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

their ill-mannered conduct, you send another message of respect, namely that their disrespectful behavior will not be tolerated, and you expect respect from them. Though you are not likely to be rewarded for your heroically respectful behavior at the time—chances are that they will continue to be stubborn and rude toward you for the moment—the long-term rewards of this messaging are substantial. Specifically, they will also get the message that you are not going to accept their bad behavior. Your calm demeanor will send the message that you are standing firm because it is in their best interests. And they will learn that there is a better way to react when they don’t get what they want.
    Children are vigilant little beings; even when you don’t think they are listening or watching, they are attuned to your every word and action. As a result, your children get messages about respect not just from your interactions with them, but also from their observations of how you treat others. Think about all of the people you come across every day while you are with your children. And think about how you treat them. Are you kind, courteous, and considerate, whether toward your spouse, friends, colleagues, store clerks, or waiters? The bottom line is that if you want to really bombard your children with messages of respect, you have to be respectful of everyone when your children are around. That’s not to say, of course, that it’s okay to be mean to people when your children aren’t around!
RESPECT STARTS WITH MANNERS
     
    Both with your children and with other people in your world, perhaps the most simple and clear way to model respect is through good manners. In the rush and hubbub of daily family life, it’s easy to forget the basic “P’s & Q’s” that every mother tries to instill in herchildren: Asking instead of demanding. “Excuse me” instead of interrupting. Please and thank-you. Hello and goodbye. Good morning and good evening. “How are you?” and “I’m well, thank you.” What is great about good manners is that they are skills that children can practice and develop. A meta-message is that good manners are rewarded with respect from the recipients of the civility and extended back to the giver for a win-win exchange of respect.
BE THE PARENT
     
    Another powerful message about respect you can communicate to your children is that you are their parent. Unfortunately, this isn’t an easy message to convey these days because popular culture sends a very different message to parents, namely, that to be a good parent you should be friends with your children. The idea is that children are more likely to listen to their friends than their parents because peers have more of an influence on children than do parents. Admittedly, peer influence grows and parental influence declines with each passing year. But, and this is a very big but, parents can and must maintain their influence for their children’s long-term health and well-being, and the way to do that is to continue to be their parents, not their friends. Think of it this way: If your children don’t respect you and don’t believe that you respect them, they are going to turn to another source for respect, and popular culture is only too happy to show them “respect.” But what popular culture is really doing is manipulating children to buy stuff that makes it more money.
    The survey of 1,600 parents that I introduced in chapter 1 describes a category of parents who are “Best Buddies” (8 percent of the sample) and who unanimously agreed with the following statements: “I try to be a very different parent than my own parents were,” “I sometimes feel more like my child’s best friend than their parent,” “I sometimes do too much explaining,” and “I sometimes praise toomuch.” The message from parents who are Best Buddies is that they are doing everything they can to not be their own parents, regardless of whether their approach is actually good for their children.
    When you are friends with your children, you give up your unique relationship with them because they have many friends, but they have only two parents (or sometimes just one). However fun it may seem to be friends with your children, you will actually lose their respect and surrender your influence over them. Let me make this very clear: You cannot and should not be friends with your children. That’s not to say that you can’t have a friendly, loving, and fun