Turning Listening Into an Absolute

My son Nate is in this wonderful phase of not listening. Right now it's mostly developmental, I know. In his little ego-centric four-year-old mind he's thinking "I don't want to listen. I'd so much rather do what I'm currently doing than listen to what you have to say." And like my daughter was at this age, he is very stubborn. If I don't give him a reason to think that listening to me is a better option than not, well...he's not going to listen. To him, it doesn't matter that it's his MOM telling him to get dressed. It doesn't matter that I explained to him that we are leaving in ten minutes. No. He's thinking, "I don't want to get dressed, and frankly you haven't convinced me that listening to you is worth the effort of getting dressed."

I have found myself, like most parents, getting lazy and instead of expecting him to listen to me the first time I ask, I give him lots of chances by coming back into the room every five miutes to tell him in my most exasperated voice to PLEASE get dressed. Cuz, "I'm not kidding. We have to leave!"

I have woke up in the morning reminding myself that doing this is not effective parenting and that today Nate will get one chance to listen. I'm going to remember to offer the choice to listen or have a time out, and I am going to follow through. And I do it. And it makes the point for a day or so only until I realize that a few days have past and I'm back to coming into the room and telling him more than once to please get dressed. And soon it occurs to me that I've been so inconsistant that even getting refocused and offering the choices isn't really effective any more.

It's when it has gotten to this point that I realize the time has come to turn "listening to mommy or daddy when we say it's time to get dressed" into a temporary absolute. Abolutes are those things that you don't get to make choices over. They are an immediate consequence for the sake of breaking a pattern of behavior. We keep a very small handful of things forever absolutes like hitting, biting, swearing (if needed)...generally those things that purposefully hurt another person. When an absoulte is broken, it is an immediate consequence. No discussion. For a preschooler like Nate, it's usually a time out. So for instance, if he were to push me out of anger, I would say firmly, "No pushing Mommy! Time out!" When used correctly, absolutes can often break a behovior, such as hitting within a very short amount of time.

As parents, we don't have many absoultes because we want kids t0 take responsibility for their behavior, we want to give them a sense of control over their lives, and we want them to learn to make choices so that they are prepared for making the millions of choices they will have to make on their own in their lifetime. Overall, studies show that offering choices and following through with logical consequences is the best way to change behavior and for long-term learning to occur. But ocassionally, and I emphasize the occasionally, we need to institue a more pure behaior managment-type approach and turn a behavior that is chronic into an absolute temporarily. This way, the pattern in poor behavior can be broken and reset to a level that reinstituting choices for that behavior again can be effective.

I realized this morning that often times turning something into a temporary absolute is as beneficial for me, the parent, as it is for my child. Because, Nate's failure to not listen to me is mostly my fault. I have not been consistant in my expectations for when he needs to get dressed. I have not done a good job of letting him know that when I say "It's time to get dressed" he knows it's in his interest to do that "right now." He knows that usually I'm going to come in and tell him three or four more times before I really insist that he gets dressed. I need to get us BOTH on the right path again.

So, this morning one of the first things I told him was, "Nate, starting today, when I tell you it's time to get your clothes on, you need to do it right away. If you don't, it will be an immediate time out." This is my way of informing him that and absolute has been instituted so I'm not blindsiding him with it later. We ate breakfast. And we talked about what was on TV. And then I told him it was time to get dressed. I didn't leave the room. I waited to see what he was going to do. And my sweet little boy huffed and sat on the couch with his arms crossed in defiance.

"Bummer. Time out, Bud for not listening and getting dressed when I asked you."

I picked him up an put him on the stairs without any further discussion. He sat there for his four minutes. When it was done, I asked him why he was in time out. He correctly told me he was there for not listening when I told him to get dressed. I reminded him that I did tell him that if he chose not to listen to me when I told him it was time to get dressed that it would be an immediate time out. He remembered. And when I asked if he was ready to make a different choice, he said he would go get dressed right now. And he did.

I will remind him again of the absolute tonight before it's time to get ready for bed. I will remind him again tomorrow morning and evening as well. And depending on how things go, decide if I can move back to lifting the absoulte and reinstating the choice of, "Are you going to listen and get dressed or are you going to have a time out?"

My guess is that by Wednesday we will both be back on the right track. And then it will be up to me to stay consistant so that we don't have to do this again.

Being consistent is hard, isn't it? It's so easy to slip into bad patterns and hope that our kids will still do as we say without us putting much effort into it. Yet, being inconsistent usually results in taking up MORE of our time in the long run and getting us MORE frustrated with our kids. Where do you need to be more consistent with your kids' behavior?