The three worst ways to give a child an instruction

…And a much better way.

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

I can’t tell you the number of parents who have talked to me about an almost overnight change in their child. Typically, their tween who was complaint, suddenly has become unmanageable.

Some parents blame their child’s new teacher or some new friends. And sure, that might be the case. But when I ask further questions, I usually find that it is caused by the way the parent has gained compliance from their child in the past.

Many parents find three types of instructions work very well when their child is young, but then don’t work at all when their child is older. Let me go through the trio of short-term effective but long-term ineffective instruction types.

1. Manipulating the relationship. When your child is young then, usually, they are very eager to please you. This means that it becomes easy to use your admiration as a means of getting them to do things you want them to do. So, rather than telling a child a direct instruction, one might invoke your feelings, “I’d really like it if you put your shoes in your room”. Or, “It makes me sad when you aren’t nice to your brother.” That’s often going to work in the younger years when they can think of nothing better than making you happy. Trouble is, when they become a little older and more their…