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

parents do both, and her own experience of navigating the stairs safely.
    Tanya, whom I mentioned above and whose catchphrase is “family forever,” also has a ritual she uses with her children to further emphasize that message. After dinner, they sit down on her lap, and they all sing “I don’t need anything but you” from the musical
Annie.
Tanya is getting this message to her children through several powerful conduits. They are getting the message through both the lyrics and the music (she read somewhere that singing taps into another part of the brain than just saying words). And by holding them while she is singing, Tanya communicates the message of safety and security to her children through physical contact and emotions.
ACTIVITIES FOR SECURITY
     
    Security may be the most subtle message you communicate to your children. Though you can talk to them about what security means, your children will feel a deeper sense of security if it is woven into the fabric of their interactions with you and the world. They receive this message through the conduits that are implicit in your daily lives, whether role modeling, expressions of love, daily routines, or outings.
Secure Attachment Activities
     
    The basics of instilling a sense of secure attachment in children are pretty simple and obvious; just do what parents are supposed to do. Yet when you make the connection between what should be normal parenting and its profound importance to security, this may heighten your awareness of its value and ensure that you take extra steps to provide these fundamental ingredients for healthy attachment.
    Be there. Jonah grew up with a father who wasn’t “there” much literally or figuratively. His father traveled constantly, and even when his father was home, he didn’t show a lot of interest in his three children. When Jonah learned that he was going to be a father, he was determined not to be
his
father. He believed that nothing sends a more powerful message to children than their parents simply being present. And, by gosh, he was going to be very present in the lives of his two children. Jonah didn’t just mean being physically there; he didn’t want to be in the room as just a warm body with a cold mind (meaning distracted and otherwise occupied). That, he knew firsthand, was worse than not being there at all, because it sends the message that even when you’re physically in the room, your children aren’t important enough for you to be all there. And in the hectic and connected world in which his family lives, it is so easy to focus on the million and one things he and his wife Lucy could be doing instead of being with their children. Jonah’s goal is to really be there for his children—attentive, engaged, and interactive; present in mind, body, and spirit. And he believes that they feel his presence in the deepest way.
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    ACTIVITIES FOR SECURITY
     
Spend time with your children.
Respond to their needs quickly and appropriately.
Be loving.
Be close.
Decision making.
Environment: parks, beaches, museums, trails.
Social: parties, camps, playdates, school, concerts, sporting events.
Physical: play structures, riding bikes, hikes, sports, performing arts.
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    Respond to your children’s needs quickly and appropriately. Myra grew up feeling neglected. It’s not that her mother meant to neglect Myra and her three brothers, it’s just that she was a single mother who worked two jobs. When Myra was about to become a mother herself, she read about attachment and realized it was onething that she didn’t get from her own mother. Because Myra’s mother was so overwhelmed, she simply couldn’t respond to her children when they needed her.
    Myra was committed to building that trust and attachment by responding to her two children’s needs quickly and appropriately. She wanted to make sure that when Erik and Melanie need her, she would be there to protect them, particularly when they experienced what Myra calls primitive needs, that is, the needs that are most relevant to their survival (even in the twenty-first century), including physical ones, such as hunger or pain, and emotional ones, such as fear, frustration, or sadness.
    At the same time, Myra didn’t want to spoil her children by being too responsive. She has taught them that not all of their “needs” are real needs (“But Mom, I really
need
that book on my shelf!”) and she tries to make the speed of her response appropriate to the urgency of