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Has this ever happened to you? You ask a friend a question and get a response that’s not really an answer. It’s sort of vague. So you ask again and get a different, equally vague reply. You’d like to know, yes or no, but you’re left unsure. You’re stuck, unable to know what to do, since you don’t know her answer.

If you’ve ever been in a situation like this, then maybe you can appreciate what it’s like sometimes to be a kid, especially a kid of sensitive, caring parents who hate to say “no.” It can be frustrating and confusing. Sometimes being in this situation feels like having a license to do whatever you want, since you can’t get a clear answer from mom and dad.

A child asks, “May I have a cookie?” Her parent says, “Why don’t you go play outside?” Any child would be confused by this: did Mom not hear me clearly? Did she mean, “Take a cookie outside”?

Another child asks, “Can I go play with Roger and Molly?” His parent says, “Did you clean your room?” Most kids would interpret this to mean, “if your room is clean – or when your room is clean – you may go.” But maybe that’s not what Dad meant. Maybe he was just trying to delay saying “no.”

Many of us hate to say “no.” We don’t want to stifle our children and we hate to deny them anything. We want them to be happy. And we think that saying “no” will make our children unhappy.

In addition, sometimes we realize that our impulse to say “no” is purely arbitrary. There’s no real reason why playing with Roger and Molly isn’t okay, but we just don’t have time right now to deal with it. It’s easier to just say “no.” But because saying “no” for no good reason seems unfair, we don’t want to say it. So we say something else.

Here’s the thing, though. Being told “no” isn’t what makes children unhappy. What makes children unhappy is being ignored or deceived. It’s much better to simply say, “no, I don’t think so” than to string a child along with a vague response. If you can give the reason for the no, so much the better: “No cookie. It’s too close to dinner time,” is a clear response. Even “No, I don’t think you can go play with Roger and Molly. I’m just too busy right now to even think about that” is more honest than linking play with a clean room.

Sometimes we avoid saying “no” because we don’t want the arguments we think will follow. But arguments are part of being a parent – both the differences of opinion that naturally occur between children and grownups, and the responsibility to teach how to argue. Yes, arguments are a teaching opportunity. When we clearly say “no” and give our reason, we open the door to a respectful discussion of the importance to the child of what she asked for and the importance to us of our reasons for saying “no.” If we are going to guide our children, we have to be ready to tell them “no” once in a while and hear them out when they argue back.

If you’ve been vague in your answers in the past, try being more direct. If you’ve been arbitrary, saying “no” without any reason and closing off discussion, try being more respectful. See if your children don’t respond by being more reasonable in the future.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Developmentally Appropriate Parenting, at your favorite bookstore.

It just makes sense: kids who have large, rich vocabularies when they start kindergarten do better in school than kids who do not. In order to read words, for example, a child has to know words and be able to use them. So teaching children a large number of words during the preschool years is a smart move for parents to make.

Research has long backed this up. Studies have compared the number of words two-year-olds hear per hour and have come up with vast differences from child to child and family to family. In general, parents who have more education and more free time to spend with their children use more words in talking with them. These same studies have demonstrated that two-year-olds who hear few words per hour are less ready for kindergarten when they turn five than children who hear more.

Now a new study adds a new wrinkle. According to a paper from the University of Chicago, it’s not only the number of words parents use in talking with their children that makes a difference. It’s also the non-verbal cues – like showing or pointing – that helps children understand. Researchers found that nearly a quarter of the vocabulary growth preschoolers experience is determined by parents’ use of non-verbal cues.

For example, saying “Look at that zebra!” while pointing to the animal helps a child learn the word “zebra” more quickly than just saying, “Let’s go see the zebra.”

Another finding from this study was that a family’s wealth or poverty was not a deciding factor in children’s ability to learn to talk. What mattered was simply the number of words heard and parents’ use of pointing and showing to help children understand. But there were large difference there. Some parents provided non-verbal cues only 5% of the time while other parents provided cues 38% of the time

Of course, parents want their children to do well in school. But school success starts early, in the simple things moms and dads do with kids who are only two or three or four. Here are some ideas:

Take time to carry on conversations. The more you and your child talk together, the smarter she becomes. For some parents, it seems silly to talk about the weather to a toddler. But once you make a habit of talking about anything and everything, your child will start to respond back.
Take time to listen to your child. The way to know what words your child knows is to hear him use them in his own speech. To use words, a child has to have a kindly listener. Even though it sometimes takes kids a long time to say what they want to say, try your best to give them the time. Remember they’re new at this.
When you talk, try to show what you mean. You can point to things, or pick them up. You can demonstrate words like “under” and “beside.” You can say something like, “I’m going to share my cookie with you,” emphasizing the word “share” as you break the cookie in two and give the child a portion.
Remember that talking with your child costs nothing. No matter how advantaged or unadvantaged you feel your family is, you can start your child on the path to success just by talking with him. Conversation levels the playing field.

Being able to use a lot of different words is so important to children’s development. Show and tell your child what’s going on in her world, as much as you can.

One of my sons’ families recently moved from a second-floor condo (in a three-level building) to a single family home. My daughter-in-law told me she’s noticed how relieved she is to not have to constantly “shush” her children, ages 4 and 10. Now that there’s no one to disturb in a unit above, in a unit below, or in a unit to the side, she feels she can finally let go and let her kids be kids.

A widely-distributed blog post this week addressed the same issue. The author makes the point that children naturally are loud. Trying to make them be quiet is frustrating… for everyone.

So here’s a challenge: take note of how many times during a day you shush your kids. Is being quiet the most important thing in your family, at least as measured by how many times it’s reinforced? You might be surprised by how frequently you shush.

In more formal times, the maxim “children should be seen and not heard” described ideal behavior. Children were expected to not to speak at all unless they were spoken to. But in a free society, shushing a child seems downright un-American.

Keep in mind that learning to talk requires not just listening to others (though that’s important) but practicing speech by talking too. Children who are inhibited from talking may have smaller vocabularies and smaller command of grammar and pronunciation, and they may be overshadowed in school by their more vocal classmates. We cannot have it both ways: we can’t ask kids constantly to be quiet then cajole them to “speak up!”

In addition, silencing our children silences more than their voices. It silences their opinions as well. The ability to think through problems and negotiate conflict requires freedom to speak one’s mind in a coherent argument. This is especially true when the speaker is younger and less capable than other people in the room, or when some groups of children (girls, for example) are shushed more than others.

Finally, keeping children quiet teaches them to “play small.” It makes being less-than a habit. Parents who are eager for their children to stand out can start by letting them speak out.

This isn’t to say that children have to yell all the time. Here are some suggestions that might make shushing a thing of the past in your house:

Model what you want to hear. If you yell, your kids will yell, just to be heard. Instead of upping your volume to carry your voice over the din, speak more quietly. This means also to avoid calling loudly up the stairs… go to where the person is to speak with him.
Turn down or turn off competing sounds. If the TV is always on, if video games or music is played at max volume, or if the dog barks constantly, kids will have to yell to be heard. Turn things off and train the dog.
Get outside. What’s the point of having an “outside voice” if you never get a chance to use it? Make certain your children get outdoors every day and don’t make them be quiet when they run around and play.
Listen to your children. Sometimes kids get loud just to get your attention. Don’t be too busy to listen, to admire, and to interact with them.
Teach volume control. If you’re modeling your best indoor voice, your children will have an easier time knowing what speaking “normally” is. But they still will need to know – in a nice way – when they are speaking too loudly for the situation. Try suggesting, in a near-whisper, “Speak only to me” when your child is declaring things at the top of her lungs.

No one likes to be shushed. But we parents shush an awful lot. See if you can break – or at least reduce – your own impulse to shush.

Reality television abounds with families in which children follow in the footsteps of Mom or Dad, usually resulting in scenes of conflict, competition, and mutual disrespect. Whether it’s Dance Moms, Toddlers in Tiaras, or Pawn Stars, the troubled family relationships these programs showcase make for compelling TV. Finally, psychological science is ready to describe what’s going on.

As you might have suspected, psychologists now say that some parents transfer their own unrealized dreams to their kids. This is especially the case for parents who see their children as extensions of themselves.

“Right from the beginning of psychology, there have been theories that parents transfer their own broken dreams onto their children,” says Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology at The Ohio State University and co-author of a study published recently in the journal PLOS ONE. “But it really hasn’t been experimentally tested until now.”

Bushman and his colleagues worked with 73 parents (mostly mothers) of children ages 8 to 15. These parents first completed a survey that measured how much they saw their children as part of themselves. Rankings ranges from completely separate to nearly the same.

Next the participants were then randomly separated into two groups. In one group, parents were asked to think of two goals they hadn’t been able to achieve and to describe why these goals were important to them. The second group completed the same task but about a friend’s goals, not their own.

Some of the goals parents talked about included becoming a professional tennis player, writing a published novel and starting a successful business.

Then parents were asked to think about their own unrealized goals and their hopes that their children would achieve those goals instead. Both groups of parents completed this task.

The results showed that parents who thought about their own missing dreams were more likely than parents who thought about a friend’s missed dreams to want their children to achieve what they had not. In addition, parents who reflected on their own lost goals and who regarded their children as part of themselves, were very strongly committed to the idea of their children reaching the goals their parents had missed.

Disappointment and regret are strong emotions, and it makes sense that parents have a certain amount of sadness about hopes that were never brought to life. But saddling children with our dreams reduces their status as real people. It makes them agents of ourselves and robs them of their own ambitions. Numerous studies have shown that children who are treated as objects and are over-controlled by their parents are more likely than other children to have trouble making decisions, to be easily influenced by peer pressure, and to be more depressed and unhappy.

Here’s a quick test:
If your child achieved a perfect score on the SAT college entrance exam would you feel smarter?

If the answer is, “Yes,” then your child might have a problem … with you!

My sons were encouraged to use a pacifier when they were babies. The older one liked his a lot and the younger one didn’t think much of the experience. Now a new study proposes that using a pacifier may delay a child’s ability to understand emotions and respond to others appropriately in social situations.

The study, published recently in Basic and Applied Social Psychology, evaluated the ability of 6- and 7-year old children to correctly identify the emotions of people presented in a video and to mimic those people’s facial expressions accurately. Researchers also measured the ability of college students on emotional intelligence and the ability to take someone else’s point-of-view. Then researchers compared participants’ scores to their parents’ memory of their children’s use of a pacifier as toddlers.

The study found that boys who were “heavy users” of pacifiers scored significantly less well on these tests of emotional responsiveness. It seemed that using a pacifier interfered with boys’ ability to practice emotions they see others express and this flattened their ability into the future to react appropriately to other people. For girls, using a pacifier made no difference.

Niedenthal notes that adults who have had Botox treatments and so lose the ability to move their facial muscles also lose emotional responsiveness. She says, “Botox users experience a narrower range of emotions and often have trouble identifying the emotions behind expressions on other faces.” This caused her to start thinking about factors that could interfere with infant emotional development in a similar way.

According to lead researcher Paula Niedenthal, using a pacifier to go to sleep isn’t a problem, since reacting to others’ faces isn’t part of drifting off to sleep. But she suggests that parents, especially parents of boys, should not rely on pacifiers to keep their children soothed during the day and they shouldn’t support a child’s pacifier habit past the first few months of life.

It’s possible, of course, that parents of older children, and especially of college students, might not remember their children’s pacifier use accurately. And children who felt a strong need for a pacifier as toddlers may have had completely different family experiences than children who didn’t, and these family differences might be more to blame for emotional disconnects than just using a pacifier. Certainly a follow-up study will shed more light on this issue. But in the meantime, limiting pacifier use during the day, especially for older babies and toddlers, might be a good idea.

It might make both you and your baby smile.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Developmentally Appropriate Parenting, at your favorite bookstore.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to comment approvingly on a little girl’s appearance. Many authors have warned against this, saying that telling girls they are pretty makes them focus on their looks as their only asset. These authors point out that boys are more likely to be complimented on their strength or cleverness than on their handsomeness. This is all certainly true.

It’s certainly true that girls are as capable of being strong and smart as they are of being physically attractive. It’s certainly true that all children – girls and boys – do well when they feel capable and powerful. Being a princess on a pedestal isn’t a good plan for life success. To the extent that parents’ comments to their girls are limited to compliments on their beauty, parents limit their daughters’ self-esteem and self-concept.

Limitations are never a good thing.

Which is why parents should not feel limited in any way in what they can say to their girls. Parents of daughters have been advised to never tell a girl she’s pretty or that her hair looks nice or that she’s wearing a lovely outfit. If you’ve been holding your tongue, biting back compliments and changing in mid-sentence from “you look nice today” to “you look nice…ly able to do anything you want!” then take heart. Telling your children they are good-looking is something they want to hear. Don’t hold back.

There comes a time in every girl’s and boy’s life when they question their attractiveness. Starting in the middle school years, children look in the mirror and see greasy hair, pimply skin, teeth that don’t quite fit their mouths, and gangly arms and legs. Adolescent bodies seem out of control. Kids are no longer cute and they’re not yet good-looking. This is a tough time.

Kids need all the armor parents can provide to get through the awkwardness of adolescence. They need to know their parents always have known they are pretty or handsome. They need to know they always have looked good. In addition to knowing they are smart, and strong, and kind, and funny, every child needs to know that the face they present to the world is appreciated and beloved.

So don’t keep your joy in your children to yourself. Let them know. Let your daughters know they are beautiful. Let your sons know they are handsome. Let your children know you love and appreciate everything about them.

You know how this goes: you are riding on the bus or airplane and you bury your nose in a book so you can ignore your seatmate completely. There’s a certain courtesy in this, perhaps, in that while you signal your unavailability for conversation you also signal your respect for your seatmate’s privacy and peace.

This trick of self-containment has spread, however. Now we no longer need to carry around a book. Now we don’t limit our avoidance of others to trips on public transportation. These days we shut ourselves off with our phones. Instead of being present for our children, we close them out. We are present for only the screen.

Jonathan Safran Foer, writing in the New York Times, recounts a recent example. He was sitting on a bench, scanning his smart phone, when he became aware that a teenage girl on the bench nearby was sobbing into hers. The girl kept saying, “I know, Mama, I know,” crying all the while, seemingly heartbroken and bereft. The call ended and the girl continued to weep. Foer describes his inner conflict: should he reach out to her, ask if he can help, offer some sort of emotional support or should he pretend he didn’t see? He realizes that he has the means to ignore her in his hand – his phone permits him to hide. He can easily attend to digital connections and avoid the opportunity for human connection right in front of him. Which, he wonders, will he choose?

This is the choice we parents face every day, many times a day. Are we connected to the children right in front of us, who hunger for our attention, or are we connected to our devices?

Poet Marge Piercy write that “Attention is love.” What we attend to is what we love. Children learn what is so, not by what we tell them but by what we do. When we pay attention, when we drag our gaze away from the screen in our hand and look steadily at the child at hand, we show our respect and we demonstrate our love.

When we refuse to be present for our kids, we are hiding out. We signal our unavailability for conversation. We love something else more.

This adds up. The distance between us grows. Sooner or later it may be our child who is sobbing on a public park bench, telling us she knows, she knows but that knowing doesn’t change some terrible truth. What is that truth? What did we miss while we were on the phone?

If you’ve been hiding behind your devices, this is your error message. Your children are waiting. Please come out.

I’ve read (and written) quite a bit about how to be more productive at work or school. Here are five things that have worked for me. Your mileage may vary.

1. Get unpleasant tasks done first.

If you have something to get done that you’re dreading, whether that’s a difficult conversation with a customer or an expense report that needs to be completed today, do that task first. It’s easy to procrastinate on things you’re dreading. But putting them off doesn’t make them go away and just prolongs the dread. If given a choice of dreading something for ten minutes or dreading it all day, that’s an easy choice. And the truth is that not only is the task usually a lot less unpleasant than you expected, the feeling of having it done and dealt with is a great way to get on with your day.

2. Don’t multi-task.

Multi-tasking isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It sounds good in theory to work on lots of things at once, but the list of to-dos goes away faster if, whenever possible, you focus on just one thing at a time.

3. Close your email when you’re working on something important.

This is a more specific item of the “Don’t multi-task” tip. You get to choose when and what to multi-task, but you don’t get to choose when, and how many, emails arrive. Incoming email is a constant stream of interruptions that divert your focus from what you’re working on. And unless you’re a lot stronger than I am, the curiosity gets the best of you and you’ll end up reading and probably responding to every email as they arrive. If you’re doing something important, close your email and focus. The emails will be waiting when you’re done. And if you can’t wait that long, put yourself on an interruption diet and only check email at certain times of the day. While you’re at it, keep Facebook closed, too. And for the trifecta, turn your phone off and answer your calls and text messages later.

4. Don’t go to meetings unless they’re (really) necessary.

Too many meetings get scheduled just to say that the group met about something. Sometimes a meeting is a necessary gathering to make important decisions. But that’s often not the case. Do anything you can to avoid attending meetings unless there’s an expressed purpose, agenda, and decision that needs to be made before the meeting ends.

5. Say “no” often.

Sometimes the best way to get things done is to say no to less urgent, less important opportunities. What’s really important? What do you need to focus on, do well, and get done? Whatever it is, that’s the top of your to-do list. Until those things are done, say no (politely) to other things, or agree to do them when the important stuff is done.

I’m all for families giving careful consideration to the cost of college and the expected return on the investment. The cost of college has gone up, the student loan crisis is officially out of control, and I encourage every student to carefully consider how their time at whatever college they choose to attend will help them prepare for a meaningful and rewarding career.

Still, every time I see an article (and I’m seeing them a lot these days) about the reported best or worst majors for college students, I become progressively more annoyed.

First, most of those lists focus on only one part of the return—the money. What about whether or not the graduates enjoyed what they learned? What about whether those majors helped them identify a talent to pursue after graduation? What if they’re happy in their chosen careers and with their lives? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money, but to label a major as reportedly better or worse based only on the average salary for graduates is an awfully narrow view to take when deciding what to spend four years studying.

Second, very few successful people can draw a straight line backwards from their successful career today to their choice of college major. Yes, if you want to be an engineer, you need to major in engineering. But many people who begin college don’t yet know what they want to do when they leave. For them, the college years should be all about learning, growing, and preparing for life after college.

We should talk about education. We should talk about the price of college, student loan realities and whether or not the more expensive schools are actually worth those costs. And we should talk about how your intended career should or should not influence where you go to college. If you want to be a kindergarten teacher, it probably doesn’t make sense for you to take out $150,000 in student loans to attend an expensive private school and major in education But that doesn’t mean that education is a worthless academic pursuit.

Think about why you want to go to college, what you want to learn, and how you think that might prepare you for life as a college graduate. Pick schools that fit you and your budget. Then have a remarkable college career wherever you go.

Don’t let a magazine pick your college major for you.

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