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

But we never offered or told them that they had to hold our hand for safety. It was always up to them to decide when they got uncomfortable and wanted our hand for added safety. We now use our catchphrase (“I’m okay!”) and the approach that we have taught our girls about exploration and risk taking for more complex and potentially dangerous situations such as skiing and biking.
    Admittedly, this approach didn’t always work out that well. When Catie was four years old, she wanted to walk along another stone wall in our backyard with a three-foot drop to a concrete path.As I tend to allow our girls to take more risks than Sarah does, I said Catie could. I hadn’t noticed that there were some flowery vines that obscured the edge of part of the wall, and Catie lost her footing and fell to the path below. Fortunately, she somehow missed hitting her head on the lower wall on the other side of the path (that would have been really bad!) and the only damage Catie sustained was a big bruise and a small cut on her forehead. Of course, I suffered a near heart attack and a deserved glare from Sarah, and to this day the image of Catie falling still haunts me.
    Dirk and Emily had an idea for their catchphrase for their son Harry from day one. From the time he was born, whenever they came to him, they would say, “I’m here for you.” Whether Harry’s cries were due to a wet diaper or hunger as an infant, his inevitable bumps and bruises as a toddler, or his failures and frustrations as a preschooler, Dirk and Emily sent Harry the message that when he needed them, they were there for him. By the time Harry got to be two years old, he had gotten the message. When Harry would, for example, climb high on a play structure, he would ask, “Are you here for me?” And one of his parents, while spotting him, would say, “Yes, Harry, I’m here for you.”
    Yuki and Mitch adopted Gregor and Vera from an Eastern European orphanage when they were three and one years old, respectively. Though Yuki and Mitch learned that the orphanage was, by the country’s standards, quite nurturing, they had read that adopted children often have difficulty attaching to their new parents and feeling secure after a life that was anything but. So from the time Gregor and Vera arrived in their new home, the catchphrase Yuki and Mitch used (they referred to it as their mantra) was “safe and sound.” From those simple words, they sent a message to their two children that communicated security, comfort, and stability.
    Erin, the mother of three-year-old Ross, loved the catchphrase idea, but decided to take it one step further. She had read somewhere that having a rating system to judge risk helps children make better choices in their risk taking. The article suggested a numbered systemof one for low risk to five for high risk. Around the time that she saw the article, Ross fell off his tricycle, came to his mother crying, and said, “Mommy, I had a bonk.” It was then that Erin had the idea of a “catchphrase rating system” with which Ross could rate the potential risk of doing something or the severity of an injury on a scale of “bonkness.” For example, Ross loves using the curb on their street as a balance beam. The problem is that if he falls off the curb along some parts of the street, he could fall down a steep embankment. Erin and Ross decided that this risk would result in a “mondo bonk” and he would have to hold his mother’s hand while walking on the curb on those sections of the street. Moderately risky stuff, such as bouncing on his parents’ bed, would rate a “medium bonk,” and less risky stuff, like tripping while running on their backyard lawn, only warrants a rating of “baby bonk.”
    Rita and Sam believed in teaching their two-year-old daughter Emmy the skills she needed to feel safe. So they thought of the most common ways in which Emmy could get hurt at their house and developed routines to give her the means to prevent these situations from arising. For example, they had a steep stone stairway from their garage to their flat. So they created a catchphrase, “Hold it!” which had a double meaning: Stop before walking up or down the stairs, and hold onto the railing when using the stairs.
    Tanya has a different take on security. She emphasizes that her children can rely on the security that comes from being a part of a family. Her catchphrase, “family forever,” sends the message that her son and