The clock is ticking and you really need to get out the door.
But your kid is taking forever.
You can feel the pressure mounting in your head. You’re going to be late, and you hate that.
But he’s not making any motion to get his shoes on, and seems to dawdle even more.
Why Lecturing Never Gets You The Result You Want
Are you inclined to lecture your child, explaining all the ins and outs of why you’re asking them to do something? You hope that if you just lay it all out on the table, they’ll finally get why you need them to get their homework done, or finish their chores.
When kids are lectured to, they tune out. They intuitively know that their voices don’t matter. And they may grow to be adults who keep their voices to themselves.
There’s a better way to get through to your kids, and it will save you a lot of heartache:
This isn’t the first time this has happened. In fact, it’s become routine. And you’re sick of it.
Finally, you resort to yelling and threatening:
“That’s it! If you don’t get your shoes on right this second, no computer today!”
Just What Are You Supposed To Do When They Don’t Listen?
It may make you wince to see me use the word “threaten” here.
You don’t want to be someone who resorts to threatening, let alone with your kids.
Yet the dictionary defines threaten like this:
“To state one’s intention to take hostile action against someone in retribution for something done or not done.”
The definition may seem extreme in this case, but to your child having his computer taken away without notice or choice IS hostile.
Now don’t worry, I’m not going to call the parent police! We’ve all done this.
We do it because we’re at our wit’s end, reasoning doesn’t seem to work, and we don’t know what else to do.
We do it because we have multiple responsibilities and really need to get out the door. But as I’ll explain, threatening may sometimes get you what you want, but it also can create serious long-term consequences for your kid.
Why Threatening Never Really Works—And Has Long-Term Consequences
When you threaten, your kid may comply in the moment. But they’ll feel bullied, resentful, and essentially powerless.
Just imagine how you’d feel if someone threatened to take something away from you because you weren’t complying with their demands.
Would you feel like complying, or would you feel resentful and angry?
Now imagine if a child is hearing this day after day. Slowly but surely, she will come to believe she’s not important, and that she doesn’t have a choice. She will grow up to think other people know what’s better for her. She will keep her mouth shut even though she has different preferences.
And she will believe this because the most important people in her formative years led her to think this was so.
A Better Approach That Makes Your Child Want To Comply
Now imagine you told your child:
“Honey, I get how much fun you’re having and that you don’t want to get in the car now. What if we hop, skip, or race to the car?”
We used to do this with our kids all the time—from getting in the bath to getting into bed—and it really worked.
When you make your request into a game—and you give them a choice—children feel that their voice matters.
We want our kids to have pleasant memories of childhood. From my experience of working with thousands of people, when kids have a choice, they conclude, “I am powerful, I am important, what I want matters.”
These are the most common self-esteem beliefs that people deal with all the time. Threatening and lecturing may get your children to do what you want them to do, but at what cost?
How To Make Parenting More Fun And Positive For Both Of You
If you validate your child’s feelings, make what you want them to do enticing, use humor and give choices, you still get them to do what you want WHILE creating positive beliefs instead of negative ones.
In my audio program Parenting That Empowers, I’ll take you through many more scenarios you’ll encounter every day in parenting your child, regardless of their age.
I’ll teach you how to use humor, games, and loving guidance so they feel important, empowered, and seen. When a child feels this good about himself, he naturally wants to please his parents—and he grows up learning how to please himself.
At first these techniques may feel completely foreign to you—perhaps you never experienced your parents this way. Instead, you were told what to do and your voice did not matter.
If this is the case, think about how those experiences have impacted how you’ve felt about yourself as an adult.
None of us want to “mess up” our kids, and all of us want our kids to grow up with pleasant memories of their childhood.
In this program, you’ll also learn how to respond when your child experiences setbacks and challenges, so they learn from these experiences and grow up to be adults who can weather anything.
As you learn these techniques, you’ll see something beautiful happen: parenting becomes so much easier, and your children become self-assured and self-motivated.
All of us want to have a voice. We all want to feel that we matter. You, as a parent, are in the unique and privileged position to instill positive beliefs in your child, starting now.
Love,
P.S. Did you grow up believing you have to please people in order to be loved?
Then you’re likely a people-pleaser as an adult. Here’s how to get your children to develop healthy self-esteem so that they know their worth does not depend on what other people think of them:
Parenting That Empowers
The Secret to Raising Your Kids To Become Confident, Capable Adults Who Feel Free to Be Themselves
✶ What to say and what NOT to say to empower your kids
✶ Get your kids to be self-motivated and avoid parenting battles
✶ Empower your kids to have positive internal beliefs
✶ Have more fun parenting
About Shelly Lefkoe
Renowned parenting expert and cofounder of The Lefkoe Institute
Shelly will teach you how to Instill in your child the positive beliefs that lead to a happy, fulfilled adulthood
