Are You Teaching Your Children To Not Listen?

Positive Discipline is about teaching children, in a loving way that preserves their healthy self-esteem, to behave well ON THEIR OWN.

It is also about teaching children to heed our directions when we need to direct.

We teach children to IGNORE our directions, and our corrections, when deliver them incorrectly.

Parenting skills therefore need to include knowing when to NOT direct, to give the child a chance to develop responsible behavior on his own. And also knowing HOW to direct when directing is necessary.

Here are two ways that we teach children to tune us out and ignore our directions:

* Directing the child to do something before determining that your direction is really necessary.
* Directing the child to do something that he is, for whatever reason, most likely incapable of doing.

Misdirecting the child in the ways described above does more than teach the child to ignore directions. It damages the child-parent relationship by instilling in the child seeds of annoyance and resentment toward the parent. It also lowers the child’s self-esteem by setting the child up to experience failure.

To tell if your child is capable of following a direction apply the positive discipline skill of observation if the child, combined with calm thoughtfulness.

Here is an example. Tony bought his eight year old son Mickey a bicycle for his birthday. This was Mickey’s first bike with gears.

As began riding the bike, his face beamed with glee. Immediately Tony displayed a lack of the positive parenting skills we are covering here.

“Don’t be too rough on those gears, son, because you can easily strip them!” Tony hollered as Mickey zoomed off.

Tony here displayed a lapse in employment of the positive discipline skills of observation and calm thoughtfulness, because it was obvious that his eight year old was too revved up with joy to register, let alone decide to heed, that direction.

Tony’s frustrated reaction to hearing the sound of the gears clicking loudly and fluently was to repeat his instructions. But the situation had not changed. Mickey was still absorbed in his new bike experience. So once again Mickey did not “listen”. His joy over-ruled his parent’s direction.

Mickey did not mean to be disrespectful. His dad was simply demanding a level of self-control that was beyond an excited eight year old’s ability to respectfully comply.

For successful positive discipline we need to understand the emotional impact of an eight-year old’s bliss upon his ability to register and comply with directions.

By repeating by repeating his failing tactic, Tony WAS ACTUALLY TRAINING HIS CHILD TO IGNORE DIRECTIONS, TO NOT LISTEN.

This is because each time that a child does not register or comply with a direction, the child is developing the habit of tuning out directions.

Repeating directions and corrections that your child does not follow is way that parents unintentionally teach their children to not listen.

To teach your child TO listen, apply these positive discipline tips:

* Make sure your direction matches your child’s ability IN THE PRESENT SITUATION.
* If your child does not comply with a direction, do NOT repeat it more than once or twice.
* Before issuing verbal directions observe the child and thoughtfully consider if he is experiencing too much excitement to really hear you.