Good Inside with Dr. Becky - Why Won’t My Kids Listen To Anything I Say?

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

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Melissa and Doug, timeless toys, endless possibilities. Hi, I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. I'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. I love translating deep thoughts about parenting into practical, actionable strategies that you can use in your home right away. One of my core beliefs is that we are all doing the best we can with the resources we have available to us in that moment.

So even as we struggle and even as we are having a hard time on the outside, we remain good inside. Today, we'll be talking all about listening together. We'll rethink what's really happening when our kids aren't listening to us and I will be giving you a ton of different strategies that you can start using in your home right away. Let's start with a question from Dava who has a five-year-old and a two-year-old. Hi Dr. Becky, I'll come up with my children to listen to anything, I say. I have to practically beg them to go outside sledding. And then once they're outside, they're having a great time to get them to get their clothes

on. My patient just is so, so low recently. So little patients. And I just feel like all I do is repeat myself and get angry and then threaten to take things away from them. It doesn't feel good. And I don't know what to do. Thanks Dr. Reki.

Bye. Dava, first of all, I totally feel for you. I have had so many difficult stages of not listening with my kids and it is exhausting. And I've been there. How I want to kind of begin is with a framework around listening, right? Because to me, we can never come up with successful interventions. If those interventions aren't based on an understanding of the situation that actually makes sense. And I think listening is one of the most misunderstood

struggles with kids. So here's how I'd like to frame it. When we talk about listening, we're not really talking about listening. Because I don't know any kid who wouldn't listen if we say extra ice cream sundae on the table or come to the couch right away and you can watch five hours of TV. Right? They'd all all listen so what are we really talking about we're really talking about

cooperation or even compliance we're really talking about what happens when I ask my child to do something I want her to do that she doesn't want to do. And for me, I always come back to myself thinking, well, what's it like for me when someone asks me to do something, that that person wants me to do, but I don't want to do? And I think about how so much of how I respond is based on how close I feel to the person in that moment, right? If I was sitting on the couch in a free moment and I was finally reading a novel or even just scrolling on my phone or drinking a cup of tea. And if my partner who was also in the couch said, Hey, Becky, can you unload the dishwasher and then bring

me a glass of water? And I said, uh, no. I'm thinking about how I'd feel if he said to me, Becky, you have a listening problem. You're really disrespectful. This is a big issue and you cannot have your iPad for a week. Right? I think we all know. I would have really strong choice words to say to him that I will not say on air and I would be livid. I would feel disrespected.

Right? And then further, it makes me think, what would have happened in that moment? Or even earlier in the day for me to say, sure sweetie, I'll get that for you, you know, sure sweetie I can do that for you. Well, a couple things. First of all, I would need him to see what was happening for me before he asked, right? My oldest kid always says this to me, he goes, parents are always asking kids to stop doing

something fun, to do something less fun. And I think that's true. So if my husband had said to me, oh, I see a reading that book, that probably feels really good, I know. Can you get me a glass of water from the kitchen? The chances just skyrocketed that I would say yes. Why? We need to generate a feeling of feeling seen before we ask someone to do something for us. We have to say to someone essentially, I see you as a real person doing something you enjoy. I am connecting to you before I ask you to do something that's a priority in my world.

So let's bring this back to your house and to your kids. Before we ask our kids to get dressed and leave the house, we have to do something that connects to them in that moment. Here's a variety of things. Oh, I see you playing with blocks. So fun to play with blocks, isn't it? It is time to get dressed. So different than saying it's time to get dressed, right? What else could we say? To kind of connect and help that person feel seen? We might say something like this. It's going to be time to turn off the TV soon. I know, turning off the TV is so hard. In a minute, we're going to turn off the TV

and it's going to be time to get dressed. Again, I'm generating this feeling inside my kid that I see him. I see him as a real person. I acknowledge him. After that, we are all more likely to cooperate because we feel closer to someone. So Dava, we have this first idea that kids need to feel seen first. This pairs really nicely with another idea, which is giving a child a choice.

Giving a child a choice is a powerful way to engage cooperation because a child feels in control as opposed to a child feeling like they are being controlled and we all are looking to have agency and the things that are going to happen in our life. So after you've set somebody to your child like, oh, I see you're playing with blocks. It is time to get dressed. Give a child a choice. That is something you don't actually care about the outcome to, but again, gives that control to your child. So it might be bringing two different shirts. Do you want to wear the blue shirt or the red shirt? Or sometimes I also like to infuse playfulness into that choice. Do you want mom to jump up and down on one foot while you're getting dressed? Or do you want me to spin around in circles until I get so dizzy I fall down?

Oh, you want me to spin around? Okay, I'm going to start spinning while you're getting dressed. Or do you want me to spin around in circles until I get so dizzy? I fall down. Oh, you want me to spin around? Okay, I'm going to start spinning while you start getting dressed. And all of a sudden, now I've helped my child feel seen. I've added connection. I've given my child agency through giving my child the choice. And we are having a much higher likelihood of engaging cooperation. likelihood of engaging cooperation. Let's hear from Remi, who's calling with a question about her four-year-old son. Hi, Dr. Becky. My name is Remi. I have a four-year-old son and we live in New York. Sometimes we encounter tricky situations where I need my son to do things and listen to me in a certain amount of time, for example, when it's past time getting in the bus and then when it's time to get out of the

bus, getting him out, and even sometimes getting in the car to go to school and then it's hard to get out of the car when we're at school. So I would love to hear your thoughts on the best tools and methods to use in those situations when you're asking your child to do something and you really need their cooperation in a timely manner, what some of the best tips and tricks are to use. Thank you so much. Hi, Remi. Thank you so much for calling in. And you're talking about so many transitions here.

And it's so important to talk about this because listening is often a struggle around transitions. And here's why. Transitions are really hard for kids. I mean, frankly, transitions can be hard for me too. But transitions mean something to kids, right? It means losing one thing and having to move to the next thing or go on to some next stage. So a transition to bath means nighttime's coming. Transition to putting your coat on and putting your shoes on to leave means, oh, I'm about to say goodbye to my mom and go to school.

Keeping that in mind softens us a little bit, that when my kid is struggling in a transition, my kid is really struggling with making the shift and kind of moving from one thing to the next. So there's two strategies I wanna talk about here. First, prep and practice. To me those go together. So let's talk about bath time.

If getting to bath is always challenging, prep and practice with dry runs earlier in the day. Kids love this type of practice. It's always a little silly to practice something at a different time of day. So if you do bath usually at 6 p.m., practice a dry run at eight in the morning, right? And you can say something like this,

oh, getting to bath has been really tricky. There's something that feels really, really hard about it. You know what I'm thinking about? When something's hard for me, one of the things I do is practice in advance. Let's practice bath time, right? Now, hopefully your kid is fully dressed, right? And it's clearly not bath time.

And this makes it silly. When we add playfulness and connection to moments that when they come often feel stressful, we actually change that moment because we're layering in connectivity to something that often is only encoded with frustration and aloneness. So it actually starts to change the transition when we practice it in this way. So let's say it's 8 a.m. and your son, Zach, is in his pajamas on a weekend. It's clearly not bath time.

Oh, let's do that practice thing. Okay, Zach, it's bath time. Right, and kind of be silly and kind of exaggerate it. Now, let's say Zach says, because a lot of kids love this, they say, okay, let's do bath. Because again, they think it's play. I might whisper and say, ooh, remember, sometimes you don't love doing bath.

Why don't you say back to me? No, I don't want to go to the bath. And now you can practice a skill, right? You could practice your remembering to give your child a choice, to empower him to feel more in control. So now in the practice you can say, okay, Zach, I know you don't want to do bath. You can either run to the bath or I can zoom you to

the bath. So now we're kind of shifting the moment by adding playfulness and we're also infusing this other strategy where we're giving a choice. Now let's say nighttime comes, right? Now what you can do around bath time is say, oh, remember, when we zoom to the bath, right, you can even pull on a strategy that helped, or even if you don't bring it back to that, you've already made it more likely that your child will cooperate because they've had some successful moments earlier on.

Cooperation is much more likely when everyone feels more comfortable. So practicing it with kind of this dry run approach helps you do that. The same thing would happen with putting your jacket on. Pretend to be leaving when your kids in pajamas. Pretend to go out of the door. Then you have your jacket on. You get out of the door. You could laugh, oh we're not going anywhere. We're in our pajamas and it's a cold day outside. We don't even have sneakers. Let's go back inside and then maybe give your kid a high five. Great job putting on your jacket. That was awesome. Now the next thing I want to talk about is one of my favorite hacks, okay? I'm not a big

fan of kind of hacks and tricks in general because so many of them feel like they kind of prioritize a short-term gain, but don't work on some larger, more important skill. But this hack that I'm about to share that I call the Closer Eyes trick is so powerful because what actually is happening is actually really important in kind of gaining your kids' cooperation. Right, so I wanna zoom out and then I'll go zoom back in to go over this listening hack. What helps us cooperate?

Any of us, adults and children, we like to feel respected. We like to feel seen, we like to feel in control. Nobody likes to feel done to, not a child and not an adult. Right? Picture yourself working on a project at work. And your boss comes up to you and says, well, looking over you and your computer, you are doing this report all wrong. You need to change the font and you need to add more to this paragraph and you need to totally restructure this. Now pause. And now imagine your boss standing next to you, watching you type. Just imagine how that would feel versus your boss saying something like that. And

then saying, okay, I'm going to leave your office kind of let me know when you're finished. Think about how much better it feels to have a little more distance, right? So keeping all that in mind, let me go into this closer eyes trick. So let's say it's time for Zach to put on his jacket and it's not happening. Here's how it would go. Okay, Zach, it's time to put on that jacket. Okay, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to close my eyes and I put my hands over my eyes.

Say, and all I'm saying, all I'm saying is when I open my eyes, if there's a kid with a jacket on, oh my goodness, I do not know what I'm going to do. I'm going to, I don't even know. I'd have to jump on one foot for 20 jumps. I'd have to do a really silly dance. I might have to roll on the floor. I'm going to be so confused if this kid in front of me has a jacket on. I don't even know what I'm going to do.

Now you can do this with your hands over your eyes and kind of peer through a little bit and maintain this position until you notice your child likely actually going to do this thing you've asked. And then when you open your eyes, do the thing you said, oh no, I have to do that silly dance of walk kind of silly dance. Do I have to do please? Don't make me do the silly dance where I wiggle my whole body up and down 10 different times. And of course, your kid will ask you to do that. And all of a sudden, this moment feels silly and connected instead of frustrating. Why does this help? We are giving our kids so much in that moment.

We are actually giving them control and independence by closing our eyes because we're essentially saying, I trust you. I trust you to figure this out. We're giving our kid that same space we would want to redo a project without someone looking over us. And we're adding the element of fun, of silliness, of playfulness. Our kids love to be in control. Kids love to feel like they're tricking us. And our kids love when we're willing to be silly and funny. And I think this listening hack is so impactful and works so many times over and over because we're infusing all of those key ideas at once. Remy, I hope this was helpful.

Let me know how it goes. And now our last caller, Asena. So, my daughter's name is Eliana, she's three years old. And a tricky situation in my household looks like her throwing food or just pouring juice, water, and milk on the floor, knowing it's gonna set me. And I tell her, we don't pour, I tell her you use positive language and I tell her, you know, we don't pour. I try to use positive language. I tell her, you know, we drink our water or when you're finished, please give a clear leave it on the table or, you know, through them in the garbage.

But, you know, see, kind of does it on purpose, I feel, and just runs away from me and just pours on the, you know, on her mat or on the floor. It helps me clean up afterwards. You know, I ask her to help me clean up afterwards. But I don't know how to kind of self or save that behavior away. I don't believe in punishment. I don't really believe in, you know, timeouts or anything like that. Because it goes along with your philosophy as well.

So I don't know how to handle that situation. Thank you so much. Okay, so first of all, let me just say that as a mom myself, I feel how frustrating it is when your child is doing something over and over and over and you're not sure how to kind of shift this. So I've been in those situations myself and I know how challenging that is. I actually want to start by reframing this because the framework with which we kind of view a situation with our child is going to determine how we intervene.

So I know for me the first thing I always ask myself is, well, how do I want to frame what's really happening? And to me what's key is that this actually is not a listening struggle. I think this is more of an issue of boundaries. So let me explain because I think that distinction is really really important and comes up a lot. When our child repeatedly does something that we ask her to stop. This is not a listening problem. Rather, this is something where we as a parent need to assert our authority to stop that behavior from happening again. We can't ask our kids to be responsible

for stopping a behavior that they continually show us. They're not capable of stopping. This doesn't mean we can't be frustrated by this, of course we can, but we have to realize this is a time I have to step in, not a time I can ask my child to have a skill that she clearly doesn't have in that moment. And then as a first strategy, I want to talk about the phrase, I won't let you. There's a huge difference between saying to our kids,

I won't let you versus we don't or please stop. And the biggest difference is whether we're focusing on what we are doing as a parent or what we want our kid to be doing. We can't control our kid's behavior. We can control what we do when we watch our child be out of control. As an example, I always think, let's think about our kids on the sidewalk. We're walking with a kid on a sidewalk and our kids start running toward the street. I don't think any of us would ever say, please stop running into the street

or sweetie, we don't run into streets. We would never say that. We would run and we would hold our child and whether we would say it in words or just with our bodies, we don't run into streets, or we would never say that. We would run and we would hold our child and whether we would say it in words or just with our bodies, we'd really be communicating, I won't let you run into the street. This is really, really critical because our number one job as a parent is to help our kids stay safe and make good decisions. And sometimes this means us making that safety happen

by making those decisions when they can't. We have to realize as parents, we need to at times embolden ourselves to embody our authority and set a boundary not because we have a bad kid, not because we have a rebellious kid or a kid who's trying to give us a hard time, we have a kid who's out of control. And when we notice that, it's our job to step in.

Our boundaries are not what we tell our kids not to do. Our boundaries are what we tell our kids we will do. I want to say that again because it's so critical. Our boundaries aren't telling our kids what not to do. Stop pressing the elevator buttons. We don't throw food on the floor. Our boundaries are telling our kids what we will do. I won't let you't throw food on the floor. Our boundaries are telling our kids what we will do. I won't let you throw the food on the floor, right? So what would this actually look like in practice? First, before we even get to the high chair,

if I know my child tends to throw food, I wanna kind of get in there before we get to the eating moment. And I would do this with a boundary and with compassion. I think we often forget we can do both at the same time. So you and Eliana are in her room before dinner and I'd say this, hey sweetie, you know what I've noticed? It's been really hard to keep your food on the tray. I know it's so fun to throw things and see where they go. I won't let you throw food. So before we go to dinner, let's take whatever you have. Let's take these soft stuffed animals. Let's take these tissues, anything you have, and throw, throw, throw, throw,

we can throw these stuffed animals, we can throw these soft balls. Let's get all of the throwing energy out of your hands because it's so fun to throw and watch things go to the ground. And then I'd actually do that. I'm giving my child an opportunity to express the urge in a way that works rather than in a way that doesn't work. Then after that I would bring my child to the table and I would say something like this. Here's the thing. Food stays on the tray or it can go in your mouth. Those are the only options. And then I'd also say something like this if I anticipated that the throwing of the food might still happen. I'd say, if it's too hard to keep your food on the tray,

I'll take away the tray and we'll keep practicing eating, just one piece of food at a time until you're able to eat your food without throwing. I'm not saying this to be punitive. I'm not saying this to be harsh. I'm saying this because I am setting the boundary for my child. Now, let's say I do this. I do the throwing the stuffed animals. I set this boundary in a compassionate, loving way. Does that mean my child's going to quote, cooperate? No, maybe not. In fact, if it was one of my kids, they might still do the throwing.

This doesn't mean you did anything wrong. It's just time for a different version of the boundary because my child is struggling to make a good decision. So your child will throw. And at that point, I take away the tray. I'd feed my kid a piece of food at a time with a fork or maybe I'd just put one piece of food at a time on the tray and even if my child protests, I would hold that boundary and say something like this.

I know, I know you want to have all the food at once. I know that so hard we will keep working on this. What's key is to remind yourself, I know what I'm doing. I'm the parent. I need to show my child I can be a sturdy leader, not a punitive one. Not a harsh one. I can be a leader who can help her make good decisions. When she cannot do it, my child is still allowed to be upset. So frustrating. We feel like we

crushed this parenting intervention and my kid still is crying. That's okay. Remind yourself, my job is those boundaries and the validation. My child's job is to feel and express her feelings were actually both doing our jobs. It's kind of messy It's definitely depleting and exhausting, but we're both doing exactly what we need to be doing I hope this resonated this idea of kind of shifting the focus away from listening and shifting the focus away from listening and toward the idea of boundaries. If this is new for you, the language of, I won't let you. Or here is what will happen if you have a hard time. That's something I would without a doubt encourage you to practice, to say out loud, to say in front of a mirror, to say in front of a voice recorder and have it play it back to you.

New things always feel uncomfortable in our bodies. So if it feels a little awkward, remind yourself you're doing something new and new is always a sign of change. So those are all the questions we have this week. And Dava, Remy, and Asena, thank you so much for sharing your stories with us. Let's bring it all together. Here are three key takeaways from this episode. Number one, listening is rarely, really about listening. We're really talking about what happens when we ask our kid to do something. We want our kid to do that our

child does not want to do. Number two, embrace and experiment with that close your eyes trick. I think you'll all be surprised at how effective it is. And number three, when you're in a listening struggle, ask yourself, might this be less about listening and more about my needing to own my authority and set firmer boundaries? Thanks for listening to Good Inside. Let's stay connected. At GoodInside.com, you can sign up for workshops and subscribe to Good Insider. My weekly email with scripts and strategies delivered right to your inbox.

And for more ideas and tips, check out my Instagram, Dr. Becky at Good Inside. Good Inside is produced by Beth Roe and Brad Gage, and Executive Produced by Erica Belski and me. Dr. Becky, please rate and review our show. Let us know what you think and what resonated. I actually do read each and every review, so please know that your feedback is meaningful to me. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves. Even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain good inside. you