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

to send them the messages of tidiness and responsibilityfor their belongings, so every evening before they go to bed, our girls pile their books on the coffee table in our living room and put away their toys in their bedrooms. Their morning routine involves making their beds and getting dressed before breakfast on school days. The messages embedded in this routine are preparedness and cooperation on busy school mornings.
    Rituals that we practice regularly are moments of gratitude before dinner, Tuesdays with their grandmother, and regular hikes on a nearby mountain. These rituals, which are special to Catie and Gracie, convey messages of appreciation, connection to extended family, and reverence for nature and fitness, respectively.
    I have noticed that our routines and rituals seem to emerge, transform, and ultimately fade away, to be replaced by others. Out of no conscious decision on our part, they appear to run their course as new capabilities, thought processes, or experiences trigger new routines and rituals that replace the old ones. When you recognize that old routines and rituals have limited “shelf lives” and new ones evolve naturally, you can ensure that the messages that underlie them stay fresh and compelling for your children.
Your Children Are Listening
will offer a variety of routines and rituals that may be associated with important messages.
    Activities. Because what you and your children do has a greater effect on them than what you say, the most direct way to communicate messages is to engage your children in activities in which the messages are embedded. These message-laden activities exist everywhere in your family’s lives: when you cook a meal, do chores around the house, play games, read books, go on outings … The list is almost endless. When you provide opportunities for your children to participate in activities that convey meaningful messages, you allow them to experience firsthand the messages’ inherent value while observing their many benefits.
    Outside support. You can’t communicate all of the messages you want to send to your children by yourself. You need to enlist helpfrom the world around you so that your children are enveloped in a cocoon of healthy messages before they leave that protective nest and venture out into a world that is full of anything-but-healthy messages. Outside support can come from your extended family and friends, the schools your children go to, the houses of worship your family attends, and the extracurricular activities in which your children participate. The more sources from which your children receive positive messages, the more likely they will be to see their value and adopt them as their own. Research demonstrates the value that outside support provides parents in sending healthy messages to their children. For example, a study of children who participated in Boys and Girls Clubs of America, as compared to others who did not, had stronger self-concepts and better social skills, received more reinforcement for positive behaviors, engaged in fewer problem behaviors, and were less vulnerable to unhealthy influences.
USE MULTIPLE CONDUITS
     
    Research has shown that children possess different learning styles, typically categorized as visual (by watching), auditory (by listening), kinesthetic (by doing), reading/writing, and tactile (by feeling). Ideally, you should send messages through the conduits that play to your children’s learning strengths, thus increasing the likelihood that your messages will get through. At the same time, despite children’s specific learning styles, when you send messages through multiple conduits that engage their dominant and nondominant learning styles, you will get the messages through to your children in more and different ways. And when these multiplied and diverse avenues embed the message in your children through different psychological and physiological systems, the message will be grasped more deeply and completely.
LOUDSPEAKER VERSUS STEALTH MESSAGES
     
    You can convey messages to your children either directly or indirectly. “Loudspeaker” messages include telling your children the message you want them to get, pointing it out in other people, or telling stories with the specific message in mind. These straightforward messages ensure that there is no confusion about your intent and that your children are paying attention and are focused on the message. The risk with direct messages is that your