Useful advice when sending a message, especially with children, is first, be brief and to the point.  Nothing will lose an audience more than a long, boring lecture.  Second, keep it simple, and address one issue at a time.  Third, establish a dialogue and avoid monologues.  Fourth, ask questions and enlist their help in solving the “problem.”  Fifth, avoid “us versus them” kinds of statements.  Communicate that all of you, as a family, are in this together.  Sixth, be patient.  Avoid strong reactions (e.g., anger, disappointment, etc) when things do not go as you would like.  Suspend judgment and be mindful of your own need to control.  Patience is so important.  “Patience serves as a protection against wrong as clothes do against cold.  For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you...Grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind”  (Leonardo Da Vinci).  Seventh, match language with maturity.  Talk with, never down, to children.  Never speak above or below the listener’s level of maturity.  Check in with them to see if the message was understood the way you intended it to be.  Ask them to tell you what it is that they heard you say.   This is a way to identify and correct miscommunication.