Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
It can be one of the more frustrating aspects of being a parent, when your child won’t listen to you. Many parents experience this, usually as your child hits certain age ranges (toddlers/teenagers commonly).
However, for some parents these periods of disobedience can seemingly go on and on. Over time, these types of behaviours can become ingrained and a significant disruptor to family life. I have worked with many parents who have found it incredibly difficult to change these behaviours. Therefore, I have put together 5 questions I would ask parents to consider, especially when planning how to improve your child’s compliance.
1. How long has this been going on for?
The first question to ask yourself as a parent, is how long has your child not been listening to you? Has it been days? Weeks? Months? Or longer? Understanding this, allows parents to understand how ingrained the behaviour may be in the child.
The more ingrained the behaviour is, the longer it may take and the more challenging it may be for parents to change this behaviour. Understanding what challenge awaits you as a parent is important, as expectations of how quickly change will happen, needs to be managed. For example, if you have a child who has displayed disobedient behaviour for months, you cannot expect change to happen overnight. Therefore, understanding this and managing your expectations is important, so that you stay motivated and consistent in challenging the behaviour. It can easy to be discouraged if you are expecting immediate results and do not get them.
2. Has your child been successfully ignoring you?
Typically, children will continue to display behaviours that are successful in getting them what they want. This can be either positive or negative behaviour. For example, if a child knows that tidying their room or following instructions, will lead to them earning some form of praise/reward or recognition, it is likely they will repeat this behaviour. Equally, if a child learns that if they shout and scream loud enough they get what they want, they will also repeat this type of behaviour.
As a result, it can be a helpful exercise for parents to look back and identify how successful their child is being at ignoring you and getting away with it. For example, you could ask yourself how often when you give your child an instruction, do they successfully avoid following it? How often do you feel as though you back down or give up? If you find that your child successfully avoids following instructions often, try to identify how/why?
Does your child shout and scream their way out of following instructions? Do they simply ignore your until you go away? Or do you have to ask over and over until you get to the point you just do it yourself?
There are a number of ways children can ignore you and an equal amount of reasons why. However, it is helpful for parents to reflect on how their child has behaved in the past or which parts of their own responses they need to change.
3. What have you tried in response to being ignored?
Thinking back and reviewing your own approaches as a parent, can provide further insight and information that you can use moving forwards. Ask yourself what have you tried in response to being ignored? What worked? What did not work? Why do you think it didn’t work? Did you try anything at all?
Understanding why something didn’t work is important, so that you can know what to change. Often I see with parents that it is a lack of consistency which is why an approach does not work. Parents will try something a few times, not feel it is working, and therefore stop trying. Sometimes parents take an approach which escalates the situation and behaviours get worse, again, this is enough to dissuade parents from continuing.
Try to identify what you could change moving forwards. Do you need to be more consistent? More calm? Take more action? All this information can help you moving forwards, as you learn from past experiences and understand what hasn’t worked and needs to be changed, or what did work and you need to do more of.
4. Do you know why your child is not listening?
Have you ever asked yourself why your child is not listening to you? Many parents simply expect obedience from their children regardless of situation, request, environment and many other factors. If the child does not listen, parents can easily overlook the fact that there may be a valid reason behind this. Alternatively, some children ignore parents, simply because they know they can and they will get away with doing so.
Try and put yourself in your child’s shoes. Try and see situations from their perspective when asking why your child is not listening to you. In doing so, sometimes answers emerge as to why a child is behaving a certain way.
For example, you could be shouting a request (not many children respond well to shouting), you may be interrupting them in the middle of something (nobody likes being interrupted, adults included), you may not have been clear enough in your request (teenagers especially will find loopholes) or your child may simply know if they refuse enough times, they will get away with ignoring you.
You do not need to conform to your child 100%. However, when it comes to increasing your child’s compliance, especially with older children, it is important to consider their views. If reasonable adjustments can be made to how you ask or what you ask, you may find a sharp increase in your child paying attention and listening to you.
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5. What to do moving forwards?
The idea behind the questions above, is to help parents identify for themselves, what has been happening and what needs to change moving forwards. So now you have that information, what do you do?
The answer to that question will vary from parent to parent. Do you need to change how you communicate with your child? How consistent you are in following up being ignored? Or do you just need to take more action and not let your child get away with it?
Should you wish to be more consistent in how you make requests, communicate or encourage obedience, please see the below post. In this post I details steps that can be taken so you have a consistent and considerate approach to making requests to your child.
7 Steps to Encourage Your Child to Follow Instructions
If you feel that you need further advice around taking more action, challenging behaviours or being more consistent in how you respond, see the below post. In this post I discuss key steps that can be taken to consistently and effectively respond to behaviours.
3 Key Steps to Using Effective Consequences with Children
Let me know your thoughts, stories, comments below!
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This sounds like some really good advice for parents; it’s great you explore it here and give such useful information and tips!
Thank you Molly! 😁
These are some great points. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you Krisren!
Great points. Our delivery of the message, as parents, is so important. There could be many reasons why a child is not listening. Gentle parenting has taught me a lot about this. And that sometimes children just don’t know how to process feelings & emotions.