bit healthy for them. If you don’t transmit clear, consistent, and healthy messages about what you value and what you want your children to become, they will be shaped by the messages from those less benevolent forces in our society. Part of being deliberate about the messages you send to your children is understanding the many “conduits” through which you convey messages and the “message blockers” that can prevent your messages from getting through to them.
    Second, I described nine messages—love, competence, security, compassion, gratitude, Earth, respect, responsibility, and emotion—that I believe are most essential for your children to hear early in their lives before your influence diminishes and that of outside pressures grows. These messages focus on how children feel about themselves, how they feel about others, and how others feel aboutthem. I also encourage you to ask yourself what messages, other than mine, you want to communicate to your children.
    Third, the payoff for sending positive messages to your children early and often is immense. These messages provide the foundation for your children to become the confident, caring, responsible, and contributing people that I’m sure you want them to be. You will set the stage for your children to find meaning, happiness, healthy relationships, and success in their lives. You will instill in your children the necessary capabilities to, when they leave the comfort and security of your family, fully engage with and thrive in a world that can be scary and scintillating, inhospitable and inviting, and frustrating and fascinating. And you will leave your children a legacy of being able to accept the healthy messages and reject the unhealthy ones they will surely receive every day from their expanding world. You will also show your children how to be conduits of positive messages to all those around them.
    Because you are reading
Your Children Are Listening,
you probably have children who are pretty young, like our daughters. We certainly have a long way to go in raising Catie and Gracie. And it is
so
difficult sometimes: overwhelming, frustrating, exhausting, uncertain, and just