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

up stories about love.
Remove activities that send bad messages of love.
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    But special time doesn’t have to be a major affair. It can involve playing a game, going for a walk, or just sitting and cuddling. Sarah allows Catie and Gracie to decide how they want to spend this special time. Catie loves to do artwork with Sarah. Gracie likes to play with her stuffed animals and have Sarah read to her. Because my work can be time-consuming, I make an extra effort to have special time with each of the girls as well. I take them individually in the baby jogger when I go for runs. I take Catie on a “trail-a-bike” when I go mountain biking. And Gracie zips around on her pedalless bike with me. But the most special special time for me, though it is also the simplest, is when I take each girl for a walk around the neighborhood just holding hands, talking, and exploring nature.
    Activities that turn into traditions are a wonderful way to send the message of love to your children. A friend of ours, Eliana, has established a tradition of taking her daughters for tea on Valentine’s Day. They dress up, she makes Valentine’s Day cards for each of them, and they spend an afternoon celebrating this day that represents love.
    Ted was definitely not the artsy type, but one day while his son Arnie was painting with his watercolors, Ted started using them, too. When he showed his “work of art” to his son, Arnie went bonkers with joy. And Ted found that, despite his very limited artistic capabilities, he enjoyed producing his little creations. So before work trips, he creates a painting, a drawing, or even a small piece of Play-Doh sculpture that he leaves for Arnie to find after Ted has left. Arnie treasures these gifts and has a bookshelf devoted to his dad’s art collection.
    Renny’s mother was a real storyteller. When he was a boy, she would create the most amazing tales that entertained him for hours. So he figures that explains why he loves telling stories to his two children. And Renny has found that his storytelling is a great way to send messages of his love for them. He creates elaborate yarns of adventure and excitement in which his sons are the main characters, to ensure that they are paying attention. Then he incorporates love and support into the narratives, between his two boys and with the characters’ parents. The stories end, of course, with triumph over the bad guys, but also with the characters’ families together hugging and kissing.
    Sometimes removing an activity that is sending unhealthy messages about love is an expression of love. Marcy used to be so disdainful of her friends with children who were always chatting it up on their mobile phones with their kids around. But then she had two children of her own, and before she knew it, Marcy had become one of those mothers. She saw the attraction of the phones. However much she loved her children, being with them full time was often boring. To entertain herself, she would call or text friends, check her e-mail, or surf the Web. Then one day, her three-year-old, Sami, and one-year-old, Jessie, wanted her attention, but Marcy was talking to her mother on her mobile phone. After several attempts at getting their mother’s attention, both of her daughters started crying, and Sami yelled, “You love that phone more than me!” Well, that cry was a slap in the face for Marcy, and she got the message from Sami. Thereafter, she made a rule that she wouldn’t use her mobile phone when she was with her children except for short and necessary communications.
    For Sarah and I, that activity was checking our e-mail or searching the Web on the laptop computer on our kitchen counter when we were with the girls. Sarah or I would often open the laptop while Catie and Gracie were eating, figuring we were being very efficient in our use of time.
    But after a while, our girls started to complain, telling us that we were ignoring them. And they were right. We realized that we were with them in body, but not in mind or spirit. Neither Sarah nor I had the willpower to resist the siren song of the laptop calling out to us every time we entered the kitchen, so we took drastic measures. We removed the laptop from the counter and placed it around the corner on a high shelf with Sarah’s cookbooks. It was close enough for Sarah to conveniently pull it out to access online recipes or for either of us to check e-mail or surf the Web when the girls weren’t around, but not