As parents we have a lot of challenges how to get our children to listen the
first time. popular topic here about getting kids to listen the first time?
Instead of the fifth time or the twelfth time, I've got 5 tips today that I
think will be helpful. Number 1 - "learn to think like a child". Sounds simple? Well,
here's what I mean. Why should your kids listen to you? Now, you've got 12 reasons
why they should. But you're an adult, you're a parent, you've got all this life
experience and you know all the reasons why they should listen. That's not what
I'm talking about. I'm talking about why should your child listen to you? In their
mind, learn to think like a child why should they from their perspective,
if you can't come up with a good reason why they should listen to you from their
perspective? They probably can't either. And they don't think like you do.
So think about this kid and there's different developmental stages. I'm going
to acknowledge that. But for the most part, kids are very efficient in their
thinking. So when they hear something, that's going to interfere with their
regular plan, they're going to put it in a little algorithm where they get to
decide, hmm... should I listen to this or not? Is this important or not?
Really? Why? Should I do this thing versus why should I keep doing what I'm doing?
Do you see how the child is thinking? Now if they're doing something fun already,
and you've just invited them to do something that's not so much fun, why
would they do that? Well, they wouldn't. That's the point. This is more fun. So
from that child's perspective, learning to think like a child helps us to
approach this in a way that gives them a compelling reason to listen and to
respond the first time. Because they might be weighing it out should I listen
now or should I wait until moms really serious? And how can I tell if she's
really serious? Oh yeah, she yells. That's why they trained us to yell. So from that
child's perspective, why should I listen to mom? Why should I do this the first time?
Let's give them a really good reason to do that. So usually that's tied to the
consequence. We'll come back to that here in just a sec. Now, let's go to number 2 -
"manage your affect". Manage your own affect. Your emotions. Affect is the
psychological word for feelings or emotions. Manage your own. If you're
freaking out, if you're yelling and screaming, then you are out of control.
Getting our kids to listen the first time, implies that we as parents, are
coming at this from a place of what Nicholeen Peck calls a calm face, calm
voice, calm body, calm voice, face and body. That means you're controlling yourself.
That mode is something really important for your children and it also allows you
to stay in a position of power as a parent because you're still in control
not out of control. If you're out of control, why should your kids listen to
you? Well, they're probably not going to is my point because now you're out of
control. They'll just kind of chill until they can see that they need to pay
attention. Coming at it from a calm voice, face and body, communicates a real sense
of power to that child and it helps to keep you in a position of power as a
parent. So manage your affect. Number 3. Now this is where it gets really
exciting and powerful. We're going to tie consequences to communication tie
consequences to communication. In other words, what were communicating
is a reasonable predictor now, for that child of what consequences are on
the way. Do you remember back in the introductory psychology. If you had a
class in Intro Psych, you probably learned about Pavlov and his dogs. In
this experiment, Pavlov would ring a bell just before introducing food to the
animal. They had some crazy apparatus that puffed a little meat powder or
something into the dog's mouth, right after the bell sounded. Well, what
happened is the dog, started to pair the consequence with the communication. The
communication being the bell, ping! puff of meat powder, okay?
Which caused them to salivate. Ping! Food. Ping! Food. We're pairing the consequence
to the communication. What happened after that?
Eventually Pavlov could just do the ping and the dog would salivate, without the
food being introduced at all. This is called a conditioned response. It's
behavioral psychology. It's how we train our brain to respond to certain things.
So what we're trying to do with our child is ping the request, consequence. In
other words, if I don't respond, I get a negative consequence. If I do respond, they
get a positive consequence. Hmm... which one goes better for me? I say something to my
child, boom they respond. Why? Because we've
trained them that the communication is followed by a consequence. And their
behavior matters because the kind of consequence they get is determined by
what their behavior is that's what I mean by pairing the communication with
the consequence. Another quick example of this, I did a video several months ago on
bedwetting. You can link to that video right up here and in this project
that I did this was my doctoral dissertation folks. In this project that
I did on bedwetting for my doctoral dissertation, I did the same thing. I was
pairing a communication with a consequence to help kids overcome
bedwetting and in my treatment program basically what we're doing is pairing
the feeling of a full bladder with getting up and going to the bathroom. So
that they don't wet the bed anymore. Those of you who have kids who are
bedwetting, you know what I'm talking about. If we can get them to get up and
respond when their own brain and body sends them a signal of a full bladder,
then we've solved the problem. Quite frankly I don't even care if the kid
wakes up as long as ping! I feel those sensations that tell me I'd better get
up and go and then boom the consequence and the behavior that follows. We were
training kids to do this in their sleep So this is a powerful concept as we tie
the consequence to the communication. Now that ties right into number 4 and
this is one I've mentioned before as well.
"Turning our words from garbage into gold" We want to increase the value of the
words that we're using. The way that we do that is what we talked about in
number 3 as we tie the communication to the consequence. That's what teaches
kids that there is some important reason to listen to that communication that's
coming from my mom or dad because it's going to predict some kind of a
consequence for me and I better pay attention to that. Normally, what happens
here is that we get into a trap as parents. Kids start to esteem our words
to be garbage instead of gold. Why? Because we say something and then
nothing in particular happens and then we say it again and nothing in
particular happens and then we say it again usually a little louder and
nothing in particular happens and when it gets to a certain level or
volume, that's when the lights go on for the kid and he's like, "oh, time to pay
attention because now something's going to happen. And what did we just train
them that our words are garbage or gold well the words are garbage, the tone of
voice is what I need to pay attention to. The kids are pretty bright. We want to
reverse that training and get them to see our words as gold not garbage. That
means the words are delivered and the consequence shows up. Oh these two things
go together. The words are important. The words are
gold to me if they predict what's going to happen. And we take the tone of voice
out of it. So our tone is always calm and pleasant. Remember number 2? Manage your
affect. calm voice, calm face, calm body and that's how we're going to turn the
words from garbage into gold. Now, one final one and this gets back to our main
job as a parent. What is your job as a parent? It's to love them no matter what
and even if. Love them no matter what me even if. So step number 5 let's put it
this way, "work on the relationship". Work on the relationship. tThat is the most
important thing. Kids need to know that they have someone in their life who is
more powerful than they are. There's reasons why that's important. Who loves
them. You think about how you feel if you know that there's someone in your life
who is more powerful than you are and loves you. Oh wow! that is a great
position to be in. We want to provide that for our children. So as we work on
the relationship and remember, our job is to love them no matter what and even if.
That solidifies a position for them where when we speak, they listen. Can we
get our kids to respond to that first time? Well, sure we can
if we've got that kind of a relationship and if we're using some of the other
principles we've talked about in this video. You've got this. Parenting is one
of those challenging things and I'm so glad that you're here part of our
parenting community at Live on Purpose TV. We've got some other resources for
you. Check out the description and come and check out our parenting power up. I
think you'll like it.