Repeating yourself? Stop, drop and roll
Some things you don’t forget: like the phone number to your parent’s analog line. Another is the eternal advice to stop, drop and roll taught by firefighters to all school kids in the case of fire emergencies. Through repetition, some things become in-grained. But some are not this useful. Some repetitions can be downright irritating. Like you repeatedly asking your child to do or not to something. Over time, you sound like a broken record and out of exhaustion and defeat, you stop telling/yelling. Your child learns that if she ignores you long enough, you’ll give up. Well guess what? Here’s a first piece of advice even a child will understand. Stop. Just stop.
Stop your nagging. Catch yourself the next time you want to bark out an order. Resist the urge to remind them to do things they already know to do. You’d be surprised how remarkably effective it can be if they realize on their own what happens when what they expect to happen doesn’t actually happen. Really! Try this yourself. Next time your daughter is watching TV, playing with a phone and a toy all at the same time, mute the TV. The absence of something can be even more effective at grabbing attention. It’s a bit of reverse psychology and we should totally use it as a parenting tool. Ask them to do it once, maybe offer a reminder and then leave it. Let them deal with the consequences, especially when they realize that your silence doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten.
Your silence doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten. But if you are constantly prescriptive about what they should do and how they should do it, then you’re just acting like a micro manager. And in the haste of doing everything, what lessons have they learned if after all that nagging, you still wind up doing it?
Drop your demands. If you have to provide instructions and supervision for their task, give them a vision of the end goal and allow them to figure out how to get there. At this point, you’re still looking for general contribution and outcome; you shouldn’t be looking for specific process and compliance. So don’t expect them to do everything your way. Because then it will really feel like they are doing things for you. Even with the help of a housekeeper, my daughter cleans her own room. I give her a duster, wet cloth and I help her maneuver the vacuum cleaner. She tells me when she needs the help, since I don’t have an opinion whether she dusts or tidies her closet first. The end result is that she needs to clean her room. It’s irrelevant to me in which order she does the cleaning or even if it takes three hours to do it. If you are constantly prescriptive about what they should do and how they should do it, then you’re just acting like a micro manager and you should not be surprised that they complain you’re no fun anymore.
Roll with it. If after all your attempts have failed, just let it slide. I recall one weekend evening after a long day I made dinner and asked my daughter to come down from her room. She was still young was probably preoccupied with some toy and just can’t keep track of time. After a few calls, I eventually ate dinner on my own. She experienced the full consequence and contemplated her inaction as she ate alone afterwards. In other times, mine and my daughter’s busy schedule makes it a real challenge sometimes to get everything done. Over scheduling is in itself stressful. So resist the urge to do everything and in haste, wind up doing things for them. These could be as simple as her making her own bed to not completing her homework. What lessons have they learned if after all that nagging, you still wind up doing it?
Parent-child relationships are dynamic and constantly evolving. While you’ll always be a parent, your child won’t stay that way. The power imbalance will reach equilibrium in the years to come and while you can decelerate the change, you can’t stop it. She’s in late childhood now so it’s less about doing for them and more about doing with them. So let flexibility happen. Let mistakes happen. Let failure happen. Her own disappointment will nag at her far more effectively than you could ever. About the only time you should be yelling at a child is if she’s in imminent danger. Growing up certainly isn’t that. There are always exceptions but generally no chore is worth a firefight.
