It's a popular topic.. How to get kids to listen without yelling?
Getting kids to
listen is one of those topics that we refer to often here at Live On Purpose
TV and we've asked some of our family out there to chime in on this. Four areas
of how to get kids to listen and we started out with this great question
about how many times does it take to get kids to listen because we want them to
listen the first time, right? So listen in. Obviously, we want them to listen the
first time but that's not the common experience as you heard from some of our
viewers. What is it that makes the difference? As you were listening in to
some of these interviews, did you notice that when kids respond, it's because
parents are serious, they're at a point where they know, the kids know, that
something's going to happen now if I don't act so the key here is not to get
angry, not to yell, not to be mad but simply to move the consequence up and
tie it directly to the communication that you just gave so you're speaking
calmly in a loving voice, right, raise your eyebrows a little bit, keep a smile
on your face as you say something that's going to happen and your prediction is
something that your kids can count on. What if you want your kids to clean up
the room the first time you asked? What if you want them to put their toys away
and come to the dinner table the first time you asked? What if you want them to
get out of bed and get ready for school the first time you ask? Well you asked them
nicely the first time and then the consequence happens immediately. See, our
kids train us sometimes. In fact, that's another interesting topic that we ought
to take to our listeners, let's listen in on this one. Alright, so how many times
do you have to ask your kids to do something before they listen?
Oh, at least three, three to five. And then what what's different about the third or
fifth time versus the first? I get like more aggressive I guess like, I know
mom's not messing around. How many times on average would you say? It was
maybe three or four times and then we would hit the button of, if you don't
listen, you're gonna regret it basically. Remember, how many times do you want to
ask your kids before they respond? How about we get them to respond the first
time? Yelling doesn't seem to help, does it?
We asked some of our listeners about this too, listen in. Do you ever think that
yelling is a punishment or a reinforcement? Yelling is a waste of time,
absolutely. We had our kids, we had three and then a cup and two and
when we had our two kids we never yelled it and we never smacked them, we just
spoke to them like human beings and they responded. How do you feel about yelling?
With kids, I have two daughters, they're very sensitive so I try not to yell but
I feel like sometimes you have to like be forceful to get them to know you're
serious so it happens, I try not to. No, doesn't get you anywhere. Did your
parents ever have to yell to get you to listen? No. That's awesome. Yeah, so what
was their secret cause a lot of parents have to yell. I think
yelling like made us emotional, that's how it like didn't work and so I think
when they were more direct and more patient with us and we were willing to
do things more because we did out of like a better spirit than if we were
yelled at. It's pretty much unanimous folks, yelling doesn't seem to work and
it's not something that we enjoy doing as a parent
so as we replace that with a calm communication, that might lead us into
this next part though we got a particularly good response on how to
communicate to your kids so that they clearly understand what it is that you
want, listen to this one. How do your kids know what you're saying
is important? I make them look at me, that's like the main thing, eye contact and
what they want to wander, like no, mom's talking to you, look at me and that's the
main thing or I get like down on their level but eye contact for sure
is everything. Okay, so how did you communicate with them so that they knew
what you expected? Well, when I would ask them to clean their room or my son
because if just one, I would say because if you don't, I will and I will go through
everything. I like that. So yes, it got cleaned. Don't you love her approach to
this? It was very clear, it's basically a choice. Do you want to clean the room
yourself or would you rather that I clean it for you? This particular mom had
done this enough with her son that he understood as soon as she said the
communication about cleaning the room, he knew what was going to happen next
because she probably had followed through before I'm guessing and that
sends a clear message to kids about what to expect so let me just add a few
observations about communicating so that kids know what to expect. First of all,
what they expect is what they have experienced so what you say doesn't
matter as much as what you've done in the past and they probably won't believe
you right up front if you say, you know what, you can clean your room yourself or
I'll come in and clean it for you now if they're used to having you just
yell at them until they clean their room, that's what they're going to expect to
happen but we've just changed the rules on them so instead of yelling, we're not
going to do that, remember nobody likes that doesn't work anyway. Instead of the
yelling, we're going to follow through on what we said. This is a concept that I
refer to as turning your words from garbage into gold so that you've just
increased the value of your occasion they know exactly what's going
to happen because you've just said what's going to happen and they trust
your words so you say it calmly, "Son you can clean your own room or I'll go clean
it for you, either way is okay with me." And I like to
add that last little part, remember, raise your eyebrows just a little bit
kind of a little to your voice, no problem, right? Meaning, no problem for me,
possible problem coming up for you but I trust you to do your own thinking about
that and you only say it once because how many times do you want to say it
before your kids respond? Once. So you say it once and then you follow through with
the consequence. When you've done that, once, you've got a precedent now and the
next time this comes up because it will, won't it? Your kids are gonna give you
another chance to practice this.The next time it comes up as those words fall
from your lips, your children will see those as gold instead of garbage. Why?
Because of their experience. They've been there before and they will remember that,
that's where the learning will kick in for future experiences. We train our kids.
Well, do we? Who trains who? Let's listen to what some of our viewers had to say
about that. Now do you think that parents train their kids or do kids train their
parents? We trained our kids because the things that we did with them they're out
doing with their children. We had a daughter that would say I don't care,
I'll say the next time you say that is another 10 minutes I'd and she'd
look at me and think, is he kidding? I don't think that's
kidding. Did you think that parents train their kids or kids train their parents?
Oh man, it's so both. I mean, kids are kind of in charge to a certain
extent I think but I mean it's our job to guide them so I think it's a give and
take, honestly, you learn from each other. I
tend to agree with this mom who said, well it's obviously both. I think it is.
Our kids train us and we train our kids, we want to think that we're the ones
doing the training, right? Because I don't know, we've got some kind of ego tied up
in this as parents. Just be humble enough to realize and recognize our kids are
training us too and the way you handle your kids is probably a reflection of
what they've trained you to do, how they've trained you to treat them so if
they don't listen to you until the twelfth time, they've basically trained
you to say at 11 times before you get serious. Wow. Knowing that might sting
just a little bit but let that sting, open up your mind to the possibility
that you are trainable as well. Don't be so prideful to think that
you're the only one who's training your kids, your kids are training you too. Being
aware of that puts us in a position of choice and now we can respond
differently to the training that's already going on and probably create
some different outcomes too. I'm so honored to be on your parenting team, my
wife and I have collaborated to put together a positive parenting course
where you get to learn more about how to get your kids to listen without yelling
and other important skills that we all need as parents, check it out in the
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