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

benefits—in the future. Naturally occurring consequences are the most effective because they connect directly to the expectations; for example, if your children procrastinate when getting ready for bed, there won’t be time to read books. Knowing your children and creatively putting yourself in their shoes are the best ways to come up with effective consequences.
    Tangible rewards for fulfilling expectations should be avoided because they can turn your children into “reward junkies” who require you to continually raise the reward before they adhere to your expectations. A key step to instilling expectations in your children is to help them find the positive consequences within themselves. The best consequences for when your children meet your expectations are the positive emotions and social feedback that come from doing the right thing. You can help your children make this connection by pointing out the good feelings and positive feedback and by connecting them with the good deed.
    Inconsistent or nonexistent consequences are obstacles to your children living up to your expectations. Due to time pressure, stress, fatigue, or expediency—in other words, life!—the best-laid plans of parents to enforce consequences can slip through the cracks. But without consequences, your children have little incentive to meet the expectations you have established. Without the early impetus from consistently applied consequences, your children will never learn or internalize the underlying messages about responsibility that you are trying to communicate through your expectations.
    Inconsistent consequences also send conflicting meta-messages about the importance you place on responsibility. One meta-message is that responsibility is not as important as you say it is. If it was, you would enforce the consequences consistently. Another meta-message is that, even if the responsibilities are important, your children need not adhere to them because they won’t get into trouble if they don’t.
    There is no magic formula for following through with consequences. You must make a commitment to the consequences before you establish any expectations (expectations without consequences have no “teeth”). When a situation arises where consequences are required, you must remind yourself of how important they are and, despite fatigue, stress, and other excuses, you must act on them because the consequences are in your children’s best interests.
CATCHPHRASES FOR RESPONSIBILITY
     
    As soon as Catie and Gracie had the language skills to understand us, we introduced them to our catchphrase, “That’s the job.” We told them that we all have jobs to do and we don’t always like or want to do them, but we do them because they are our responsibility. Sarah doesn’t always like cooking or getting stains out of their clothes, but she does them because “that’s the job.” I don’t like doing dishes or going to work some days, but I do both because “that’s the job.” And our girls have learned that they have jobs to do, and though the jobs are not usually fun, the girls must do them because, well, “that’s the job.” Any time they don’t feel like doing a chore, Sarah or I say, “that’s the job” as a reminder of their responsibility to do it.
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    CATCHPHRASES FOR RESPONSIBILITY
     
“That’s the job.”
“Take it out, put it back.”
“Families work together.”
“Do it now, do it well.”
“Work first, play later.”
“Listen to your conscience.”
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    With two high-energy boys and a house full of kid stuff, Edie isn’t about to let her home devolve into a chaotic mess. Plus, being a single, working mom with no help, she doesn’t have time to pick up after her sons. So they have a simple catchphrase and rule, “Take it out, put it back.” Whenever Tommy or Greg finish playing with a toy or game, they have to put it back where they found it before moving on to the next thing. If they forget (which they do frequently), Edie requires that they stop what they are doing and return the previous toy to its rightful place before they continue with their current activity.
    Ron and Georgia have very busy lives. They have three children and both have careers, so everyone pulling an oar is a requirement for their family to make it through each day. They believe cooperation is an essential responsibility for families, so their catchphrase is “Families work together.” Of course, cooperation is not an easy sell to