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

physical well-being. If you consider the developmental trajectory that children’s lives take, you notice that control overtheir bodies is the first step (no pun intended) they take in gaining mastery over their lives. From their first finger grasp and head lift to sitting up, crawling, and walking, gaining control of their body is their first source of competence and sense of authority over their world.
    This sense of security over their physical existence has broader implications for the creation of a secure self. The experiences that children garner from such a “primitive” aspect as their physicality establish early perceptions about themselves that will then be applied to their ever-expanding internal and external worlds. A secure self acts as the starting point from which children can engage their internal world, that is, their thoughts, emotions, physical feelings, needs, and wants, with comfort and confidence. Children can also use their secure self as the “home base” from which they can explore their growing outer world, including their surroundings and relationships, with assurance and ease.
    The messages that you send and that your children receive about a secure self are particularly important when their being is threatened in some way. In times of urgency and emergency, when children are sharply attuned to their emotions and highly vigilant to your messages, your emotions and the reactions that your children see set the tone for the degree of security they feel in threatening situations.
    Sarah and I experienced the power of this message in an unsettling way when Catie was about two and a half years old. While doing the dishes after dinner, I stupidly left an opened tin can on the floor to be put outside in the recycling bin. Catie picked it up and began playing with it. In doing so, she cut her finger severely enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room to get stitches. Sarah got to her first, and despite a significant amount of bleeding, Sarah was incredibly composed, and I did my best to follow suit. From that moment, Catie didn’t shed a tear—not when we were waiting in the emergency room, not when I physically restrained her so that she could receive several shots of a local anesthetic, not when she got four stitches from the physician. Catie was calm andattentive throughout. The ER physician said most kids in this situation are hysterical because their parents are hysterical. I don’t tell this story to congratulate ourselves for being so calm; we were wrecks inside. I tell it to demonstrate the importance of the messages we send to our children. The message we sent to Catie after she cut her finger was that it was pretty serious, but we had the situation—and ourselves—under control, so she could be confident that we would take care of her. With her trust in us, she was able to accept our message and use it to help her remain under control, too. In a nutshell, Catie got the message that, if Mommy and Daddy thought she was okay, then she could trust that she was okay.
SECURE WORLD
     
    The third message of security gains increasing importance as your children achieve full mobility, move beyond the prescribed limits of their immediate family, and enter the physical and social world of nature, neighborhoods, playgrounds, childcare, preschool, and elementary school. A significant part of your children’s development involves steadily increasing the range of their physical and social worlds. The perceptions that children develop about these worlds, whether they view them as safe or dangerous, will dictate the degree to which they are comfortable exploring and expanding these worlds.
    Early experiences in which your children feel safe to discover the world beyond you enable them to develop the sense of a secure world and gain comfort and confidence in being “out there” on their own. This belief in a secure world is made up of three distinct perceptions. First, children know that, however far they may roam, their parents (and other significant others such as extended family, caregivers, and teachers) will provide them with a safe haven to which they can return when they reach the outer limits of their comfort zone. Second, as they explore the world around them, childrenwho live in what they believe is a secure world know that, should they experience some threat, whether real or imagined, they have the capabilities to navigate the choppy waters. Third, children come to believe,