- Don't repeat, don't repeat.
(gentle music)
- Welcome to The Simply Charlotte Mason Podcast.
I'm Sonya Shafer and I'm joined by my friend
and co-worker, Laura Pitney
to do another episode of Your Questions Answered.
This question is quite interesting.
It goes like this: You say not to repeat yourself,
"but I'm wondering how you teach this?
"I have a five year old.
"Let's say I get her attention,
"look directly into her eyes, and tell her
"'Go put your pajamas in the laundry.'
"She starts the journey,
"but get sidetracked on the way there.
"Five minutes later, I notice her pajamas
"on the kitchen floor, beside her,
"while she's playing with the toys she found on the way.
"How do you handle this situation
"if you don't repeat yourself?
"This is my life right now,
"even my older girls are guilty
"of similar behavior sometimes."
- That's a tough one.
- It is, it is.
- It sounds like she's doing the right steps
as far as making sure the child's looking at her,
and making sure she's hearing her.
But it's the follow through.
- Yes, yes, and I think one helpful thing
with that follow through is,
in order to get that habit established
in the first few weeks of getting that established,
I think mama needs to go with her,
say, "Okay, go put your pajamas in the hamper."
And walk along beside her to help her stay on task,
to help her brain keep moving forward.
I know that's going to grate a lot of mamas the wrong way,
it's like, "I don't have time for that.
"I got to be doing all these other things."
But hopefully, it will only be for a short time.
And just think, if you get that habit established--
- Right, then you won't have to be right next to 'em.
- Exactly, and you'll reap the benefits
of that follow through for the rest--
- Right, in other areas
'cause it would apply to other areas.
- Yes, that's true.
That's true, so I think going with her
is going to be one good benefit.
- What are your thoughts about,
okay, your child is looking at you,
you have the eye contact, you're telling her what to do.
You're saying, "Okay, did you understand?"
And they say, "Yes, ma'am."
Do you think there is a value in having them
repeat back the instructions that were given to them?
- Sometimes, I think so, it's almost like
a form or narration. - Comprehension, yeah.
- Yeah, (Laura laughs) yeah, exactly.
And it takes away any excuses they have for
"Oh, I didn't understand," or "oh, I didn't hear you."
Or something like that.
So I don't see a problem with having them repeat it back.
If you want them to put it in their own words,
you can (chuckles) or put it in your words,
but that way, there's no miscommunication.
And that's an important adult skill actually,
(Laura laughs) when you're having a conversation
with your spouse or something, a lot of times people say,
"Tell back the person what they just said,
"to make sure you understood it correctly.'
- Right, another thought with that is
not all of us have smart alert kids, but some of us do.
And so for us to say, "All right, go put your,"
as you would say pajamas, I'd say pajamas.
Go put your pajamas--
- There's a song there,
♪ You say pajamas I say pajamas ♪
(Sonya and Laura laugh)
- As I'm telling my child to do that,
they'll say, "Yes, ma'am, I understand."
But because I didn't say when to do it.
So clarifying that, "I want you to go do this right now,
"or before you go play with the toy."
Clarifying when you expect it to be done,
because that again, they might come back and say,
"Well, I was planning on doing the pajamas in the hamper,
"but I was going to do after dinner."
So not that they shouldn't just obey immediately,
and with a happy heart,
but every once while we have that smart alert kid
that's going to see the loopholes in the instruction.
So even being more specific of when you expect it.
- And I understand that and could be very helpful.
There's also on the flip side of that,
that you cannot think of every potential loophole
they might come across.
And so we might need to, at some point,
have a little heart-to-heart on attention is,
I love the definition,
listening with the ears, eyes, and heart.
And what do you think I'm telling you?
- Yeah, read between the lines here (laughs).
- Yeah, yeah, you know me,
what do you think my intent is here?
What's the end goal I have in mind?
And a lot of that is your whole relationship
with your child,
keeping your hearts turned toward each other,
it's an ongoing process.
- But it's one of those situations where you may say,
go put your pajamas in the hamper.
And they'll say, "Yes, ma'am," and then they may say,
"what did you say to do, again."
'Cause obviously, all kids struggle with the distractions.
So getting back to the question
of how do I not repeat the instruction, to begin with?
I have found that sometimes, I'm like,
"Well, what did I tell,"
putting that responsibility back on them
to go back in their mind
to what I had originally said,
versus the temptation just to repeat it.
Because that's the quick, easy answer.
So the habit in ourself
to put that responsibility back on them.
"I know, you heard what I said,
"you were looking at me, you said, 'Yes, ma'am.'
"So think hard about what I told you to do.
- It makes me think of Winnie the Pooh (Laura laughs),
which part did you get the fluff in your ear?
Which did you not hear?
And you might even say, "Tell me what you do remember?
"Which part do you remember?"
Just to help them draw it out.
I think another helpful thing is
to motivate them to pay full attention,
to pay better attention,
is to have consequences ready to go.
Consequences are so hard
to have specific and powerful in the moment,
I get requests all the time for,
"Can you just give me a list of consequences?"
And you can't, 'cause it depends on the situation,
the background, is this a one time occurrence?
Or is this a perpetual thing?
Is this a personality?
Does the child have auditory processing issues?
There's just so many factors.
But mamas, I think are in a unique position
to understand their children better than anybody else.
So I think they can find those consequences
if they stop, and reflect, and think about it ahead of time
and have a few in their tool belts, if I will.
- Right, well, natural consequences are usually there.
It's just us understanding well, in her example,
the child got distracted by a toy along the way.
So the natural consequence would be probably
to take that toy away, or to not let them have the toy
until their responsibility's done.
So the natural consequences are usually there,
but like you said, to have a few that are on hand,
for instance maybe, "Oh, well, you didn't obey this time.
"And you know what I expect of you,
"I told you, and you chose not to do it.
"so that means a 30-minute earlier bedtime."
Or trash duty this week--
- Extra chores.
- Especially, when they're old enough
to understand that they made a choice
not to obey when they did hear it, and everything--
- Or if the child has gotten distracted,
and you walk across the room, and she's playing with a toy.
You can take the toy,
but rather than saying, "I told you to,"
that's the repeat part we want to avoid.
Take the toy and say,
"You have not done what I told you to do."
That's it, and then you wait. - And then you wait.
'cause sometimes - And you wait.
they have to, yeah, it can be awkward.
And you pray a lot, while you're standing there too.
Another mom that I read recently,
mentioned an interesting consequence that she does,
that kind of is a multi-use consequence,
where if she gives the child a task to do,
and they get distracted, and they don't do it.
They have to come back and do the task twice.
So in the pajama instance, or pajama instance.
- Get it right (Sonya laughs).
- Okay the PJ instance, she would,
the mom would find the daughter there,
you could take the toy and say,
"You did not do what I told you to do,
"let's go do it together."
We go, she puts the pajamas in the hamper.
You take them back out,
take them back to the kitchen where they started from,
put them down and say,
"Okay, let's do it one more time, start to finish."
Just to practice doing it correctly.
- I think that's a great idea. - Might be powerful.
- Especially if you have younger children
that really you're trying to form
that habit of listening, and for yourself not to repeat.
I mean, hands on, it is so practical in that way.
I had to instance, this week,
it wasn't only the non-repeating,
but it was something, one of my daughters
was already trained to do, the examples,
okay, asked her to dust the living room.
That's something we've practiced,
she has grown up dusting the living room,
it's nothing new that I've asked her to conquer.
But the heart of it was the integrity
of doing the job well, and doing it
without me having to repeat myself,
or repeat the instructions,
because she knows, she's an older.
And so, it so happened that I noticed this big streak
along one of the pieces of furniture
that it was very obvious,
I could have wrote my name in the dust,
unfortunately (Sonya laughs) good house cleaning here.
So I asked her, I said,
"Did you dust that piece of furniture?"
And she said "Yes."
And I said, "Well," I provoked her first of all,
which took pittance on my heart, I'm like,
"Well, I know you didn't do it,
"because I can still see the dust."
So it was a learning lesson for both of us.
But anyway, us bringing up what she missed
in the instruction, and her understanding that,
"Okay, mom told me to do something,
"I listened, I heard it, I'm acting it out.
"But I didn't do it thoroughly--"
- Yeah, that's tougher.
- And so as the kids get older,
and we struggle with the repeating and the instructions,
it's almost like there's an added component
of like you said with,
what was your definition of attention?
- Listening with the ears, eyes, and heart.
- So rather, now I'm on the heart side of things,
for the younger kids, when you give instructions,
they can hear it, and they can do it.
And they're like, "Yes, I conquered it."
But it's more out of loyalty and respect to you
as their authority figure,
versus as the children become older,
and really develop their own personalities,
and who they are as young people.
That's really where I have seen
the heart issue come into play
to where she did the job, it was dusted.
But it wasn't that integrity component that I really,
we've really been working on actually,
that's been one of our habits lately,
to where I want her to do what's right,
when nobody's watching.
And to dust every component
of what was expected of her was part of that.
And so I know our question's about the habit of repeating,
not repeating ourselves and our children to do it.
But that's multi layered, really--
- Yes it is. - With the attention,
and I'm just in that phase of life right now,
where the heart is my concern,
and not just the conformity of the outward.
And with the younger ones, it's easy to make that happen
because they're ready and willing, most of the time,
besides when they throw the fits on the ground,
but ready and willing to--
- just that little part, of it.
yeah, yeah, they're happy to please you,
they want to please you, especially those preschool years,
and younger six, seven, eight year olds.
But when you start getting a little feedback,
and they have this inner war with themselves, almost of,
"Okay, I've been trained, I know what's expected of me."
But then there's this fight of selfishness
to want to do it their own way.
"Or hmm, I wonder if I do this,
what kind of reaction I'll get from mom today, so--
- Or as they're getting older
they're starting to view it,
like we do sometimes as mamas, where it's like,
this is a never ending thing, I'll do it today,
but I'm just going to have to do it again next time.
And so they might be thinking it's futile, in a sense.
- Right, and helping them navigate those emotions
and those thoughts and to counsel their hearts
to where there is the right response,
where they want to obey,
and they want to do what's right.
And they don't want to have to say,
"What did you say?"
We want to benefit the fruits of all those years of labor.
And yet, it's still a struggle for them,
a struggle for me, I mean, we've talked, she even mentioned
how we expect these things of our children,
but how do we change it in our own life,
and it's a habit that we struggle with--
- Yeah, what if we have trouble paying attention ourselves?
That was another part of the question, yeah.
- Yeah, so how would you answer that?
- I think it's going to take small steps.
But it needs to, number one,
we don't just throw up our hands and say,
"well, that's just the way I am, and I can't improve."
Because Charlotte Mason talked about it,
it's pleasant to know that even in mature life, we can
now I'm paraphrasing, but we can form new habits
with a quote little persistent effort (laughs).
Yeah, a lot of persistent effort.
- (laughs) just a little.
- Yeah, but I think one thing
that can help adults especially,
is to take it in tiny steps.
So I'm going to pay full attention to this particular thing,
or when my child is talking to me,
I am going to set aside my phone,
or set aside the potato peeler,
or whatever we're working on.
And I'm going to look her right in the eye
and give her my full attention.
Just those little steps that we can keep working on
in our own hearts and lives, in addition to that proactive,
we can start examining our lives
for areas that are sabotaging those efforts.
If we're continually doing social media, all the time,
that starts a cycle in our brains
that shortens our attention span,
because we're looking for notification dings,
boom, we're there.
And it's taken our attention away
from what we were working on.
That as well as getting enough sleep
when you're fatigued, it's hard to pay full attention.
Just the idea of using different parts of the brain
as you go through your day.
So we don't clean the whole house to bottom
in one fell swoop, well, we're going to clean this,
and then let's go do something else for a while.
You know what I'm talking about,
but just those same principles
that we talked about with teaching our children
the habit of full attention,
I think with a little reflection,
we can tweak them and apply them to ourselves.
And just remember it's a process,
you're not going to just flip a switch
and suddenly have full attention.
We all struggle with it at different times of the day,
let alone of our lives.
- Right, I definitely think consistency, on our part,
to be a good example, on that maybe even the habits
that our children are struggling with,
whether it's a weakness of ourselves or not.
This example of being not repeating,
which lends to full attention to a certain degree.
Unfortunately, that burden rests on our shoulders
to really try to be a good example.
Like you were saying, when our child needs our attention
to drop what we're doing and give them our full attention
as an example to them that they should do the same to us.
So it just kind of goes hand in hand,
which is a beautiful thing.
And it shows you how the family works well together,
and you all make mistakes, and you all fall short,
but yet you're there to encourage,
and uplift and keep at it.
And for this mama to feel like
she sees a struggle in her children,
and then yet to see their own struggle in her own life,
that humility is such a beautiful thing,
'cause you're never going to improve
if you don't admit the problem.
And you don't get on the same page together as a family,
which goes back to how important habits are,
and to do them as a family,
and not expect everything to be perfect all at once.
But a refining process almost with that--
- And Charlotte talked a lot about mental sympathy.
That when you are in the same boat,
you're not going to come down
with a sledgehammer on your child.
You're going to understand
how hard it is for that child too.
Doesn't mean you're going to excuse it,
doesn't mean you're going to just say,
"Well, we're not going to work on that."
But you can empathize with them.
I thought of one more way we can be a model,
and I hesitate even to bring this up--
- (laughs) I'm ready.
- But it's like okay, conviction time.
How many times just yesterday,
did my husband say something to me, and I said, "What"?
That just came to my mind is like, Wow,
now I could play the card,
of I'm getting older, I'm getting harder to hear things.
But no, we need to watch that aspect too.
It's not just with our children, it's with
other people in general. - People around us.
It's all good. - yeah, good words.
Well, how about you?
Do you have more tips and comments
to help with paying attention,
teaching our children to pay full attention?
Not repeating ourselves?
- What was that?
(Laura and Sonya laughs)
- Yeah, just going to go there, too, yeah.
We'll go back to don't repeat yourself, what did I say?
- Don't repeat yourself (Sonya laughs) you got it.
(gentle music)
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Because we're not repeating.
(Sonya and Laura laugh)
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Thanks for joining us, we'll see you next time.
(gentle music)