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

be able to focus adequately on any single message. The worst-case scenario is that, to avoid being overwhelmed by the messages, your children actively resist them and may actually do the exact opposite of what your messages tell them.
    The best strategy is to choose and focus on a few messages that are most appropriate to your children’s current level of development and life situation. Life has a way of letting parents know what their children need to learn at any given time. For example, if your son isn’t sharing with his younger sister or your youngest daughter is hitting her older sister, you are presented with a ready-made “teachable moment” in which to send messages about generosity and kindness, respectively.
INCONSISTENT MESSAGES: “YOU CAN THIS TIME.”
     
    Though we may not like to admit it, many of us as parents aren’t as consistent as we should be. Too often, we allow our children to do some things sometimes—usually when it’s expedient—but not other times. What’s the message that your children are getting with these inconsistent messages? At best, they don’t get the messages at all. At worst, the contradictory messages confuse them so much that they choose whichever message works best for them, even if it isn’t the one you want them to get. Or even worse, they get the meta-message that being inconsistent is okay.
    You may find it helpful to ask yourself in what situations you become inconsistent in your messages. It may be when you areunder stress, such as when you are trying to get your children out the door in the morning, when one of your children is throwing a tantrum because you don’t initially give her what she wants, or when you are trying to get dinner on the table on time at the end of the day. This awareness alone can trigger an internal alarm that reminds you of the need to send messages consistently. You can also develop strategies, such as taking a deep breath or having a keyword that will help you remember the importance of consistency in your messages as you enter those situations that are difficult for you. Both approaches will buttress your resolve during those difficult times when it would be so much easier to send a contradictory message or no message at all.
CONFLICTING MESSAGES: “BUT DADDY SAID …”
     
    If you and your spouse send conflicting messages, you pretty much guarantee that your messages won’t get through to your children. Not only will your children not get a clear message, but they will be confused by the contradictory messages from such credible sources and may become paralyzed with uncertainty about what your message really is and what you want them to do.
    Another problem with conflicting messages, aside from the obvious fact that children won’t get a clear message, is that children are amazingly adept at learning which parent will give them what they want. Even as young as age two, children can be incredibly manipulative and capable of playing each parent off each other to get what they want. At the very least, if they don’t like the message from their mother (“No, you can’t have any candy”), children will try to get a better message from their father (“Here you go, dear”).
    Conflicting messages arise for a number of reasons. Parents may be carrying different mental templates of what constitutes good parenting from their own upbringings. They may, as a result, have divergent parenting philosophies and styles. Parents may havedifferent personalities and temperaments; for example, one is laid back and one is more intense. They may also have different values, such that one parent thinks certain messages are important and the other parent doesn’t. One parent might simply not believe that the other’s message is all that important. Or perhaps worst of all, parents may do what is expedient rather than what is in the best interests of their children.
    To reduce conflicting messages, parents need to look at their parenting beliefs and explore where the conflicting messages are coming from. As I mentioned in chapter 1, in-depth discussions about parenting philosophies and styles should be prerequisites to identifying and resolving possible conflicts in the messages that you send to your children. In an ideal world, you want to arrive at an accord long before you communicate any messages to your children. In the real world, the sooner you can craft a consistent message, the better it will be for your children.
DIFFERENT CONDUITS,