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

mean that it will naturally emerge in the child. Rather, the new understanding of genetics, contrary to the old argument of nature
versus
nurture, is nature
via
nurture. In other words, genes (nature) are like light switches that are flipped on or left off based on children’s experiences (nurture). As a result, the problem is that, even if children are genetically predisposed to compassion, what begins as an egocentric stage can turn into an entrenched attribute if that genetic switch isn’t turned on. And the way parents ensure that the switch is flipped is by sending children messages that discourage selfishness and encourage compassion.
    It’s never too early to get your children out of their “the world revolves around me,” “I want it now,” and “I don’t care about anyone” world. In fact, you must send messages of compassion early and often because once they enter the world of popular culture and peers, your children will be getting messages that actually confirm their egocentric predisposition. As your children first resist your admonitions to “be kind to your little sister” and then slowly but surely absorb your clear and persistent messages of compassion through many conduits, the emergence of this essential attribute in your children will be a wonderful thing to behold. But it definitely won’t happen unless you make it so.
POPULAR CULTURE’S MESSAGES ABOUT COMPASSION
     
    Despite its beauty and value, compassion is not held in high esteem by our popular culture. To the contrary, if our popular media (e.g., television, film, music) are any measure, people worship at the altar of “me.” This creates a perception that self-love, egotism, vanity, pride, entitlement, and disinterest toward others are attributes to which we should aspire. Video games aggrandize violence and misogyny. Reality TV encourages greed, deception, and humiliation. Our culture of celebrity makes important the trivial and trivializes the important. Professional sports foster an attitude of “win at all costs.” Popular culture sends messages to your children that it’s cool to be cold, and even worse, that compassion is for weaklings, wimps, and losers.
    Popular culture doesn’t want your children to be compassionate. To the contrary, it wants your children to be self-centered and totally focused on having their own needs met. When children are acculturated into “Generation Me,” they become easy prey for popular culture because its messages about self-indulgence go directly to their egocentric need for immediate gratification—“You can have it all, now, and without any effort.” There is no more powerful example of this message of selfishness than the widespread popularity of the expression, “It’s all about me.” This expression teaches children that everyone and everything in their lives should be directed toward satisfying their needs. It also tells children that the needs and wishes of others are irrelevant.
HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES
     
    Our world, with its rapid advancements in communication, appears to be shrinking, and the influence that people can have on others,both good and bad, has never been greater. Yet so many children are being taught to look no further than the narrow world in which they live. In earlier generations, most children had greater contact with others different from themselves—people of different races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic status—and this contact fostered an awareness of and appreciation for life on “the other side of the tracks,” and by extension, compassion for those who might be different from them.
    In contrast, many children today, because of private education, homogenous neighborhoods, and gated communities, have little exposure to people and cultures different from their own. Without a broader perspective on how others in the world live, children are not given the opportunity to develop compassion and empathy for those less fortunate than they.
THE VALUE OF COMPASSION
     
    Developing compassion starts with the recognition that we are not isolated creatures, but rather individuals who are each a part of many groups—families, communities, races, religions, nationalities, and citizens of planet Earth—that not only must coexist, but actually need each other to survive. This realization leads to an awareness of others: who they are, the culture in which they live, what they believe, how they live their lives, and the challenges that they face.