Your Child's Journey

wisdom for the big steps little children take

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Get Your Child to Listen

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Mom yelling in megaphone“How many times do I have to tell you?” Do you find yourself saying this or at least thinking it often?

When our children are not doing what we tell them to, it is a good idea to stop and think about what may be causing this to happen. When we know the why, we can usually find a way to solve the problem. Sometimes our children have just gotten into the habit of not listening, but sometimes there is a different cause. Here are a few reasons your child may not be doing what you have been telling them to do.

The wide-angle lens
If your child is very easily distracted by noises or lights or even the sensation of a breeze on their skin, he may be experiencing his world through a wide-angle lens. These children are not purposely ignoring what you say. But they hear your voice as only part of the background noise.

For any easily distracted children, get down on their level, make sure you have eye contact and then tell them what you need them to hear.

Overwhelmed with Words
Some children cannot sort out the important from the extra words in a sentence. Many parents just talk too much, especially when they want their children to hear something. The more they say, the less the child hears.

For these children, make your directions as clear and to the point and in as few words as possible.

The Forgetter
Forgetters don’t remember what they were sent to do. It may be caused by a short attention span or it may be an inability to remember 2 or more items at a time.

For the persistent forgetter, be sure you have their attention before talking. Start with only 2 simple commands at a time. Hold up your index finger and say the first item and then the second finger and say the second item. Have the child copy your actions and words. When they can successfully handle 2 move on to 3 and gradually move to a longer list of directions.

Too Focused
These children get so involved with whatever they are doing that they really do not even hear you. They may look you in the eye, but their mind is still on their current line of thought. They may nod their heads and even repeat your words, yet not have heard your words.

For the overly focused child, you must set up routines. They must know that there are times to play and there are times they must do chores or other activities. Set a timer or remind them a few minutes before they must close down whatever it is that they are zoomed into. Don’t allow a game or electronic device to engage your child for too long at a time.

A few other things parents can do to be heard by their children:
Be Considerate. Don’t interrupt your children unnecessarily. If the request can be delayed, give them a reasonable time frame to complete the task.

Don’t repeat yourself. Children will get used to not listening because they know you will repeat yourself. They will wait till the very last moment to obey. Stop repeating yourself. When you know they have heard you the first time, if they don’t obey, let the consequences follow.

Use Consequences.

  • Let natural consequences occur whenever possible. “Since you didn’t put your shoes on, we are not going to the park.”
  • Use consequences that are related to the infraction. “You didn’t put your Lego away when I told you, so they are mine for 2 days.”
  • You can also have blanket consequences for not listening. “When you don’t listen the first time, you have chosen a time out.”

Our children must listen and follow directions in school. If they don’t, there are consequences. Should we expect less than teachers do?

When our children learn that they must listen to what we say, remember what they are to do, and complete the tasks in a timely manner, our homes will be more peaceful and enjoyable for everyone.

Nagging and Negotiating

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girl beggingThis article is not about your habits of nagging and negotiating, it’s about your kids’. However, they may have learned it from you in the first place. We may not even realize we nag or negotiate. When our kids don’t do what we say the first time we ask, we may begin a downward spiral.

When we ask our children over and over again, we are nagging. Nagging sends the message that we don’t really expect them do to what we say. Sometimes when they don’t comply, we begin to plead or negotiate for obedience. Children who are used to nagging or negotiating tend to wait until that ‘certain’ point when they know they must obey. We really must not nag or negotiate, as they can catch the habit and become very skilled at getting their way.

They discover how effective it can be in just one moment of weakness when we cave in and let them have what they want. It only takes once. From then on, they will try it on everything from a sweet before dinner to staying up a little later to expecting a toy every time they go shopping with you.

They will try it on every adult involved in their care. But if you observe carefully, you may see that they never try it with certain adults. Maybe they torment you and your husband, but never seem to do it at preschool. They may hassle your parents, but never nag your husband. Perhaps that adult knows the key is to never, ever give in. The kids know it and quit trying with them.

But any learned behavior can be unlearned. That’s the truth. It only takes consistency.

Amy McCready, at Positive Parenting Solutions, has a three-word answer that will stop nagging. She calls it, “Asked and answered.” Here is her example of how it works:

The concept is simple. When seven-year-old Daniel begs to dig a giant hole in the front yard and gets “no” for an answer, chances are he’ll be back in five minutes asking again – this time with a “pleeeeeeaase” just so you know he really, really wants to dig the hole.

Instead of repeating yourself or jumping in to a lecture, avoid child nagging by getting eye to eye and follow the process below:

Step One: Ask, “Have you ever heard of ‘Asked and Answered’?” (He’ll probably say no.)

Step Two: Ask, “Did you ask me a question about digging a hole?” (He’ll say yes.)

Step Three: Ask, “Did I answer it?” (He’ll probably say, “Yes, but, I really ….”)

Step Four: Ask, “Do I look like the kind of mom/dad/teacher who will change her/his mind if you ask me the same thing over and over?” (Chances are Daniel will walk away, maybe with a frustrated grunt, and engage in something else.)

Step Five: If Daniel asks again, simply say, “Asked and Answered.” (No other words are necessary!) Once this technique has been established, these are the only words you should need to say to address nagging questions.

So the next time your child tries to nag or negotiate for their way, try ‘Asked and Answered.’ It saves arguments, whining, and frustration. Try it and keep using it. When they have asked and gotten the same answer 12 times or more, they will retire the tactic. In a few weeks or months, they may try again, just remember, “Asked and Answered.”

For some other help on getting your kids to do what you want the first time you ask, please read what Dr. Leman says in, Have a New Kid by Friday:

Top 10 list of what it takes to discipline kids

Two techniques that work.

Baby Sleep

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sleeping-babyBaby sleeping at night means everyone in the family sleeps better. Having a baby that doesn’t sleep well calls for action. Our grandson cried non-stop every time he was laid down for months. At night one adult swaddled him, walked him, rocked him, and prayed for him to sleep. Whenever he nodded off, he was gently laid in his car seat (the only place he sometimes slept). Within a short while he was crying again and the whole process began again. He was finally diagnosed with GER and medication was prescribed and the whole family began to get sleep at night.

Most babies don’t have such a severe problem with lying down and sleeping. Here are some ways to help your baby be able to sleep well at night. Starting early might help you avoid some bad habits that will make your child’s falling asleep a chore every night for years.

  • Have a regular bedtime. Children thrive on routine. Going to bed at the same time every night helps your baby begin to get sleepy at that time each evening. (Of course it can’t be the same every night, but make it as often as possible.)
  • Wind down time. Right before nap time and bedtime, take a few minutes to snuggle and begin to calm down. At nighttime, you may want to have a longer bedtime routine including a soothing bath, read a book or sing a song, pray together, or any other ritual you don’t mind continuing for years.
  • Comfort. Make sure he is fed and burped, has on a clean diaper. Swaddling helps young babies feel more secure. Appropriate sleepwear for your climate and room temperature is also a must.
  • Sleep associations. Dim light, white noise, a certain scent, or a comfort item can signal it is time to sleep for your little one. Even when you need to give a night feeding, be consistent with keeping the lights dim, little noise, and no play during these feedings, your baby should learn to fall back to sleep quickly and not get his days and nights mixed up.
  • Keep naps consistent. When babies are overly tired, they are much harder to get to sleep. As much as possible, make sure they have a regular nap time.
  • Lay baby down before she is totally asleep. When she falls asleep in your arms, she expects to wake up that way. When she stirs and you are not holding her, she is jerked wide awake and alarmed. Then you must hold her again for her to calm down and get back to sleep. But, if she falls asleep in her crib with very dim light and quiet, she will learn to self-soothe to sleep. When she stirs awake later, everything is as it was when she fell asleep, and she self-soothes back to sleep. Of course if she is hungry or wet, she’ll let you know she needs your help.
  • Babies don’t sleep through the night for the first few months. Most babies need night feedings until they are at least 12 pounds or 5.5 kg. By about 3 months, babies are fairly regular about when they eat and sleep. If you have practiced these routines, your baby should be well on the way to sleeping through the night.

Here are some articles on Your Child’s Journey about sleep:

Here are some reliable resources on this topic:

If you have questions or comments about this article, please email me.

You Are Invited!

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Youre Invited

All moms want to give their babies and children the best possible care. But research takes more time than you have.

First Steps is a helpful bulletin for moms with children from birth to 3 years. Each monthly bulletin will have the information you most need for that month of your baby’s development. These bulletins were carefully assembled from the best information available and compiled in a brief, readable style. They will help you learn the usual developmental mile markers for that month. Also, you will see what to expect next and the best ideas to help your baby get there. Other short articles of interest for parents with children that age are included.

Learn more about me and Your Child’s Journey at About.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Blessings!
Diane

Importance of Strong Foundations

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This article was written by: Amanda Morgan. Please visit her site to read more of this article and see others she has written at: NotJustCute.com

Why Early Learning Matters!

Passionate about early education and child development, I find foundations to be particularly interesting.  Their function is critical. They’re carefully designed, prepared, inspected, formed, poured, reinforced, inspected again, sealed….. and then, after all of that, almost totally covered back up with dirt.

I am anxious to see a home standing in that spot of dirt. Not lines of cement. I want a home I can cook in, sleep in, gather in, live in. And I’d love to see that home spring up right now.

But not so much that I’d skip building the foundation.

The foundation is what keeps us firmly planted. A house doesn’t just sit on the foundation, it’s securely attached. Every 18 inches around the perimeter of the house there’s a large bolt embedded in the cement that affixes to the floor of the house.  In addition to that, there are multiple steel straps, each of them several feet long, that are also embedded in the cement foundation and later attached to the walls of the house with an almost ridiculous number of fasteners.

All of this connection keeps the home safe when the wind and rain come (and boy do they come!) or should an earthquake ever surface.

Like the foundation for our homes, the early years of a child’s development are a critical time of preparation.

The tasks of early development are often unseen or unrecognized by others. More commonly identified as play, this work of singing, climbing, running, pretending, painting, talking, and listening, is more powerful than its simplicity implies. Each activity is laying the foundation for future learning.

Children singing songs and listening to stories are building critical pre-reading skills — skills that are not just nice, but necessary for them to become readers. Little fingers lining up cars on a mat are building the fine motor skills that will allow them later to hold pencils and master keystrokes. At the same time, this play-work is also helping them build concepts of numeracy, such as a one-to-one ratio as they move cars one by one, or the ability to sort by attributes as red cars and blue cars find separate parking lots, or the ability to compare quantities as they realize their friends have more or less cars piled up than do they. All of these skills need practice and hands-on construction before we introduce the later math concepts that often play out on grade-school worksheets.

In addition to all of that, this foundation of play and exploration prepares children with the gifts of wonder and social problem-solving. These are gifts that are built through experience, not by lecture. And it is these gifts that open the door to all later learning.

Those unable to see the foundation of early learning for what it is are often eager to plop something down that’s more rewarding.  Just as I may be happy to skip right to the home I can see, they want to go directly to the seen skills like reading rather than pre-literacy skills and mathematical computations instead of early numeracy. This is the learning that “counts”, after all.

But just as our framers needed the assurance of a well-prepared foundation, our young children need a solid, deep foundation in hands-on exploration and play to prepare them for later skills.  As I’ve said before, watching a child take words from a page and turn them into a spoken story is magical to watch — like seeing a house come up where there was once nothing — but before you can put the work and effort into decoding, you have to build the foundation with things like language, phonemic awareness, and  concepts of print.

As literacy experts, Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, stated in their book, Literacy Beginnings: A Prekindergarten Handbook:

“The knowledge that forms the foundation for reading and writing is built throughout early childhood through play, language, and literary experiences.”

Learning foundations are built through play and experience. And we can’t afford to skip that.  A push-down curriculum isn’t helping kids to get ahead, it’s simply ignoring the critical role of the foundation.

The metal straps and bolts of the foundation secure our home and keep it firm in the face of storms and tremors, and a strong foundation does the same for our young learners. A lack of foundational skills weakens our learners as they move on to more and more challenging work. Often, those who struggle in later grades with reading, do so because they lack foundational skills that begin early on like phonemic awareness or story comprehension. Math woes begin when we fail to start with a foundation of number sense and numeracy through hands-on activities.   (The Number Bag is one of my favorite techniques to use in the preK classroom.)

Those straps and bolts are also a reminder that a house isn’t built in independent levels. There’s an interconnection. The house isn’t just set down onto the foundation, it grows out of it. Likewise, strong foundational learning gives root to later learning as basic concepts create connections necessary for inquiry and growth.

When children are allowed the time and space to build strong foundations, the skills built later on come more easily and solidly.  We owe children the opportunity to build strong foundations in ways that are developmentally appropriate. Let’s reject the notion that we have to leave childhood behind in order to get ahead.  Let’s be builders.