negotiable. If you ask your child to do something for you, insist that they do it. It is so important that children learn to respond to instructions. Giving and taking orders are all part of life’s rules and children must not be allowed to imagine they are somehow immune to it. School, the workplace, even leisure activities will require orders to be acted upon, sometimes immediately.
To make it less stressful all round (although this will not always be possible), try not to ask for something you want an immediate response to if your child is engrossed in an activity, a book, in the middle of a favourite TV programme time or doing homework. If they are busy concentrating on something, they are more likely to show some resistance. In these circumstances ask them to carry out your request after they have finished the chapter, TV programme or their homework and make sure they have heard and understood.
Warning children in advance that they will have to do something will help prepare them mentally to do it, as in, ‘Dinner will be ready in five minutes,’ then after that time, ‘Come and sit down, please.’
Children disobeying orders can be life-threatening. For example, if a young boy has never been taught to obey his mother, one day he gets separated from her in a car park, then suddenly sees her. If she shouts, ‘Stay there, don’t move, there’s a car coming,’ and the child doesn’t, he is putting himself and possibly others at risk.
A good way to get children to obey first-time requests is to ask them to do something quickly so that they can have a reward or get on with doing something far more fun. For instance, if a mother is returning home with her children, she could say, ‘Quickly, go and hang your coats up and then you can have a biscuit/start painting.’ Then when they return, ‘You’ve put your coats away already? That’s fantastic, my goodness you’re fast. Well done, here’s your biscuit/right if you get the paints out, I’ll get the paper.’ Suddenly children are in the mind-set to help. They soon learn that doing as asked brings praise and rewards.
Of course, there are going to be far more times when you will simply ask them to do something without dangling the carrot and they must react as quickly.
When you are teaching your young children to obey simple commands, explain what you would like them to do, keep it simple, ask if they understand, then wait and watch to see them do it. If they ignore you, repeat it and mention that you would like it done now. If they don’t move immediately take their hand and help them up with a, ‘Come along, mummy has asked you to pick up your socks and to give them to me. Now pick them up like a good boy.’ Once the command has been carried out, thank them. If they carried out the task with no fuss, thank and congratulate them at their speed and efficiency. If they refuse to pick the socks up, put your hand over theirs and help them to pick up the socks then give them to yourself. Thank them in a matter-of-fact voice.
Persistence is the name of the game, so do not leave the room until they have done what they were asked to do, keep a firm voice and do not lose your temper. Never let your children get away with not doing something they have been asked to do. It can be a small battle of wills, but you are the parent, you must be in control. When children realize that you are not going to give in, they will. You may only have to sit out two or three incidents like this until your children act upon your requests. That Mum or Dad mean business is a valuable lesson for children to learn. There will be times when they dawdle and don’t react immediately, but don’t let them get into a habit of just not doing it.
I was recently at a taxi rank at a train station and saw a mother and her son of about 6. She asked him to put his empty plastic water bottle in the bin and pointed out where it was (about 10 yards away). The first and second time she asked he ignored her, the third time she asked he put it on a window ledge, the fourth time he took it off the window ledge and played with it. This scenario continued for a total of about 10 minutes when, finally, the mother picked up the bottle, which had now been abandoned on the floor, took her son by his arm and walked him to the bin and dumped it for him.
When the son disobeyed after the first request the mother should have taken him to the bin then and made him throw the bottle away, even if she had to put it in his hand at the final moment before it was dumped. She should have praised him for dumping it then immediately talked about something else. By allowing her son to disobey her request several times she inadvertently taught him that he has the option whether to do as he has been asked or not and if he decides not to his mother will do it anyway.
Create continuity and consistency
Rules that you create must be upheld by you and your partner. If, for instance, children have been told that something is off limits, it must always be off limits, not just occasionally. Your partner must also know what is off limits and what action to take if they disobey.
Children learn by consistency, so your children must always be treated in the same way if they do something that displeases.
It’s very easy when you are tired or depressed not to stick to the rules and your children will soon learn that you sometimes give in if they ignore them. Hard as it is sometimes when you are tired, always stand your ground over rules. In the long run it will make life so much easier.
Make rules clear and simple
Always be specific about what your children should or should not do. Telling children to ‘Behave nicely’ or ‘Eat properly’ can mean very little, but if you say, ‘Take your feet off the sofa’ or ‘Use your spoon’, you are making yourself very clear.
Tell children what you expect of them
Once your children have learned to obey simple commands, talk to them before you go out, whether it is to a restaurant, the cinema or to the shops, and let them know exactly how you would like them to behave. Children are often better behaved if they are prepared and they know exactly what is expected of them.
Encourage and reward good behaviour
The most positive ‘new’ parenting skill to have emerged over the past twenty years is the encouragement and reward of good behaviour and paying less attention to poor. Children, as I have already said, love attention and the praise and positive attention they receive from behaving well will spur them on to behave in that way again. Promising a reward for good behaviour is likely to produce more satisfactory results than threatening to punish bad behaviour. We now know that children who receive little attention from their parents will behave badly just to receive attention, even if that attention is a reprimand. Paying little or no attention to attention-seeking behaviour is likely to stop it.
Be firm about poor behaviour
However, I am not of the school that believes in completely ignoring poor behaviour. Children must immediately be told that whatever they were doing is unacceptable, otherwise how will they ever know? If it persists, there is no discussion but an immediate penalty should be enforced. Parents who allow their children to always give a reason for their bad behaviour are only encouraging them to make excuses and not accept responsibility for their actions, and this is just storing up problems for the future. Children must learn to accept the consequences of their actions, otherwise they will never accept blame, even when they clearly are to blame. The constant drone from teenagers of, ‘It’s not my fault,’ will in a way be correct, as they have never been taught to be responsible for their actions.
Teach why the word ‘No’ must always mean ‘No’
How many times have we watched a badly behaved
