The Why and the What of Messages

For you to send the healthiest possible messages to your children requires that you fully buy into my notion that children become the messages they get the most. Though I think it is a pretty intuitive and reasonable concept, I feel the need to thoroughly convince you of the profound value of messages to your children's development. To really win you over, I want to explain the why and the what of messages.

WHY MESSAGES?

I've always been a bit of a tech geek and first adopter and, for some time, I've been blogging on the psychology of technology for a variety of Web sites. One concept that I come across frequently in the technology world is "default." For those of you not familiar with what a default is in tech-speak, it's defined as a "preset option: an option that will automatically be selected by a computer if the user does not choose another alternative." Although I didn't understand why for some time, the idea of defaults has always resonated with me and struck me as meaningful on a psychological level.

You may be wondering what a computer default has to do with raising children. Well, in raising your children, whether you realize it or not, you're creating a set of default options for just about every aspect of their lives. To paraphrase the computer definition above, these defaults are "automatically selected by children if they do not deliberately choose another option." In other words, your children's defaults are reflexive responses to their life experiences, including their first thoughts, emotions, decisions, and actions in any given situation. Defaults, whether healthy or unhealthy, are very important for children because they are the first options that will arrive in their "inbox" when they are faced with a choice. If you can "install" healthy defaults in your children, you are increasing the chances that they will choose the healthy option over other alternatives that might be more attractive to them, but would also be potentially harmful.

The Importance of Defaults

There are several reasons why defaults are so important for children. The cognitive sciences have demonstrated that people in general attempt to be as efficient as possible in choosing and taking courses of action. This means that whatever mechanism will enable children to come to a decision most quickly will likely determine the course they choose. Defaults provide that efficient mechanism.

Also, recent neuropsychological research has shown that the pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with so-called executive functioning — such as impulse control, risk/reward comparisons, future planning, and decision making — is still developing well into children's teenage years. This means that, without proper defaults, children are not only more likely to act without thinking, but also more readily swayed by external forces, such as peer pressure and popular culture. In other words, children will usually have knee-jerk reactions to, rather than make deliberate decisions about, the situations they face. Whether children have healthy defaults, unhealthy defaults, or no defaults at all will, to a large extent, dictate what their reactions will be.

How Defaults Develop

Defaults develop early in your children's lives from several sources. Role-modeling from parents, peers, and other people visible in the lives of young children provides them with their earliest exposure to defaults. When your children see influential people in their lives — and you are, by far, the most important people in their lives — act a certain way in various situations, they internalize those reactions as their own defaults. You can see the power of this role-modeling effect in simple ways, such as the body language and vocabulary your children pick up from you. Once your children develop language skills, you can shape their defaults by discussing appropriate behavior after teachable moments that arise in situations and in conversations. Ultimately, defaults are instilled through sheer repetition; the more your children see and hear the same messages, and act and react in the same way themselves, the more deeply ingrained those defaults become and the more likely those defaults will direct their behavior in the future.

Types of Defaults

The values that your children internalize can act as defaults because values will be the first "gatekeeper" in choosing a particular course of action. If your children's default values include honesty, responsibility, and generosity, then when they are faced with situations that trigger these value defaults, they will be more likely to, for example, tell the truth, accept blame, and help others. And, given all of the bad values in the messages that they are getting from popular culture these days, it is an immense challenge to instill healthy values in your children. Unfortunately, once your children leave the nest, most of the values to which they are exposed, for instance, those conveyed by popular culture, will not be healthy ones. If you can inculcate positive values through good messages early in your children's lives, you'll be setting value defaults that will make them more impervious to the unhealthy values they will confront once they enter the larger social (and digital) world.

The attitudes that your children develop about themselves — self- esteem, self-respect, confidence, willingness to take risks, patience, and hard work — will become defaults when they face challenges in different aspects of their lives, such as in school and relationships. These attitudes are initially created through the quality of your relationship with your children and the messages you send them about your attitude toward them.

Defaults related to children's physical health become habits that guide their physical life. Eating, exercise, and sleep defaults can set the stage for their long-term physical health (or ill health). When you look at the unhealthy diets and lack of physical activity among so many children these days, and the unhealthy defaults that get established at such a young age, you can understand why obesity among children has reached epidemic proportions.

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