How Do You Say Goodbye to Your Child Before You Leave? The Impact of a Simple Sentence on Child Psychology

Do these phrases often come up when parents say goodbye to their children?

In this seemingly warm daily routine, there is a hidden trap in the Chinese way of saying goodbye:

The more we use “earning money for you to spend” as a pacifier, the more children automatically translate “being loved” into “being fed”.
You think you are expressing love, but in fact, you are quietly giving your child a pass that says “the world revolves around me”.

What’s more heartbreaking is that many parents don’t realize this is a pitfall: Can a single sentence really lead to such serious consequences? Is it not a big deal or an alarmist statement?

A parent once said, “My child, at the age of 5, would say, ‘Mom, work overtime, then you can buy me Lego.’ I thought he was being sensible at the time.”

This “sensible” remark is like a mirror, reflecting our collective unconscious parenting blind spot:We take material compensation as a shortcut to love, but forget to tell our children – the true meaning of work is to create, to take responsibility, to share, not to exchange for toys.

Recall that our generation was also raised with “earning money for you to spend.” We often heard this from our parents when we were young, which shows the inertia. But inertia is not a get-out-of-jail-free card; as long as we replace “buy for you” with “create together,” we can gradually pull our children from “takers” back to “participants.”

Why is that so?

In child development psychology, there is a term called “egocentrism,”
most evident between the ages of 3-7.
At this stage, children are like they have a wide-angle lens, only capturing themselves.

If we continue to use “buy for you,” “feed you” as our closing remarks, it’s like adjusting the lens to be narrower—over time,children will only see “I want,” not “we”.

What’s more heartbreaking is that material promises are like quick-acting crying remedies. Once applied, the crying stops, but the next dose needs to be doubled: a remote control car today, a Tesla model tomorrow, and a rocket the day after? You can only go to buy a rocket.

So, today I would like to invite all parents to press the “pause button” and re-examine that 10-second farewell ritual before leaving home every day: what are we really conveying to our children? If we change our words, will our children start to regard “what can I do for this world” as the background color of life?

Let’s take a look at how those common, offhand remarks affect our children.

How do those offhand remarks affect children?

When adults translate the purpose of going out directly into “buy for you,” “do for you,” the subtext the child hears is—My existence is to satisfy you.

Over time, children will take others’ efforts for granted:

So, when they want a second dress, a third toy car, they don’t think about whether mom is working late into the night, nor do they feel bad for grandma who has been waiting in line for half an hour. They just ask, “When will you buy it for me?”

“Earning money for you to spend” completely erases the process of labor, leaving only the result—material possessions.

Children do not see their mother frowning and changing design drawings during meetings, nor do they see their father standing for six hours in the operating room, wearing heavy sterile clothing, performing surgery. They only see the new toys in the express delivery boxes.

As a result, labor is simplified into an operation like “ordering takeout”:

When they grow up and face things that require effort to obtain,their first reaction is not “I want to try,” but “Why hasn’t anyone bought it for me yet?”

When adults repeatedly emphasize “for you,” rather than “together,” a string is missing in the child’s brain that says “others also need.”

In kindergarten, when biscuits are distributed, he will grab the largest piece first; when a child falls, he stands by thinking “my cake is not finished yet.” It’s not that he is born indifferent, but every morning the phrase “earning money for you to spend” plays like a repeating tape in his ears:You are the center, others are the background.The more hidden harm is:Excessive focus on material rewards, neglecting the value of labor itself.

Children will equate “happiness” with “buying things”:

In the long run, labor is no longer creation or achievement, but just a means to exchange for material possessions. One day, when no one is there to “buy buy buy” for him, he may fall into a huge void—”If no one spends money on me, what’s the point of my efforts?”

So, the next time before leaving, please press the pause button in your heart: is this sentence telling the child “you are important,” or is it telling him “you are only responsible for receiving gifts”?Translating “earning money for you to spend” into a story that children can understand only takes an additional 10 seconds, but it can avoid 10 years of educational hidden dangers in the future.

Back to the beginning of the story,

what can we do?

Now let’s bring the scene back to the same day when the parents are about to go out. The elevator door opens again, and this time, let’s quietly change the lines and demonstrate the greetings when leaving the house. If parents have more inspiration, welcome to share in the comments section.

✅ Mom’s side

“Sweetheart, Mom has to go to a meeting! Today, I’m discussing with uncles and aunts about how to design the accessible passage for that new apartment building, so that grandparents in wheelchairs and parents pushing strollers can easily get in and out.”

The child blinks, and the focus instantly shifts from “new clothes” to “when will the accessible passage be built?”

Maybe they will ask, “Do you have to draw a lot of drawings?”

You can follow up with: “First, we need to design every slope and turn, then calculate the material needed, which is similar to building a block model.”

The elevator door closes,what he carries in his heart is not “gifts,” but “Mom is doing something to make everyone’s life more convenient.”

✅ Dad’s side

Dad, while changing shoes, casually says, “I’m going to the hospital! Today, I’m going to perform a heart bypass surgery. When the patient recovers, I’ll take you to see those amazing medical devices on the weekend. Guess which blood vessel Dad has connected?”

The child is most likely to clap excitedly, “I want to perform surgery too!”

Dad smiles, “Okay, study hard first and wear your little doctor’s stethoscope.”

Work is turned into an adventure game, the taste of gifts fades, and the sense of participation comes.

✅ Grandma’s side

Grandma, carrying a basket, smiles at her grandson with squinted eyes: “Grandma is going to the vegetable market to pick a live perch. At noon, we’ll team up – I’ll kill the fish, and you’re in charge of beating eggs and sprinkling scallions. How about that? Let’s make a delicious parent-child steamed fish.”

The little one immediately enters the mode of a little helper,the focus shifts from “I want to eat fish” to “I have to beat the eggs well,” and incidentally, the word “cooperation” is written in the heart.

Remember 4 little tricks,
which can be flexibly used in life

Just a few words, sounds like casual chat, actually hiding four little tricks that can be used effortlessly—

Replace “earning money to buy for you…” with 👉 “I am going to do [specific things], which can make [everyone/us] better”.

The closer the metaphor is to his life, the more he feels that labor is fun, not a chore.

Don’t mention “new clothes” or “big cars,” but let the result become an “incidental surprise.” For example:

Grandma’s phrase “let’s team up” actually breaks down the task into an assembly line: Grandma is responsible for the heat, and the child is responsible for beating eggs. Don’t underestimate this 30-second collaboration; it allows the child to experience for the first time the surprise that “an individual’s 100% completion is not as good as a team’s 120% completion.”

Gradually, you will find that children no longer chase you asking “where is the gift,” but instead ask “what interesting project are you going to complete today?”

When children hear “Mom is going to meetings to draw plans, Dad is going to the hospital to perform surgery, Grandma is going to the market to pick perch,” they plant little seeds in their hearts, which slowly sprout and take root—the values of “work is useful,” “think for others,” and “together is better” They will grow up with the child, becoming his confidence to face the world in the future.

Values, empathy, team spirit,
help children become better people

Let children know thatlabor is not a “game currency” to exchange for gifts, but a superpower to make the world better.

Children’s initial understanding is very simple:

But as he verifies these causes and effects in real scenes over and over, his brain will automatically upgrade—It turns out that “work” can turn imagination in the mind into tangible good things.

When he enters kindergarten, elementary school, and hears “classmates work together to clean the classroom,” he will instinctively feel“This is my chance to make the environment better,” not “the teacher is assigning tasks again.”

In the long run,labor is no longer “a bitter task that parents have to do,” but “I have the ability to make the world more comfortable” superpower, and this positive feedback loop is the most solid foundation for values.

From “I want” to “he thinks” – the perspective shift only requires one sentence.

In the past, what children heard was “buy for you,” and the focus was always on themselves.

Now what they hear every day is “to make it more convenient for everyone” and “we use it together,” their brains naturally take an extra turn: designing an accessible passage is not only for me, but also for grandparents in wheelchairs and mothers pushing strollers; steaming fish is not only for me to eat, but also for grandparents who love to eat. This turn is the sprout of empathy.

In practice, you can add: “Today, Grandma has a sore back, let’s help her clean the perch, okay?”

When children do this, for the first time they experience“My pain ≠ the world’s pain, others can also feel pain” Once empathy sprouts, it will grow like a vine: seeing classmates fall, he will hand over tissues; seeing stray cats, he will take the initiative to pour half a bowl of water.Parents don’t need to preach, just continue to give a daily reminder of “others also need,” and children can complete the perspective upgrade on their own.

Expand “I” to “we”—The family is the smallest unit of training camp.

Grandma’s phrase “let’s steam fish together” actually breaks down the task into two assembly lines:

Don’t underestimate this 30-second collaboration; it allows the child to experience for the first time the surprise that “an individual’s 100% completion is not as good as a team’s 120% completion.”

In the future, when encountering kindergarten group block building or elementary school blackboard newspaper production, he will instinctively find partners and assign tasks, instead of monopolizing all the blocks by himself.

Daily family life is the best sandbox:

Every division of labor carves a sentence into the child’s brain:One person goes fast, a group goes far.When he grows up and faces real team projects, he will naturally become the person who “makes the cake bigger before dividing it,” not the person who “grabs the biggest piece first.”

Hide “education” in life,
not cram it into the classroom

Many parents are anxious: I also want to cultivate values, but where are there so many big truths to tell?

In fact,education is most afraid of “class-like” instilling. Compared to taking children to a children’s career experience center on weekends, it’s better to turn the 3-minute farewell ritual every day into a “micro documentary”:

Put these fragments together into the “Today’s Labor News” in the family group, and when the child sees it before going to bed, they will automatically replay in their mind: This is how the real world works. Over time,those seemingly trivial daily routines will grow into the skeleton of the child’s understanding of the world.

The correct farewell speech is not to push children into the abyss of “demanding,” but to hand them a key to open the three doors of “creation, empathy, and cooperation”.

Tomorrow morning, when you squat down and say “Mom is going to…” again, please remember—you are using 10 seconds to pave a smoother road for your child’s growth in the next 10 years.