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

which they are a bit uncomfortable. Eve and Darren expose their children to every kind of international cuisine they can find (though, admittedly, not every taste is welcomed). They read books to their children that teach them about other peoples, cultures, and religions. Once the children were old enough, the family took trips to India, China, Russia, and Africa.
    Carly and Jake see compassion as starting close to home and expanding outward. They emphasize to their son and daughter that caring for each other is the foundation of their family and of compassion, kindness, and generosity toward others. They establish clear expectations of how they want their family to treat each other and focus on activities that require cooperation. For example, they play games, work on puzzles, and do household projects that can’t be accomplished alone.
    From this foundation of compassion within their family, Carly and Jake expanded their message to include their friends and neighbors. They built a strong network of like-minded people who shared the value of compassion. They and other parents in their network organized social activities and charitable work aimed at helping not only those outside their circle, but also those within. In recentmonths, Carly and Jake organized a Tom Sawyer–style house-painting party for elderly neighbors who couldn’t afford a new paint job. They, along with other parents in their group, arranged a condolence-card-writing event for a member of the group whose father had recently died. And Carly and the other moms in the group, with their children, prepared several weeks of meals for a family whose mother had become seriously ill, requiring surgery and a lengthy convalescence.
    One of the most interesting and courageous acts of compassion I have learned about firsthand occurred during my recent visit to a Southern city with a large African-American population, high levels of poverty, and almost uniform geographic racial segregation. Randy, the chaplain at the school at which I was speaking, did considerable charitable work in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. Five years ago, he had decided that, for him to have the greatest impact on this struggling community, he, his wife Christina, and their three young children needed to move into the neighborhood, where they would be one of only a few white families. At first, his wife was resistant and worried for the safety of her family. But seeing her husband’s passion and determination, she steeled herself and agreed to the move. To their surprise, their family was welcomed into the neighborhood. In the five years since their move, they have never had any problems being a white family in the area. The chaplain’s ability to effect positive change in the community has grown exponentially. And their children are not only seeing and hearing messages of compassion, but also living a life immersed in compassion.

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Message #5: Gratitude Is Your Child’s Heart (“Mo’ Grat’”)
     
    One of the most neglected messages that you’ll want your children to get early and often is the power of gratitude. Consider a simple “thank you.” Those two words offer a win-win benefit for the sender and the receiver of the message. A surprising and robust finding of the growing body of research into what makes us happy is that gratitude increases our happiness. For example, when people express genuine, heartfelt gratitude to others, the senders say that they feel happier for several days. And how does the receiver of that gratitude feel? Darned good, of course, because they feel appreciated.
    Yet, teaching children to be grateful seems like an impossible task sometimes. How many times have you done something for your children and received no “thank you” in return? More times than you can count, in all likelihood. And how did you feel? Unappreciated? Perhaps a bit angry and resentful because your children have not acknowledged your efforts on their behalf? Less willing to help in the future? All very reasonable reactions to an absence of gratitude. And how many times, after you or someone else helps your children, have you asked them to say “thank you”? I’m sure that if you had a dime for every time, you would be wealthy today.Though there is some evidence that gratitude, like other “prosocial” behaviors, is inborn, you wouldn’t know it from the struggle that just about every parent has in getting their children to express gratitude.
    And