Imagine there was some way to record and analyze all your interactions with your kids. Imagine if they ran all the words you said, the things you told them, through some sort of computer. What do you think would show up most? What themes would emerge? What would the word cloud look like?

We asked recently about ​what our kids hear most​: Us telling them we love them or us telling them to knock this or that off, us telling them to hurry up or come down to dinner. If someone was to put together a ‘greatest hits’ from you, what do you think would show up?

It’s pretty sad to consider just how negative these greatest hits would be for many of us. Even if we’re not particularly strict parents, our top ten would be filled with commands and admonishments and reminders. It would be far less positivethan we’d like to assume.

We might not be aware of this imbalance but you know who feels it acutely? Our kids. They feel the weight of it. They are bombarded with your criticism, your negativity, your obsession with these things that feel like they don’t matter. (They do impressions of this with their siblings when you’re not around btw.)

In the February 25 entry in The Daily Dad book (​grab it signed here​) we talk about calling out or down for your kids’ attention and surprising them with “I love yous” and compliments. The reason this works is revealing: They’re expecting to hear what they usually hear instead.

We have to fix this ratio. We have to do better making sure our greatest hits actually represent our feelings, and invoke in them the feelings they deserve (that they are loved, that they are enough, that we support them and believe in them).