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

increasingly competent) little agriculturalists.
    After returning from the supermarket, Jonah and Lucy require their two children to carry a bag of groceries into the kitchen. If the bag is too heavy, which most bags are for small children, Jonah or Lucy will take one handle and their kids will take the other. Similarly, when they visit extended family, each child packs their own little roller bags and carries it to and from the car. If their family is flying, their children are required to roll their bags through the airport.
    Our girls love to “help” Sarah make dinner. I put help in quotes because, as you might have experienced yourself, two little girls trying to help their mother prepare dinner can actually make the process longer, more complicated, and messier. Despite these drawbacks, Sarah usually allows them to take part by pouring, mixing, and chopping (with a dull knife, of course) ingredients. Catie and Gracie are not only gaining a sense of culinary competence, but alsomastering a wonderful skill that will offer them practical value and joy for a lifetime.
    Karl is a real “do-it-yourself” guy; he just loves fixing things (his motto is: I usually fix the problem, but I don’t guarantee my work). His three children love to be his “apprentices.” When Karl goes to repair something, he allows them to carry a tool. During the repair itself, he gives each of them the opportunity to use a tool so they feel like they are making the repair, for example, they screw in a screw, tighten a bolt, or hold on to the drill while Karl is drilling a hole.
    Darcy and Wayne weren’t going to fall for all of the advertising for so-called educational games and toys. They grew up without all of that fancy rigmarole and turned out just fine. They believed that if they just stuck to the basics, their two children, Lars and Lena, would turn out just fine, too. So their time with their kids is filled with reading, playing games, doing puzzles, playing sports, engaging in pretend play, exploring nature, and creating art.

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Message #3: Security Is Your Child’s Safe Harbor (“I’m Okay”)
     
    Your efforts to instill the messages of love and competence in your children are devoted to developing your children’s fundamental sense of security in themselves and the world. There are three messages you want them to get for this budding sense of security. First, there are people in my world who will protect me when needed. Second, I am master of all that is me (body, mind, spirit) and am capable of taking care of myself. Third, the world is a safe place that I can explore with confidence and free from fear.
SECURE ATTACHMENT
     
    The first message of security involves your children feeling securely attached to you. The operative word with attachment is “trust.” Simply put, secure attachment develops in children who learn that they can trust their parents to meet their physical and emotional needs. When they are cold, hungry, or thirsty, they know you are there to provide them with warmth and sustenance. When they are scared, sad, or lonely they can turn to you for comfort.
    This attachment isn’t just important for you and your children to develop healthy relationships. You are their first exposure to the world. The experiences your children have, the emotions they feel, and the perceptions they assume about you and their relationship with you become the foundation for the experiences, emotions, and perceptions they will have with the world beyond you.
    Imagine children who grow up without that attachment, trust, and sense of security. They learn that the world is a dangerous, unpredictable, and neglectful place that can’t be relied on to care for them. Such a worldview would have a profoundly negative impact on every aspect of their future lives, including how they come to see themselves and their emotions, relationships, and ambitions. Who they ultimately become and what they eventually do would emerge from this dark place of doubt, fear, and need. Research has shown that children with insecure attachment experience significant separation anxiety when parents leave, yet find little comfort when they return. They are often described as needy and clingy by teachers and other caregivers. In adulthood, they fear intimacy, have difficulty expressing their emotions, lack trust in their intimate relationships, and take rejection badly.
    Now consider children who are raised with a strong feeling of attachment, trust in