Chapter 4: The Ten-Second Parent: Timing, Talking, & Proximity

From: Weiss, M.J. and Wagner, S.H., with Goldberg, S. (2006). Drawing the Line. Warner Books: New York.

The importance of scale: How, when, and where to talk to your kids — and when not to talk at all


A few seconds, a few feet, a few words: when it comes to kids’ behaviour, these three dimensions can make a world of difference.

In Chapter 2, you learned about the concept of “drawing the line.” In Chapter 3, you learned how to make drawing the line meaningful with the strategies of rewarding, ignoring, and penalizing. In this chapter, Michael and Sheldon add the final ingredients to the mix: timing, talking, and proximity. By acting quickly, keeping words to a minimum (and voices low!), and getting close, parents can make a real difference — and create cooperation.

In Chapter 5, we’ll show parents how to perfect their plans through practice.

Lisa is planning dinner for her family. She’s in the kitchen, while her five-year-old son, Kyle, is downstairs, playing video games. She’d like him to bring up a bag of spaghetti from the pantry in the basement, so she goes to the top of the stairs and calls down to him to help her.

“Kyle, would you like to bring mommy some spaghetti, please?”

Silence.

“Kyle? Did you hear me? Can you bring me some spaghetti from the pantry?”

Silence.

“Kyle!

Still no answer. (Tell us that this has never happened in your home!) Lisa’s starting to get just a little bit angry.

“Kyle, how old are you?”

Silence.

“Is something wrong with your ears? Kyle!”

No response from the basement.

“Kyle, I’m going to count to three and then you’ll be in big trouble … one … two… three … Kyle!”

Silence.

And so on. With each repetition, Lisa gets more agitated — you can hear it in her voice. Here she is, making a perfectly reasonable request, and her son is ignoring her.

After a few more repetitions of her son’s name at increasingly higher pitches, Lisa gives up and stomps down the stairs to the pantry.

“Never mind Kyle, I’ll get it myself — like I normally do.”

The situation isn’t new. If Kyle doesn’t want to do something, he simply ignores his parents.

“When it’s suppertime and he’s downstairs and we’re upstairs, we flick the light on and off to him to tell him to turn off the TV and come upstairs to eat,” says Lisa’s husband, Steve. “We could tell him that five and six and seven times, and he won’t come up. You’ll have to go downstairs and turn the TV off and take him by the hand and bring him upstairs. If you tell him to do something, he will not listen to you—”

“Unless it’s something he wants,” adds Lisa.

“Yes,” says Steve. “If you tell him to come upstairs and get ice cream, he’ll be right up.”

“He’ll pretend that he doesn’t hear us,” says Lisa. “It got so bad that we had his hearing checked by a specialist. But there’s nothing wrong with his hearing. It’s perfect.”

While his parents are getting more and more frustrated, Kyle’s feeling pretty good: he gets to keep playing video games while avoiding tasks he doesn’t want to do and activities that don’t interest him. In the longer run, however, he’s learning that the best way to get the things he wants is to ignore and disrespect his parents and other adults. Over time, he’s going to internalize an image of himself as a “bad kid,” a kid who doesn’t listen. And meanwhile, Lisa and Steve are feeling pretty bad about resenting their son.

That bad feeling lasts well beyond the spaghetti incident. Kyle’s parents get so frustrated with his non-responsive behavior that they end up fighting. “By the end of the night we’ll be at each other, because of the situation a few hours ago,” says Lisa. “Kyle’s been in bed for hours, and we still have so much frustration that we’re arguing. It’s like a stew pot and we’re still going through it.”

There may be nothing wrong with Kyle’s hearing — but there’s a lot wrong with the dynamics of the situation. In a nutshell, it’s too long, too loud, too far, too angry, and too much! Timing, talking, and proximity — and, as a result, scale — are all off in Kyle’s interactions with his parents, just as they are in countless other incidents between parents and their kids.

Timing, talking, and proximity: your “early retirement” parenting plan

We’re all familiar with those advertisements for retirement savings. You know, the ones where they compare the person who started saving in her early twenties with the forty-year-old who just got round to contributing to his 401K last year? The message is startling: the twenty-year-old who starts saving early on can put much less cash into her retirement fund, and stop saving before the forty-year-old even starts, and still end up with much more cash in the end. (This news is either heartening or depressing, depending on whether you’re an early savings bird or a later financial bloomer.) In other words, a little bit of extra effort earlier on yields tremendous results, and greatly reduces necessary efforts down the road.

The same holds true when dealing with kids’ problematic behaviors. A little extra effort at the very beginning of an episode can greatly reduce parental effort — and stress! — down the road. When kids act up just a little — like the first time Kyle ignores Lisa — parents often choose to ignore it, and the situation drags on, and escalates. When a situation drags on, however, parents get increasingly angry and frustrated. Voices and blood pressure rise, and before we know it, things get blown out of all proportion. A simple request for a bag of spaghetti can turn into an all-out battle, with kids in tears, parents furious, and bad feelings permeating the whole house. And all over a bag of spaghetti. In other words, the scale is way off.

Had Lisa upped the scale of her response, just a little, at the outset of the spaghetti incident, it’s likely there wouldn’t have been an incident at all. Let’s rewrite the scene: imagine what would have happened had Lisa nipped situation in the bud by reacting immediately to her son’s disrespectful behavior. The moment she realized she was being ignored, Lisa could have stopped talking, gone downstairs, turned off the TV, got close to Kyle, and calmly but firmly repeated her request, close up. If need be, she could have taken him by the hand and walked him through the task of getting the pasta from the pantry and bringing it upstairs.

In the short run, of course, this approach seems counterintuitive: Lisa would actually be doing the job she asked Kyle to do. But, by taking this approach, she’s also showing him that she means what she says. Practiced consistently, that’s a lesson that will stick in the long run. In time, there’s a great chance that Kyle will learn how to cooperate with his parents and respect their reasonable requests. And, in the meantime, ’Lisa’s saving herself a lot of aggravation by not getting worked up: she keeps her cool with Kyle, and — as a bonus — doesn’t end up fighting with her husband all evening.

When we talk about scale, we’re talking about three crucial, interrelated elements that will make or break parents’ efforts to deal with disrespectful, non-responsive, or non-compliant behaviours — often before these behaviors even occur. If parents can master the basics of timing, talking, and proximity, then they’re well on their way to creating an atmosphere in which it’s easy for kids to cooperate. By acting quickly, closing the distance between parent and child, and keeping talk to a minimum in the heat of the moment, parents can help keep situations manageable and in perspective — and, in the process, teach kids how to act appropriately.

Let’s explore each of these crucial elements in turn.

“How long has this been going on?”: Timing

As parents, we’ve got a lot on our plates: the usual round of work, housekeeping, child care, and finding time for our partners or spouses — not to mention ourselves. It’s easy to get distracted. Not surprisingly, we’re often slow to react to our children’s behavior, both the good stuff and the annoying stuff.

Take Kyle and Lisa. She stands at the top of the stairs for a good few minutes, calling to her son. And, in this situation, those minutes might as well be hours. If we were timing this scenario with a stopwatch, the clock would have started the moment after Lisa made her first request. At that point, Lisa needs to wait just long enough to know whether or not Kyle’s responding. If she hears his footsteps to the pantry, or an “Okay, Mom,” the clock stops. She’s done. If on the other hand, Lisa hears only silence — or the sound of the Nintendo — that’s her clue that Kyle is ignoring her. And at the first sign of his inappropriate behavior, it’s time to act.

Now, part of the problem is that Lisa thinks she is acting when she stands at the top of the stairs and repeats herself. She calls, she cajoles, she threatens us, she uses sarcasm. And she uses up a fair amount of energy. Every time she repeats herself — “Kyle, bring up some spaghetti! Kyle, bring up some spaghetti!” — Lisa lets the situation drag on even longer. The longer she lets Kyle ignore her, the angrier and more frustrated she gets. So the situation escalates, just like a snowball rolling down a hill grows in to a huge snow boulder. Lisa’s voice gets higher and louder, her blood pressure rises, her body tenses, and Kyle becomes more entrenched on the couch: if he wasn’t going to listen to his mother the first time, he’s hardly going to go upstairs when she sounds really mad. By the time Lisa finally gets the spaghetti herself, she’s furious.

What’s more, the more Lisa repeats herself, the more time passes. And the more time that passes, the further she and Kyle get from the original incident. By the time she finally acts, her actions have lost immediacy — and, by extension, clarity: is she furious because Kyle didn’t listen to her the first time? Because he didn’t listen to her the ten times she asked next? Because he never listens to her? Because she can’t seem to figure out how to solve this problem? It’s no longer clear — to us, or to her. And if Lisa were to penalize Kyle at this point, he probably wouldn’t know exactly why, either. As a result, the consequences wouldn’t teach him much. By reacting immediately, it’s clear to both parent and child what behavior is at stake and how the parent expects the child to behave.

Instead of standing at the top of the stairs, getting angrier with each passing minute, Lisa needs to stop talking — immediately! — and back up her requests with actions. If Kyle doesn’t respond the first time, that’s long enough. As we noted above, Lisa needs to deal with her son’s inappropriate behaviour by going downstairs, turning off the television, and calmly insisting that Kyle cooperate with her by getting the spaghetti.

By responding immediately, Lisa sends a strong message to Kyle that she means when she says. Over time, that message will sink in — and Kyle will begin to listen to his parents’ reasonable requests because he knows that, if he doesn’t, those requests will be backed up by their immediate actions. How do you know if the situation is dragging on too long? Here are three simple clues:

  1. Do you sound like a broken record? “Kyle bring up some spaghetti! Kyle, bring me up some spaghetti! Kyle bring me up some spaghetti!” If you notice that you’re repeating yourself, there’s a good chance your timing is off.

  1. Are you repeating requests or negative statements, like “Stop that”? If yes, it means that your child is either ignoring you or acting in an unacceptable way. Rather than repeating yourself and nagging, hear these statements as signals to yourself to stop talking, get up, and act!

  1. Are you getting upset? Do you feel angry or frustrated? Is your voice rising? Are you yelling? Are your fists clenched, or is your jaw tight? Does it feel like your blood pressure’s rising? All these physical and emotional signs are powerful signals that you’ve let a situation escalate for too long. Act quicker, to nip both unwanted behaviour and your own rising blood pressure in the bud.

Of course, no one is expecting you to be able to respond immediately to every instance of inappropriate behavior — especially when you’re dealing with other children or several activities at the same time. Reality simply dictates that we can’t always react as immediately as we’d like to. Don’t be too hard on yourself — just respond as quickly as you can, as often as you can. And keep in mind that the faster you’re able to respond within the moment, the more time, energy, and aggravation you’ll save later.

Timing and reward

We’ve talked a lot about responding quickly to inappropriate behavior. But how should you time your responses when kids are behaving well?

In general, we’d love it if parents noticed kids’ appropriate behaviour just as much as they noticed the inappropriate stuff — and responded quickly to it. In reality — as we discussed in the last chapter — we know it can be more difficult to pick up on good behavior, simply because it doesn’t register on our radar screens the way the in-your-face annoying stuff does.

Sometimes, however, it’s crucial to recognize and quickly reinforce kids’ appropriate behavior. And that’s when you’re working with a child to encourage or promote a specific behavior. Whether you’re potty training, teaching table manners, negotiating tantrums, or trying to make bedtime a peaceful time, you need to reward kids — usually with specific praise and attention — often, and immediately following any display of the desired behavior. So, the moment your child uses the toilet successfully, says please, quiets down, or stays in bed for five minutes, reward him or her: “Way to go! I’m so proud of you for making a pee-pee in the toilet!” Or, “You’re doing a great job staying in bed. I’ll be back in five minutes to check on you. Sweet dreams.”

To reinforce Kyle’s appropriate behavior, Lisa could praise him after he’s got the spaghetti from the pantry and brought it upstairs — even if she’s just walked him through the entire exercise: “That’s great, Kyle. I really do appreciate your help. Now you can go back to watching TV.” In time, with consistent reward and penalty, Kyle will learn to do the job on his own. And the positive reinforcement of praise — however forced it sounds at the beginning — is an important tool in helping him learn.

In the beginning, err on the side of rewarding too much rather than too little. As new behaviors and accomplishments become a bit easier for your kid, then you can start to vary the availability of the rewards. For example, at first, you might praise your daughter every time she follows your direction to put away a toy. As she becomes more reliable and adept at putting away her toys, start to reward her every two or three times she shows the behavior. Eventually, save the reward for after she finishes cleaning up all of the toys. You can also give unexpected bonus rewards if she does a really good job: “Wow! This play room looks fantastic! What about we read a story to celebrate?” In other words, start with very frequent and regular rewards, and gradually reward less frequently and less predictably — a process called “thinning” or “fading.” When kids don’t expect to be rewarded, rewards are even more valuable, and underscore special behavior.

Swift, yes, but also short

Hopefully, it’s clear by now that parents need to react quickly, especially when confronted with kids’ problematic behaviors. Whether doling out penalties or rewards, however, parents should keep in mind another aspect of timing: keep the rewards and penalties brief. Often, five or ten seconds of time out is all it takes to get a kid on track again, while a reward can be as simple and fleeting as eye contact or a smile. (For more on brief rewards and penalties, see Chapter 3.)

Old adages like “one minute of time out for every year of life” are, frankly, wrong. Long time-outs or rewards shift the focus from the activity at hand to too-lengthy negative or positive consequences. Instead of worrying about “how long” positive and negative consequences should be, focus instead on how frequent and brief the consequences are. You can divide up five minutes of penalty time a bunch of different ways:

They all at up to the same amount of time. But trust us: all things being equal, the final scenario is by far the most effective. Why? Because it provides the most opportunities to learn. Virtually all learning theories link repetition rate with speed of learning. The more frequently you penalize a child for inappropriate behavior, the faster she’ll learn to avoid it and to behave appropriately. The more frequently you reward appropriate behavior, the faster she’ll gravitate toward it.

“Thirty trips to time out? You must be joking. Who has that kind of time or energy?” Well, we can tell you this: we have more energy for 30, ten-second trips to time out than we do for forcing a stubborn four-year-old to sit in a chair for five minutes at a time, several times a day. And we certainly have more energy for 30 tiny trips to time out than we do for putting up with days, weeks, or months of battles with children. Sometimes, consistently penalizing rewarding your kids can be tiring — in the short run. That’s why we often suggest that parents pick a specific time to Draw the Line: to deal with certain problematic behaviors when parents have the time and energy. We’ll often tell the parents we work with, “You’ve got to have one more repetition of penalty in you than your child has of difficult behaviour. You’ve got to show him that you’re willing to go all day on this issue.”

But we’ll tell you a secret: it’s a rare child or situation that gets to 30 repetitions of a time-out. (For what it’s worth, our record is twelve. Twelve.) Most kids will give up on inappropriate behavior long before you get that far. It boils down to your own persistence and determination in demonstrating to kids that you really mean what you say. Yes, keep the consequence really short, deliver them relentlessly — over and over again. Your child will grow really tired of the same old drill.

Really use your words: Talking

Let’s return, again, to Kyle and Lisa and the bag of spaghetti. Here’s a perfect example of the classic broken-record scenario. Lisa stands at the top of the stairs and talks. In fact, she talks in all kinds of ways: she asks nicely, she cajoles, she repeats herself, she yells, she uses sarcasm, she threatens — but she doesn’t actually do anything. Once more, Lisa needs to act instead of talk, and act quickly, by going to where her son is and physically insisting that he listen to her.

“We are a society of the biggest mouth talkers on the face of the earth,” says Michael. “We gab, gab, gab, talk, talk, talk. And talk is the cheapest thing on the planet.”

Now, don’t get us wrong. We have elaborate discussions with really young kids, but we also know when to keep discussions short and to the point, and when to keep quiet altogether.

So, how do you talk to your kids — in the heat of the moment, and after? What should you say, and how should you say it? In what order? How loud? What ratio of positive to negative to neutral statements should come out of your mouth? What about tone of voice and facial expressions? And where should you be when you talk?

Clearly, there are a lot of dimensions to talking. And to make things more complicated, those dimensions will change with the situation.

In the heat of the moment

We love talking to kids. They say the smartest, cutest, craziest, funniest things — and we’re constantly amazed by how acutely they observe the world and how much they understand. We can talk to kids — our own, and other people’s — for hours.

That is, if they not acting up.

In the heat of the moment — when a child is behaving inappropriately — we often say nothing. If we do use words, we keep conversations with kids short and to the point (“Use your words” or “No biting” are good examples). And, most important, we back those words with action. For example, instead of repeatedly calling to her son, Lisa needs to go to him and physically guide him through the act of getting the spaghetti from the pantry. To do this, she might first go to him and turn off the TV (that’s the penalty). Then she can get down to his eye level, and take him gently but firmly by the arm. Only then would she say: “Why did I turn off the TV? Because I need you to help me by getting the spaghetti. In this house, we help each other. Do you want to play video games? You can play once you’ve helped me. Let’s get that spaghetti.”

Let’s break that sequence down again, using a different example. Three-year-old Jana’s parents, Todd and Clara, really value dinner time as family time, and want to eat that meal with their three kids around the dining room table. They’re having trouble convincing Jana to stay at the table. They’ve decided to Draw the Line around sitting at the table. If Jana leaves, she’s crossed the line, and the penalty is simple and straightforward: one of her parents escorts her back to the table. When she and her siblings sit at the table and eat with their parents, Todd and Clara take pains to remark on what nice manners they have, on the good job they’re doing, and on how much they like spending time with their kids. They also use the incentive of dessert to motivate their kids to stick around just a little longer.

When Jana wanders away from the table, however, Todd and Clara stop talking and act. First, one or the other gets up, and physically escorts Jana back to her seat (penalty). Only then, after the penalty, do they say anything — and the comments are short and to the point: “Why did I have to help you back to your chair?” After a moment, if Jana doesn’t answer, her mom or dad will answer for her: “Because we haven’t finished dinner yet. You need to wait until we’re done.”

In the heat of the moment (and, admittedly, these moments aren’t particularly charged) Todd and Clara don’t get into long explanations of why they think it’s important for the family to eat dinner together. Only after the moment has passed, and after the penalty imposed — and their kids are calm enough to hear them — do they talk with Jana and her siblings about the reasons behind their rules. “Dinner-time is when we’re together as a family. We want to talk to each other and hear what we did today.”

When is the wrong time to try to have a reasonable discussion with your kids? When they’re being unreasonable: ignoring you, walking away, crying, whining, screaming complaining, or otherwise acting inappropriately. You can only reason with a reasonable person.

Consequence and Reason: Creating moral kids

Drawing the Line. Rewarding, ignoring, penalizing. Timing, talking, and proximity.

Sometimes, we can get so caught up in the details of managing our kids’ behavior that we forget the larger goal in all of this. What is it that we’re trying to do with all these techniques?

Of course, we’d be lying if we said that we weren’t trying to find ways to increase our kids’ cooperative behavior and bring more peace, quiet, and pleasure into our parent-child relationships.

But we don’t want our kids to listen to us because they’ve become subdued little robots. Nor do we want children to “obey” only because they know they’ll be punished if they don’t and/or rewarded if they do. And we don’t simply want them to behave because it will make our lives easier — although it will. Instead, through all these exercises, we want kids to develop and internalize a moral code of conduct. In other words, we want kids to learn to share, consider the feelings of others, help out when asked, be polite, treat others fairly, take care of their bodies, strive to do well in school and beyond, and more — all examples of so-called “pro-social behavior” — not because they fear they’ll “get caught” if they don’t or because they want rewards, but because they’ve come to internalize a system of values (generally, your values) and know for themselves what’s appropriate and what’s not. And then we want them to be able to act on the knowledge, even when we’re not around to make them act.

This whole process of internalizing a moral code is known as “induction”: we want to “induce” certain moral standards in our kids. Induction has been researched at length by developmental psychologists William Damon, Nancy Eisenberg, and Paul Mussen, among others. Along the way, they’ve discovered some critical concepts about how best to talk to kids to help them develop and internalize these pro-social behaviors. In a nutshell, say Eisenberg and Mussen,1 the process of induction requires two things:

  1. Holding children accountable for their actions (through rewards and penalties), and

  2. Offering meaningful explanations for those consequences.

By reasoning, say Eisenberg and Mussen, parents and caregivers can model pro-social behavior — consideration and concern for others — and a logical, orderly approach toward social interactions. At the same time, parents teach their children about acceptable standards of behavior and other people’s feelings, and communicate that kids are responsible for their behavior.2

Let’s look at a classic example: the preschool thief. Two-year-old Sarah snatches a toy dump truck from her classmate, Zane, who bursts into tears. Obviously, the snatching and grabbing so typical of toddlers is something we’d like to discourage. Instead, over time we’d like Sarah, Zane, and all their peers to internalize the values of respect for other people’s property, sharing, asking nicely, and all the other pro-social behaviors that tend to make life more pleasant for us all.

In a perfect world, a vigilant teacher takes the dump truck from Sarah and hands it back to Zane. That’s Step 1: the penalty, or consequences. Then the teacher says to Sarah, “Why did I give the truck back to Zane? Because he was playing with it first. You make him sad when you took away without asking. I bet you would be sad if he took a toy away from you. Can you say, ‘Sorry, Zane’?” That’s Step 2: the reasoning behind the consequences.

Obviously — as anyone who’s had any exposure to two-year-olds will tell you — it’s going to take dozens of repetitions of the lesson for Sarah and her peers to fully internalize the moral code of conduct around sharing. Over time, though, the message should sink in — as a result of the combination of both meaningful consequences and meaningful explanations for those consequences.

In other words, it’s not enough merely to penalize a kid for her transgressions: if you consistently impose the penalty on its own, not backed up by any reasoning, you might end up with kid who obeys — that is, when you’re around. In the absence of an authority figure, however, she’s quite likely to revert back to the snatching and grabbing, because she hasn’t internalized the moral code of sharing and considering other people’s feelings. (This is the kind of approach often taken by authoritarian parents, as discussed in Chapter 1.)

The reverse is also true. Reasoning on its own, not backed up by meaningful consequences, doesn’t do much to induce behavior. We often see this approach with overly permissive parents, who will say something to the effect of, “Oh, Sarah, it’s not nice to take toys away from other people. See, now Zane’s crying. He’s sad because you took his truck away. Do you want to give the back?” But what if Sarah says, “No,” and walks off with her booty? Unless a caregiver follows up with meaningful consequences — that is, requiring Sarah to give the truck back — the lesson has pretty much zero value.

Consequence (both positive and negative) and reason — in a nutshell, the are the two ingredients that create moral kids. In


Yes, no, maybe so: Positive, negative, and neutral statements — how much of each?

Here’s a sometimes-painful exercise: for one day, monitor what you say to kids. How many positive, neutral, or negative statements do you make?

You may be surprised — or not — to find out that the majority of your statements to kids are negative in tone. In fact, the majority of things you say your kids should be positive or neutral in character.

Negative statements make you feel bad — who wants to be know as a nag? But they also weigh on children. If kids hear negative statements in relation to themselves, and they hear the statements repeatedly, over time they’ll come to believe the message behind the words: that they are not good kids. As we said earlier, for example, the more often Kyle hears messages to the effect that he’s not a cooperative child, the easier it will be for him to believe those messages.

Now, we’re not suggesting that you become a syrupy giver of false praise. And we’re not saying “never say ‘no’ to your kids.” We say no all the time. What we are saying is that if you hear yourself saying something negative, it should mean that your child is engaging in a behavior that you want to discourage. Rather than repeating negative statements ad nauseam, hear these statements as a signal to yourself to stop talking, get up, and act!

If words are coming out of your mouth, try to make sure it’s because you’re chatting with your kids, conveying information to them, giving clear directions or explanations, offering a perspective, or just telling them how great they are. If negative statements are coming out of your mouth, they should be short and to the point — and not repeated. Negative statements should signal to your kids that you are about to take action.

Tone of voice

One note: when you’re negative, be negative.

Too often, we see adults giving mixed messages to kids. We’ve seen parents smile brightly as they say sweetly to their offspring, “Oh, sweetheart, it’s not nice to bite. Can you say ‘sorry’?”

Many of the words are right, but the tone isn’t. In fact, it utterly contradicts the words. Coupled with an utter lack of action, the words are ultimately meaningless to a biting three-year-old.

A more appropriate response? Again, think short, curt, to the point: “No biting!” Add to that a stern look or frown, and deliver the message and at the child’s eye level. (If necessary, take his or her change in hand — gently but firmly — to make sure that you can make eye contact.) That quick, curt, approach startles a child, and is itself a penalty. Once the penalties been delivered, you can offer reasons and corrective measures: “biting hurts Mommy. It makes her want to cry. You wouldn’t like if Mommy bit you, would you? Now, say you’re sorry, please.”

Are you repeating yourself?

Both parents and teachers fall into the trap of repeating rules, expectations, and consequences. We’ve already discussed the fact that repeating yourself is a sign that your timing is way off, and that each repetition takes you further away from the original incident — by the time you finally act, the lack of immediacy renders the consequences less effective. As well, with each repetition, you’re likely getting angrier and more frustrated.

But there’s another problems with the broken-record routine: you lose credibility with each repetition. If you really meant what you said, you wouldn’t stand there repeating yourself — you’d do something. When Kyle ignores Lisa, it’s because he knows from past experience that he can ignore her and get away with it. Her requests aren’t credible to him, because he knows there won’t be any real consequences if he doesn’t listen to her. In short, her constant repetition, not backed by any action or consequence, teaches Kyle that his mom isn’t credible.

Don’t get caught in this trap. Don’t accidentally turn into a “broken record.” Decide at the outset how many times you are going to repeat yourself — we suggest no more than once after the initial request, although many parents are comfortable with counting to three — and then act.

Most people repeat themselves because they are busy doing something else or they are just plain tired! But, if you find yourself saying “I wish my kids would listen to me,” then stop repeating yourself and take action. One way to nip your child’s behavior in the bud is to nip your own repetitions in the bud.

Request or requirement? Watch your grammar

“Kyle, would you like to bring mommy some spaghetti, please?”

“Is it time for bed now?”

“Do you want to pick up your toys?”

“Would you please eat just one bite of chicken?”

For various reasons, many of us have a difficult time asking for things directly. We have an even harder time stating clear requirements. Whether it’s because we want to be “friendly” or low key, or because we’re afraid of sounding pushy or rude, we tend to soften our directions and requirements and make them sound more like requests. We do this by turning what should be statements into “yes-or-no” questions, and prettying up those questions with words like “would you like,” “do you mind,” “do you want,” etc.

The problems with this kind of verbal approach are at least threefold:

Requirements — bringing Mommy some spaghetti, going to bed, picking up toys, tasting one bite of a new food — are nonnegotiable. Requests, on the other hand, are things your children have some choice about: talking to Grandma on the phone, wearing your red sweater, having another helping of peas, deciding which bedtime story you’d like to hear.

Decide what’s a requirement and what’s a request. Often we’d like our children to do things, but we recognize that ultimately it’s up to the kids. When you say to your two-year-old, “Would you like to talk to Grandma on the phone?” you likely know that there’s the good chance he’ll say no, and you’re probably not prepared to force him to talk on the phone — even if you (and his Grandma!) would really like him to. This type of situation is, by definition, is a request. You aren’t going to back it up with a meaningful consequence, and you’re not going to get into a head-butting match with your child. In the end, he’ll do what he pleases.

If it’s a requirement, don’t ask your kids if they’d like to do it. Instead, tell them to do it. Use statements, not questions or requests — and back it up those statements with actions, either a reward when your kids listen (“Thank you! I appreciate your help!”) or a penalty (for example, turn off the television until they complete the required task) if they don’t.

Just because it’s a demand, it doesn’t have to sound nasty. There’s nothing rude or wrong about saying:

“Kyle, please bring mommy some spaghetti.”

“It’s time for bed now. Let’s go.”

“Pick up your toys, please.”

“Try one bite of chicken, and then you can have dessert.”

Get a little closer: Proximity

Let’s return, again, to Lisa and Kyle and that bag of spaghetti.

Lisa needs to think about where she’s standing in relation to her son. She’s at the top of the stairs, while Kyle’s in the basement, absorbed in Nintendo. By standing at the top of the stairs, Lisa’s essentially making a “long-distance” request. And that’s a problem, one we refer to as “long-distance behavior management.”

Parents can successfully offer attention, rewards, and praise from a distance. If you want to, you can shout, “Hey, Billy! You’re being a really great kid” from another room or from the kitchen window to the backyard. You can blow kisses across the playground. You can write funny notes and put them in kids’ lunchboxes. All these activities can reinforce appropriate behavior while making your children feel loved and as though you’re paying attention.

But when it comes to trying to minimize difficult behavior — like too much noise, kids making messes, siblings trying to kill each other, or garden-variety not listening — parents need to get close up. Why? For several reasons.

Don’t fall into the trap of being an ignored broken record, yelling from the other room. If your kid is doing something you don’t want her to do, close the gap between the two of you: stop what you’re doing, go over to her, and redirect her behavior. When Kyle ignores Lisa, she needs to discourage his rude behavior by getting close to him. As Michael points out, “If you don’t hear Kyle’s footsteps within three or four seconds, you know he ain’t listening. Now, you have one of two options. You can either get progressively angrier, and keep calling and keep calling, or you can stop talking, go downstairs to where he is, and close the physical gap between you and him. Get in his face, speak a low voice, and physically redirect him to action. I swear you’ll save time and aggravation in the end.”

TIP: When you’re discouraging or penalizing inappropriate behavior, you need to get close to your kids. And when we say close, we mean get really close. Get in their space. Get down to their level and make eye contact. If you need to, turn off the TV or the video games, or gently but firmly take a child’s chin in your hand and insist that she look at you. Then, when you have her attention, you can give the reasons behind the consequences.

Similarly, if you’d like your child to do something, don’t shout your request across the house. Again, get up, go to him, and ask her — in an “inside” voice politely — to help you out.

Let’s look at another family, getting ready for dinner in another city. Camille would like her nine-year-old daughter, Carissa, to set the table. Busy in the kitchen, Camille shouts across the house to Carissa, who’s upstairs in her bedroom: “Carissa! Come and set the table!”

The simple effort of shouting causes Camille’s blood pressure to rise.

Carissa, at the receiving end, hears her mother’s raised voice and hears one thing: trouble. She didn’t want to set the table in the first place, but now she’s also confused: why is her mother yelling at her when she hasn’t done anything? “I’m not going down there,” she thinks. “I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear.”

A few moments later, Camille notices that her daughter hasn’t responded. Her solution? She yells louder. “Carissa! I said, come and set the table!” Her blood pressure goes up a little bit more. “What’s she doing?” Carmen wonders of her daughter. “It’s like she’s deaf.”

Up in her bedroom, Carissa’s in a quandary. Her mom’s yelling louder — she must be getting madder. And now Carissa’s kind of peeved at her mom. “Why is she so mad? I haven’t done anything,” she thinks. “She yells at me all the time.” Carissa considers going downstairs to set the table, but she really doesn’t want to face her mom.

You can see where this is going — and the end isn’t pretty. Carmen, who was originally yelling to make sure her daughter could hear her, is now yelling because she’s mad. Carissa is feeling injured and put upon because her mom yelled at her for no good reason. In the end, Carmen stomps upstairs to yell at her daughter close up for a change: “I can’t understand why nobody in this house ever listens to me! Get downstairs right now, young lady, and set that table! And if you’re not careful, you’ll be grounded for a week.”

Carissa burst into tears and yells back at her mother, “you’re always yelling at me! It’s so unfair! I hate you!”

The point is simple: Camille could have averted a fight by going up to her daughter’s bedroom and politely asking her to set the table. It may take a bit more effort at the outset to get close and talk rather than stay put and yell, but we promise you this: it’ll save you a lot of hassle in the long run.

TIP: Make a pact never to yell again

“One of our house rules is simple,” says Susan, a mom of a one-year-old: “we can’t shout. If I need to communicate with my partner — to ask her a question, or tell her the phone’s for her — I have to get up, go over to her, and talk to her. And she has to come to me. It doesn’t matter if she’s upstairs and I’m in the living room or the basement. Sometimes it seems like a pain, but it really adds to the peace in the house and cuts down on the frustration of not being heard the first time. Since we have two phone lines, sometimes we’ll even phone each other rather than yell.”

If you could do precisely one thing, make precisely one change, to the way you talk not only to your kids but to everyone in your house, make it this: never, ever, shout across the house again. If you need to talk to one of the kids or to your partner, get up, walk over to where they are (even if it’s up or down a flight of stairs), and talk to them in a calm, quiet voice. Just try it for a week — see what a difference it will make.

Get close to reward

As we noted above, you can reinforce good behavior from far away. But just because you can doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. Most of the time, make a point of getting close to your kids when they’re behaving well.

As Barry, the father of two little girls says, “If I see them playing nicely, even if it’s just for a brief moment, I’ll jump in there and at least point it out to them: ‘You guys are playing great!’ Don’t be afraid of interrupting good behaviour.”

Routinely get close to the kids to tell them how great they are doing. Pay attention to the good behavior by coming into the room and saying hello, or joining in kids’ activities and playing side by side, even just for a moment. Then leave them to carry on. Your physical closeness will make your kids feel acknowledged and comfortable — and your departure will allow them to further develop independence and explore the world on their own.

Conclusion: Are you credible?

As we’ve seen throughout the course of this chapter, timing, talking, and proximity are inextricably intertwined. The faster you respond, the less angry you’re likely to get, and the quieter your voice can stay. By responding immediately, you’re also less likely to repeat yourself — and won’t get caught in the broken-record trap. The closer you are, again, the quieter you can be, and the harder it is for a child to ignore you, so the chances of repeating yourself go down enormously. And so on. All together, these three strategies keep the scale of almost any childhood transgression reasonable, and the parents keep their wits while guiding their kids towards appropriate behavior.

We guarantee that by responding quickly, keeping talk to a minimum, and getting close to their kids, parents will find it easier to be consistent in their demands for decent behavior from their children. Parents who are consistent don’t give an inch one day and a mile the next. They don’t penalize kids for certain behaviors one day, and let the same behaviors go another day. They don’t make demands they’re not prepared to enforce. They don’t say one thing and do another. And when parents can be consistent, they gain credibility with their kids.

When children see their parents as credible, we mean that children view their parents as honest, reliable, believable, and predictable, as people who have integrity, whose words are consistent with their actions. Credible people say what they mean to say and they follow through the way they said they would. Every technique we use with families — every technique in this book — is rooted in credibility. We’re utterly consistent and predictable with kids, and so kids know that we mean what they say and are serious in our requirements for cooperation. Why is this important? Because as goes your credibility as a parent, so goes your child’s respect for you.

For the last time, let’s look at Lisa, Kyle, and the spaghetti. Kyle doesn’t get the pasta for his mom because he knows that he doesn’t really have to: experience has taught him that if he ignores her for long enough, eventually she’ll get it for herself, and he gets to keep playing his video games, uninterrupted by household chores. He doesn’t see Lisa’s requests as credible, because he knows should experience that they won’t be any consequences if he doesn’t respect them. And, therefore, he doesn’t respect them. (And why should he? Obviously, if his mom really meant what she said, she would have backed up her words with actions.) And, over time, Kyle has come to see Lisa as not credible and therefore not worthy of respect.

Every time Kyle doesn’t listen to his mother, he practices being disrespectful. And the more he practices, the better he gets at it — and the more entrenched the disrespect becomes. Lisa needs to learn how to make herself (and her requests) credible to Kyle. Kyle needs to see that his mother means what she says, and that she will follow through on her expectations that he’ll cooperate with her requests. If these two things don’t happen, Lisa is setting herself up for a lifetime of disrespect from her son.

Drawing the line. Rewarding, ignoring, and penalizing. Timing, talking, and proximity. Taken together, these strategies are ways for parents to be consistent and gain credibility with their kids.

1 Nancy Eisenberg & Paul H. Mussen (1995). The Roots of Prosocial Behavior in Children, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

2 Nancy Eisenberg & Paul H. Mussen (1995). The Roots of Prosocial Behavior in Children, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, p. 82.