5 Ways To Help Your Child To Listen to You

One of the greatest irks most parents tend to complain about is when their own child doesn’t seem to listen to anything they say. We (the parents/caregivers) end up nagging for the nth time but the attempt always seems to fall on deaf ears. But if we change our tune and say something along the lines of “Want some ice cream?”, they’ll come running to you. 

So here are some possible ways for you to hopefully have your child pay more attention to what you’re saying and decrease the tendency for us to repeat what we’re telling them to do. 

1. Get their attention first.

One reason why they aren’t listening to you is probably that they didn’t actually hear you in the first place, or they were concentrating on something else entirely. Even as adults, we sometimes honest to goodness didn’t hear what our partner or friend was telling us. So when we want to say something to our children, try to get their attention first. 

This can be done by either patting them lightly on their shoulder or making sure by visually checking on them that you have their attention. Although do be mindful when interrupting your child when they’re doing something that needs their concentration, as they might lose interest in what they’re doing, or you might break an opportunity of honing their focus and concentration. I discuss the child’s time in my IG post here.

2. Talk at eye level to them (connect before speaking).

This is always standard protocol 101 when talking to anyone. We try to maintain eye contact with them. And even if our child is still little, they’re humans worthy of respect and courtesy. So even in this simple thing of going down to our child’s level, keeping eye contact helps a lot to foster listening in our child. I talk a lot about respectful parenting here, so feel free to check it out if you’re interested for more!

This further helps our children in truly trying to understand what we mean, as they can see the movement of our mouths. When we are at eye level with them, we can also gauge properly if they were able to understand clearly our directions to them. And as parents, we would often have the instinct if they really understood them or not.

3. Switch things up by either suddenly whispering to them or saying something completely off-topic.

This is one way of making sure to perk your little ones’ ears for the most part. You know how we as adults learn to tune other peoples’ noises out? Even when they’re yelling? Yeah. Our kids can be sometimes experts at that. So before we begin yelling at our kids, take the time to breathe and try to consider another approach. 

Try to whisper. Even with adults, when someone uses a softer voice, we unconsciously try even harder to pay attention to their words. You can further add incentive by using humor and whispering something that is completely ridiculous such as “the unicorns went to the toilet to pee” to really get their attention, then proceed to say what you really want to tell them.

4. Be gracious with your children.

Oftentimes, especially when we’re running late for appointments or in the midst of some routines, we tend to bark orders incessantly to our kids. But remember that our children’s brains are still developing, and it takes time for them to process information and words especially when we bark orders one after another. 

So do be mindful of giving our kids time to process the information and our words. And try not to be so upset if they don’t get our instructions right even when we repeat them incessantly. Sometimes, more than us repeating our words, what they need is help in processing the information, or just grace when they don’t get it too fast.

5. Be firm with your boundaries and your words.

One of the top reasons why our kids don’t listen to us? It’s because we don’t stick to our words and boundaries, and they know that we won’t follow through with our words. They became desensitized and know that ‘we’re just saying that’, but don’t really mean what we say. So what’s the point of listening to us in the first place? 

Hence, be mindful again of what we say. Empty threats and illogical consequences can only get us so far, and they do not truly teach our kids anything valuable, except that we, as parents, can get annoying. As I’d always like to say, a few solid ground rules that are always followed are better than a long list of rules that often gets broken. 

And there you have it, dear parents! Hopefully, these tips have helped you to get your child to listen to you. As with anything when handling our children, try to connect with them first before you begin barking orders and instructions one after another. 

As always, cheering for everyone in their respective parenting journeys!

Kristine