Instead, the combination of jacket and shouts generates a flow of negative reverberations like the ripples created when tossing a stone into a calm pool of water. When it comes to telling your child to carry out this simple task, you tend to be irritated because the jacket should not have been in the middle of the floor in the first place.
Let's rewind and consider another way to deal with the jacket.
On the way home from a stressful day at work, you are thinking about how nice it will be to have a pleasant evening with your family. You come into the house, your arms full, and you see your child's jacket lying in a heap on the floor. Your child is slouched on the couch playing a video game. Of course you are irritated! However, you really would like to have a pleasant evening with your family. Your immediate reaction is to lash out. Try using the enhanced steps for giving clear directions below to design an alternative response that will set the stage for cooperation.
Enhanced Strategies for Giving Clear Directions
Prepare yourself. Stop what you're doing and pay full attention to your direction.
Get your child's attention. Say your child's name, get close, use eye contact, use touch (as appropriate).
Say what you want the child to do. Saying what not to do omits the necessary information. “Put your jacket in the closet, now please.” vs. “Don't leave your jacket in the hall.”
Make it short and simple. Use the fewest words possible and make them easy to understand.
Make a statement; don't ask a question. Questions imply choice (e.g., “Pick up your jacket, now please.” vs. “How would you like to pick up your jacket?”)
Pay attention to timing. Give directions at reasonable times (e.g., not five minutes before your child's favorite TV program is finished).
Be calm. When necessary, take time to become calm in face, voice, language, and body posture. Keep negative emotions under control.
Be pleasant, polite, and respectful, but firm. Show that you expect cooperation in a firm yet positive manner (face, voice, language, and body posture). Use the word “please.”
Don't allow discussion. Simply repeat the same clear, short, polite direction. Arguing reinforces noncompliance.
Give one direction at a time. More than one reduces cooperation.
Give your child time to respond. Cooperation means getting started within ten seconds.
Maintain contact. Stand and hold for ten seconds. After that, restate the direction using the same words and neutral-to-positive emotions.
Follow through. When your child complies, praise the behavior with words, smiles, and positive gestures.
Clear directions can have a profound effect on you and your entire family. Most parents require lots of practice to make clear directions a standard habit. It can be shockingly hard. If it were easy, we wouldn't need this book or the years of research it took to figure this out! How you lead as a parent affects the way your child will follow. And, before you can change your child's behavior, you may have to change your own. That's right. We can't expect our children to become cooperative unless we are skilled at being calm, clear, and polite in the face of chaos.
Think about how many steps are involved. First, when you saw the coat on the floor, you had to stifle the almost automatic (and actually quite natural) irritated reaction. If you allow yourself to react with anger, how do you think your child will react? And how will you then respond to that reaction? And then how likely is it that you will have a pleasant evening with your family? And, by the way, has the jacket been hung up? So, whether you like it or not, the first person you have to change is yourself.
In our decades of working with parents—and being parents—we have met few moms and dads who automatically knew how to deal with irritating situations. Our human reaction to a biting mosquito is to swat it. Most of us have no idea how often we go through the day swatting mosquitos. Learning to respond rather than react to life's many irritants is a lesson in self-control that requires practice, practice, and more practice. Automatic negative reactions to pain can be replaced with responses that help you achieve your goals. In the situation above, the goals were a pleasant evening and the coat hung up
Practice giving clear directions that involve simple actions and that can be accomplished in a minute or two—put your shoes away; close the door quietly; or put your backpack in your room now, please. Don't start with cleaning up a catastrophically messy room or washing the dishes from Thanksgiving dinner. Another mistake parents commonly make is to give what we call “stop” directions: “Stop teasing your brother.” “Don't do that.” Instead, provide a direction for an alternative start-up behavior: “Bring in the mail now, please.” Parents who develop a habit of giving clear directions report that this simple step dramatically improves their children's behavior.
Directions Gone Astray
Here are some of our favorite examples of directions gone astray. With each of these examples, notice the missing elements of clear directions and think of ways to strengthen the direction using the formula: “Name, do X now, please.” And then stand and hold. By the way, if you have any doubt about the importance of the stand-and-hold element, have your partner or a friend give you a simple direction and remain pleasantly, but firmly, in your personal space until you respond. When we were demonstrating the stand-and-hold technique with a friend, he said he became so uneasy that he wanted to comply immediately.
The Drive-By
This is a common mistake we make as parents when giving directions. Naturally, we resort to this approach when we are in a hurry. Rather than taking a few moments to follow the strategies for giving clear directions, we forget several elements.
Dad rushes through the room, calls over his shoulder on his way to the car: “Alison! Hurry up! We have to go!”
What is missing here? Look at the strategies for clear directions and revise this statement to make it more likely to succeed. How long do you think Dad will race his engine before Alison joins him? Will he have to go back inside and try again? Given that he has to start over, how likely is he to be pleasant (or at least neutral)? Let's rewind and try it again with another approach.
Dad rushes through the room on his way out the door. He stops, comes back, and stands by Alison. He gently touches her shoulder, makes eye contact, and smiles.
“Alison, grab your backpack and let's go now, please.”
