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

their parents and the world, and that sense of security. They come to view the world as a safe, friendly, and predictable place that they can count on to meet their needs. The worldview that they subsequently develop would be one of comfort, interest, and opportunity. Studies on attachment have found that securely attached children separate from their parents with ease, welcome them back with enthusiasm, and are readily calmed by parents when frightened. In adulthood, these children generally have high self-esteem, are socially competent and able to establish and maintain intimate relationships, and are emotionally expressive.
Learn to Read Your Children
     
    As I have noted earlier, children have distinctive temperaments, moods, emotional styles, and needs. They also send messages through different conduits to alert you to their specific requirements. You need to learn your children’s personalities and the particular messages they send about their needs.
    An essential way to build the trust that underlies secure attachment is to interact with your children in ways that are consistent with those unique attributes and messages. By doing so, you respond to their needs in ways that are most meaningful and comforting to them. This congruence between your children’s needs and your responsiveness sends a powerful meta-message, namely, that you understand them and can give them what they need in the way that they need it. Their recognition of your understanding acts as the foundation for that trust and secure attachment. In contrast, when you respond to your children’s needs in ways that are out of sync with who they are, their deepest needs are not met, and they feel misunderstood, disconnected, and unvalued.
Be Consistent
     
    Consistency is especially important for establishing secure attachment because your children’s trust in you is based on your creating a consistent and predictable world around them. The dangers of inconsistency in attachment behavior are evidenced by the type of attachment referred to in the research as “disorganized.” Children with disorganized attachment demonstrate no clear pattern of attachment behavior, sometimes approaching, other times avoiding, and still other times resisting their parents. They often appear to be disoriented and anxious. Findings suggest that inconsistent responsiveness by parents may contribute to disorganized attachment; for example, parents may be quick to respond at one time, but neglectful the next, or loving and supportive at one turn andangry and critical at another. With these mixed messages, children can’t predict if, when, or how their parents will respond, creating a state of mistrust, detachment, and insecurity.
SECURE SELF
     
    The second message of security is the sense of security and safety that children develop about themselves. For children to feel truly secure, they must believe that they are safe and have mastery over themselves. The secure self initially emerges from the love you give your children as described in chapter 4; this love contributes to the secure sense of attachment that I just discussed. Your love provides your children with the knowledge that there are people in their lives who can and will protect them when necessary. The secure self also evolves from the sense of competence that I explained in chapter 5, because when children feel competent, they know that, even when their parents aren’t around, they have the power to feel safe or make themselves safe when they encounter uncertain, risky, or dangerous situations.
    In contrast, children with an insecure self feel as if they are in a constant state of danger. This insecure self arises due to the absence of all of the experiences, relationships, and qualities that produce a secure sense of self. These children don’t feel loved and lack strong attachment to their parents. They also lack the sense of competence that would be especially necessary given the dearth of comfort and safety from others. As a result, they have no safe harbor, either external or internal, in which to reside or to which to return, so they are caught; they don’t feel secure where they are, yet they are also afraid to venture outward because they don’t feel capable of feeling safe “out there.” The result is that they experience a persistent state of threat and engage their world with fear and reluctance.
    An essential area in which this message of security has relevance is children’s