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

school. So parents buy all kinds of “educational” games and toys that are purported to enhance competence, build self-esteem, and accelerate children’s capabilities. Yet these products have no real value, and research backs up my assertion. In fact, the research shows that children’s development can’t be accelerated; they can only do what they are developmentally prepared to do. When parents try to push their children ahead, they may actually be stunting their development because their children aren’t being allowed to lay the necessary building blocks for later development. Studies show that allparents really need to do to ensure their children’s normal development is to do what parents have always done (at least until the “educational-industrial complex” started controlling the parenting messages). Without even realizing it, when your children engage in the activities that kids have always been involved in, they will progress in developing a sense of competence. And, in case you haven’t heard, under pressure from education and media groups, Baby Einstein, the leading maker of so-called educational products for children, has removed the word “educational” from their advertising and packaging and offered a refund for their products in an implicit admission that their products do not, in fact, have any developmental benefit.
MESSAGES OF COMPETENCE
     
    Competence is an essential quality that children need to develop to become fully functioning adults. In fact, one thing that separates adults from children is the former’s broad repertoire of capabilities that enable them to navigate the world, including physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and practical skills. Competencies are necessary but not sufficient to become a capable adult. Of equal importance is belief in those capabilities; people won’t use the competencies that they have unless they believe that they have them and that using these skill sets will lead to success.
    Early childhood is the time not only when the basic competencies are established but also when the fundamental belief that “I am a competent person” is instilled. The initial experiences that children have as they first engage in the world, from grasping your finger in infancy to sitting and standing to walking, eating, dressing, and talking, lay the foundation for their future beliefs about their ability to master the increasingly complex world in which they will live as they mature. Research has demonstrated that early experiences are vital to establishing competence beliefs. Negativecompetence beliefs are more resistant to change once those beliefs become ingrained. Conversely, positive competence beliefs that are established early on will be less likely to falter in the face of subsequent setbacks and failures.
    Children crave opportunities to demonstrate their competence, almost as if they are hardwired for it. Catie and Gracie are constantly saying “Let me do it!” We often find ourselves “trying to help” when neither of them asked for our help, out of expediency, to make things easier for the girls, or because we see that they can’t quite do the thing they are trying to do. And, to their credit, our efforts to help them are constantly rebuffed with “I can do it myself” (in a dramatically indignant tone). A powerful lesson is that your children are willing to work hard to develop their competence, and intervening too early or too often sends the message that you don’t think they are competent.
    Patience is the key here. Let them struggle for a while. If they realize that they aren’t quite ready to do what they are trying to do, your children will ask you for help and you should then lend a hand only sufficient for them to surmount the immediate difficulty and then turn the task back over to them to finish. The rewards of overcoming what are for them monumental challenges are immediate and clear. Bright smiles of accomplishment spread across their faces, and they gush with pride.
    Yet, many children have already internalized a sense of incompetence. You see them on playgrounds, in classrooms, and on sports fields. They are pessimistic (“I can’t do it.”), fearful (“I’m afraid.”), and reluctant to even try (“No, Mommy, no.”). Certainly, some of these children were born with cautious or fearful temperaments (all the more reason to provide them with the attitudes and tools necessary to gain that sense of competence). For