That’s one of the reasons I’d really like some subliminals that are designed for children. I listened to garbage music as a teenager (but also some good music, like Garbage lol) and I can only imagine what my life would be like if I’d been listening to subliminals back then, as well as more things like Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, etc.
The next best thing is teaching my daughter important things. While she definitely has some childish stories that we read to her, she also has science books and inspirational stories - board book stories about Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Maria Montessori, and other female role models for her. Obviously it will be many years before she’ll be able to understand journaling and intentions, but as soon as she’s ready, we’ll be teaching her that.
We don’t have cable tv, so she’s not being exposed to junk like that… and the only screen time she gets is when we facetime with family, as they all live quite far away.
Impulse purchases etc can be influenced for a long time, but certain key values are definitely established earlier on and become relatively (but not absolutely) fixed. Certain beliefs around love, safety, relationships, money… are established in childhood. They can definitely be changed, as there are many stories of people growing up in poverty or in a less-than-ideal home environment who later become wealthy, happy, successful, etc despite the early lessons they learned.
One of the reasons we chose the Montessori method for our daughter is because it focuses so much on instilling a sense of confidence and a “yes I can!” mindset from such an early age. Many people use cribs for their babies, my daughter only slept in a crib until about 7 months. Now she has a Montessori floor bed that she can get in and out of as she pleases. The only barricades we put up are a gate at the top of the stairs, and closing the door to my office as I’ve got a server rack in here as well as my workstation on the floor beside my standing desk… lots of wires to get into.
We do say “no” to her if she’d doing something she should not be, but only when she does it after we’ve already explained to her why she shouldn’t do it. Things like grabbing my glasses off my face, or pulling on the cable of a charging phone. (all of our plugs are at baby height, not much we can do about that) but for the most part we present her with things we can say yes to. She can pick her snack, between 2 good choices. She can go to her shelf and pick any toy or book she wants to, as they’re all acceptable.
It’s not an experiment as this method has been around for over a century, but it’s definitely different from how I was raised. And very very different from how my wife was raised in China.
But yeah, child-friendly subliminals for establishing mindsets for happiness, confidence, focus… sign me up!