Do you find yourself constantly saying certain things over and over with your kids? such as…..“don’t do that”, watch out, stop fidgeting, don’t play with that, sit still”, etc. Do you sound like your parent’s voice and are starting to hate the sound of your voice constantly nagging your kids. I remember parenting my step kids and trying to leave the house for school in the mornings were when big meltdowns happened, and my partner and I lost our temper and repeated things far too many times. I can relate.
Here are 3 ideas on how to help when talking to your kids: (especially when you are triggered).
1. Give little bits of information at a time
When we go on and on with kids, they tune us out. Researchers show that our brains can only keep four “chunks of information or ideas in our short-term memory at once. This equates to about 30 seconds (one sentence of speaking).
For E.g. “Tomorrow when I pick you up from school we need to go to the dentist, so tonight you need to brush your teeth well and floss them. Can you pack your toothbrush in your bag so you can brush them before we go to the dentist tomorrow? Oh, and pack your swim bag for the tomorrow morning now because Bill is picking you up on Wednesday and oh we need to get a Birthday present for Derek on our way home tomorrow. Okay?”
Your kid tuned you out after the first sentence. There are too many different ideas here, your child will most likely get confused and tune you out. Especially if your tone is nervous, anxious or accusatory. What you want to do is break it up into separate digestible pieces.
For E.g.”Hey sweetheart, tonight when you brush, can you remember to floss? We’re going to the dentist tomorrow after school. You cool with that?”
The rest of the information can come in bits and spurts in a digestible way.
2. Give brief instructions with clear expectations.
Parents often feel out of control and try to gain power by nagging, criticizing, and giving multiple warnings so you feel like a broken record. Not much fun for you nor them.
Having said that, as you know, younger children need more instruction and assistance then say your 7 or 10-year-old. As an effective parent, you allow your kids to take on increasing amounts of responsibility as they grow older.
E.g. “Your 3-year-old is fidgeting at dinner on his stool. You repeatedly tell him, “sit still, you’re going to fall, eat your dinner”
2 minutes later…
“What did I just say? Sit still, you’re going to have to sit here longer, so just eat.”
3 minutes later
“Are you hearing me? You are all over that stool, you are going to fall off and hurt yourself, please pay attention and finish your dinner or no story tonight.
Your child is hearing a tone of disapproval, you are sending the message that you don’t trust them to manage the situation on their own without lots of instruction.
Try this E.g.
“Paul, I’m concerned you are not being safe on that stool. I need you to focus on your dinner. You have 5 more minutes and then I take your plate away and Its bath time.”
This leaves the responsibility in his hands, he continues to distract and doesn’t eat a full dinner. After bath time you can offer him the leftovers from his plate if he’s still hungry. Or, you can choose to tell him he has to wait until morning.
The natural consequence might be that he does fall off the stool if he disregards what you said and doesn’t pay attention. Sometimes this is the best way to learn, through experience.
He will most likely only do that once and learn from it. Logical consequences teach kids to learn from their mistakes, create healthy problem-solving skills and eventually plan ahead, but this takes years of training and we need to be patient as they don’t have a fully functional prefrontal cortex quite yet (and won’t until they are 25, sadly you have a long way to go…) Its baby steps, and sometimes two steps forward and one step back.
Or…maybe you have a 9-year-old who is constantly late for school.
For E.g. “You need to get dressed now, or you will be late for school”.
5 minutes later… “what did I just say? You’re not even dressed yet, I told you, get dressseeedddd now!
5 minutes later …“OMG, you’re still not dressed, what is wrong with you, did you hear anything I just said, I’m losing my temper”
Press repeat each morning…By continually repeating yourself and nagging you are indirectly communicating to your child that you don’t trust them to manage the situation without continual reminders. You are actually training your kids to ignore you. Gulp.
Try a different approach, that actually comes with a different mindset. Be willing to follow through, and in the beginning if you have repeated yourself lots and you start to back off, there will be a period of adjustment where your child will expect the constant reminders.
This will involve sitting them down the night before and explaining that they dynamic is not working for you or them. You want to do things differently so you are less frustrated and you can have better connection with each other. Explain you will ask them once and once only in the mornings from now on, and the rest is up to them. Ask them what support they may need to be more efficient in the morning. Brainstorm, perhaps laying their clothes out the night before? Having a list on their door of what things to do in the morning when they have fog brain? Work collaboratively together. This is a key step in changing the dynamic.
Now you have set the stage for more cooperation.
The following morning, you could say
E.g. “Remember what we talked about last night? You have your clothes laid out this morning, yay! I’m pleased we are finding a new way to do this morning thing!
Let’s see if we can work together this morning. We are leaving for school in 45 minutes.
Please gather up all your school work, if you don’t you will have to explain it to your teachers.”
These instructions are clear and brief and convey a well-defined expectation with a natural consequence. This allows the child to make decisions (conscious or unconscious), so they can learn from their behaviour.
3. Model listening
Our children learn by what me model daily to them. When we can listen, really listen to our children and treat them with respect, the same respect we would give a friend or partner, they learn the value of respect and empathy and we teach them valuable and effective communication.
This means attentive listening to them whenever you can, and if you can’t it’s okay to say “sweetheart, I’m cooking dinner right now and need my attention here, I’ll come sit with you and listen to your story in 10 minutes. I really want to hear what happened”.
Otherwise we half-heartedly or resentfully listen, but we are not really present, and our kids feel that. We then expect them to be fully present when we have a request or sometimes demand. It’s not entirely fair.
When we listen to them we show interest, enthusiasm, ask them questions and reflect feelings.
“Wow, your shoe fell off and went flying across the playground, that’s crazy! Did someone pick it up for you? Were you surprised?
“I’m so sorry that your best friend said that mean thing to you, were you sad?”
“You went to the store with Grandpa and he bought you a Popsicle? You lucky girl! Was it yummy? What flavour was it?”
These responses help a child feel important, and worthy of our time, care and attention. When we have an empathetic resonance with them, it helps them develop more interconnected neural pathways to process and make sense of emotion in their world. This all helps deepen and cultivate their social emotional intelligence.
Parents make mistakes every day, so don’t give yourself a hard time when you have a parenting fail and you do the exact opposite of this. Many of us are parenting from very unhealthy role models from our parents and it takes having some self-compassion for when we yell and lose our temper with them. We are works in progress in this parenting thing too.
It’s just about being good enough…and that’s enough.
