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

over the electorate. And cable-news channels, talk radio, the blogosphere, and party “war rooms” predictate their very existence on identifying and consistently conveying messages and responding to conflicting messages.
    The communication technology landscape of the twenty-first century is also rife with messages. There are voicemail messages, e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages. Think about all of the messages we send and receive every day and you’ll understand how messages influence us in ways both trivial and significant. And you’ll see that messages will also shape your children in ways predictable and unexpected, healthy and harmful.
DO YOU NEED A CRYSTAL BALL?
     
    As parents, we want our children to be prepared for the future. There was a time, not too long ago, when parents could make some sensible assumptions about the future and how their children might best be prepared to flourish in it. But with the pace of change in our society ever-increasing, can we still trust those assumptions?Will what worked in the past continue to work in the future? What should our messages to our children contain that will adequately prepare them for a future no one can predict with any reasonable degree of certainty? The uncertainty can sometimes feel paralyzing given the immensity of the task we face as parents and the consequences of failure for our children.
    But preparing our children for the future doesn’t have to be terrifying, because, despite the profound and fast-paced changes occurring now, raising children doesn’t have to be very different than in the past. Yes, parenting is more difficult now, because we lack the social supports we once could rely on and the resulting feeling is that we have to “go it alone” more than ever before. And yes, the world continues to change technologically, socially, and politically in unpredictable ways. But the fundamentals of child rearing haven’t changed much because people haven’t changed much; we are all driven by the same motives that have driven people for centuries, even millennia: to find meaning, happiness, and connectedness in our lives.
    And what children need to thrive hasn’t changed much either. Children still need a loving and safe environment. They need support, encouragement, and important life skills. And they need guidance from their parents to help them navigate the world in which they are growing up (which has, admittedly, gotten much more complex). In fact, because of the rapid changes and profound uncertainty they are experiencing every day, our children need these messages from us more than ever before. If we can give our children a solid foundation of the right messages, they will have the maturity and capabilities to handle all of the unforeseeable changes that lie ahead.
THE BIRTH OF
YOUR CHILDREN ARE LISTENING
     
    Your Children Are Listening
is based on my own professional knowledge and experience as one of those so-called parenting experts. Asa former full-time academic and published researcher, my work has always been informed by the latest scientific theory and research on child rearing. The last decade has been a fertile time for the study of children, and it has brought new understanding and insights into how children develop. In fact, it may be that this book could not have been written earlier.
    But, equally,
Your Children Are Listening
is based on the real-life parenting experiences my wife, Sarah, and I have had in raising Catie and Gracie. As Catie is just now in kindergarten and Gracie is knee-deep in her preschool years, our memories are sharp, our concerns are fresh, and our joys continuous. These in-the-trenches experiences provided me with the inspiration and the lessons to write
Your Children Are Listening.
I also sent out a survey to almost 5,000 parents in which I asked them to share their experiences with communicating messages to their children. The response was overwhelming; I received a wealth of new, interesting, and sometimes surprising strategies from parents, just like you and me, on the what and how of the messages they send their children.
NINE ESSENTIAL MESSAGES
     
    Your Children Are Listening
will describe nine essential messages that your children need to get in their early years to have a life of meaning, connection, happiness, and success. This book is divided into four parts. Part One , Get the Message, will introduce you to the importance of messages; all the ways that you send