Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not To Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 27 and today I want to talk about how we can stop nagging and encourage our children to listen more, do more and take on more responsibility. Now, I can imagine a lot of you will be thinking, yeah, right, Mary-Anne, that sounds amazing, but have you met my kids? Not that there is anything wrong with your children. I am sure you have tried a lot of different strategies, read lots of different books and are almost resigned yourself to a lifetime of nagging. But I can promise you there is another way. It's not a quick fix way, but a way which could genuinely be a transformation. For you and your family. It just has to start with some home truths and honesty. And of course, in my usual way, I will say this with a lot of love. So, let's start by looking at a couple of typical family scenarios. So, in scenario one, we ask our children to get their shoes on, get their school bag, come to the dinner table, come off their electronic devices. So, we ask initially in our best parent voice. So, that kind of voice that we say when we're being our best selves as parents. Then we get caught up in another task. Maybe we've got to sort of, you know, get the other child ready or we get distracted by a phone call or we get stuck into another task. And when we then go back in terms of our attention on them, we realise they still haven't done what we've asked. So, we ask again, either in a tone which sort of echoes our annoyance or our disapproval, or we add the exasperation of, I've already asked. I've asked you, why haven't you done dot, dot, dot, wherever that is. They still don't do what we ask. Either they say they're just finishing something. Oh, just do it. I'm just finishing this. Or they didn't hear us. Oh, I didn't know you'd asked me to do that. Or they've got distracted again. And then we shout. Our voice gets raised and all of our frustrations come out. Why won't they just do what we asked them to do first time? It would make life so much easier. Why can't they see that? Scenario one. In scenario two, we ask our children to maybe tidy their room because it's a bit of a mess, clear their plates, put things in the dishwasher, look after their things, those sorts of things. So, this is more of an ongoing problem rather than something that's situational as we talked about in scenario one. So, rather than our children tidying up after themselves routinely, we may have to ask them each and every time. Now, sometimes we persist and we ask them to tidy up, which can go exactly the same way as we've sort of described in the previous scenario, with us asking nicely first, then again with a little annoyance, and then finally we shout. Or with the scenario where we ask our children for ongoing tidying up, we might decide it's just easier to tidy up after them rather than go through the whole palaver each and every time. We hate seeing the house untidy or messy anyway. It causes us so much stress. So, it's just easier if when they don't do it, we just do it ourselves. Now, there are probably countless other scenarios, but these are the typical ones I get asked about all of the time. And the typical scenarios as such all start off with us being our best selves in terms of the requests that we make to our children. And sometimes after that we might stay calm and sometimes we don't. Either way, the nagging comes into play when we have asked what we feel is a thousand times and nothing changes. Why? The honest answer is, and I say this with love, we get what we have conditioned our children to expect. Sorry, but that's the truth. If our children have learnt that we say something once, we then get distracted and we don't follow through immediately, then we ask them again and again and then we raise our voice, our children learn that they don't need to actually respond to our request the first time, second or even the third time. They wait for the explosion and that's really not what anyone wants, right? The alternative is that we end up dropping our expectations and simply doing the job for our children because it's just easier. A typical scenario for that is one around helping around the house. Now, I want to remind you of my analogy that I've used before about our role as parents. And our role as parents is that we scaffold our children's rising building. They're building their own home and we provide the scaffolding. We are there to catch any falling masonry or timber and we make sure our children's finished home meets building regulations. Helping our children learn to take ownership and responsibility for their own home is a big part of our role as parents. We want to move away from short, quick wins, which means we raise confident children well equipped to cope with the adult world and that's where their house meets building regulations. We want to move away from quick fixes, quick wins that make the life easier in the moment, but we have to keep nagging, we have to keep persisting. What we want to move to instead, a long term permanent success. We want to move away from short, quick wins. And if we want long term permanent success, it's going to take work. Yet the rewards themselves are incredible. And there are three simple rules for moving away from nagging and reminding to our children doing things more independently themselves. So let me talk you through these. So the first one is set clear and development appropriate expectations. Now, you know that I've talked about this before. Our children are going to have to have a lot of expectations. Our children have an age, which is given to them, their chronological age. It's given to them by their birthday. But our children also have a developmental age. This is their maturity, their maturation. And the two are often misaligned. So what we need to make sure is rather than thinking, well, I've got a 13 year old, surely they should know X, Y and Z. We need to be thinking about what's developmentally appropriate for that 13 year old who happens to be my child. Where are they at in terms of their emotional maturity, in terms of their social skills, in terms of their intellectual skills, in terms of their level of independence? We need to take those factors into account before we take a blanket approach of their 13, their 8, their 7, their 19. In terms of our expectations, we need to be thinking developmentally. And part of that development might be to do with maturity, but it might also be related to what else might be going on in their world at that time. I've spoken quite often before about teens and the fact that actually we know that our children's brain goes through another huge change and restructuring at around the age of 11 and 12 and doesn't reach full maturity until our children are adults, until they are 23 years old. So it's also being aware of certain of those sorts of changes and the impact that that might have and the approach that we might take, particularly when we're in a very head-on collision kind of way. It's a different kind of mindset when our children are younger. So we need to make sure that our expectations of our children are developmentally appropriate and that we've actually set these and made it super, super clear. Quite often we really just assume that our children know to pick up after themselves. And actually, if we've never taught them that, if we've never set that as a clear expectation, because we've scooped in after them or we've been inconsistent, then what then happens is our children don't necessarily know that that's a clear part. So we need to set clear and developmental appropriate expectations. We get ultimately what we expect. So we really need to take some time over this one. And you'll know me by now in that my view is always that we should only take one thing, start on changing one thing at a time. And where you're going to get the greatest success is where you've really spent some time reflecting, really taken time to think and look and almost do that kind of family audit, looking at your family as a whole right now. What are the biggest things that have that major impact? What then, it then allows you to think about what's the one thing we need to be working on? So we need to really take some time to think through what needs to change for your family and then work through that one change at a time. One simple expectation, which I would encourage you to start with, is that everyone in the house contributes to the upkeep and the maintenance of your home. Now, if that expectation is already super clear, but maybe you're struggling with a bit of a consistency, then listen on. If it's something that you haven't set as an expectation, then I would encourage you to consider if you started with that as your one thing, if you set a very clear expectation and developmentally appropriate for each of your children, could this make a big impact? And the reason why I say this is because it's almost at a basic level of something as a family. Now, I talked about this a lot. over the different lockdown periods when we had everyone at home and parents were feeding back to me that they were becoming quite fed up and frustrated with a constant tidying up after everyone. And the reason why I think this is quite an important one to start with is that remember your home is an environment that everyone uses and lives in. So everyone must make a contribution to its upkeep and it's actually quite an easy expectation to set up. It's easy and it's clear because everybody uses the home so everybody must make, and I love this word, is a contribution. I hate the word chore. You know everyone has to do chores. It sounds so negative and so demanding and so there's lots of drudgery to it. But instead if we talk about it from the perspective of this is our home, we all get to live in here, we all get to use and enjoy the space and we need to make a contribution to its upkeep. It changes the narrative. Now for those of you who might be listening to this thinking yeah but Mary-Anne I've got a two-year-old how can they contribute? I would really urge you to consider every child can make a contribution and that contribution can be for our younger children to simply put away their toys at the end of the day. So don't get caught up in this notion that for younger children we shouldn't be encouraging them because they're maybe developmentally not appropriate. It is once you've got a child who is toddling around and is able to be relatively comfortable with their feet, they can put cutlery on a table, they can clear up their toys, they can organise things. There is definitely things that every member of your family can do to contribute to the upkeep and the maintenance and the general sort of wellness I guess of your home. And I want to sort of give you a specific example because one of the things we need to talk about is obviously if we're going to set up some of these new routines and we're going to set up some of these new routines and we're going to set up some of these new routines and we're going to set up some of these new routines and we want our children to take ownership of things, it's easier when we start talking about this notion of consequences. So everyone contributes towards the upkeep of the home and one of the natural consequences may well be that some of the privileges are then removed. So let me give you an example. In a lot of people's family homes, their sitting room, their living room, their lounge, whatever you call it, may be the space where the television is and that may also be the space where if you have a games console or other things are used. If our children are not able to maintain that room and make a contribution of leaving that room as they found it, so neat and tidy cushions on the sofa, if that might be where what it is, you know, crisp packets or food packets removed from the floor, glasses taken away, plates taken away, whatever those, whatever it is for your particular family. If they make good afterwards and they contribute to its upkeep, then obviously there are natural consequences. They get to use that room regularly and they get to go into that room because that's the room that they want to go and use because that's where the television is or the games console. If our children are not contributing to the maintenance of a room, so they're not making good, they're not tidying up after themselves, they're not picking up, then a natural consequence may well be that they lose the privilege of being able to use that room. So we're not talking, and for those of you who might want to look at my why, you know, punishments don't work, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the fact that we're not able to work. It's this notion of we're trying to, we must always be thinking about what are we trying to teach our children? And ultimately we're trying to teach our children to be responsible, to take ownership for their behaviour and to understand that their behaviour has consequences, which is why consequences work so much better than punishment. So if our children understand that one of the abilities to use a particular room is that they need to make good afterwards, they need to make their contribution after they've used that room, then we instil an element of independent thinking and independent ownership because they understand that's part of the privilege of being able to use that room, of being able to go and watch television, of being able to take maybe their duvet down or their blanket down and lie on the sofa if they're having a duvet day or whatever that might be, is that there needs to be an element of making good. And when we talk about setting clear expectations that are developmentally appropriate, if you've got a child who is too young to bring down their blanket and they can't physically pick it up, then that may not be developmentally appropriate for them to remove it back upstairs, but it may well be developmentally appropriate for them to fold it up, tidy it away, put it somewhere and then somebody then helps. So it's just thinking through what that is, but it's being able to be really clear about what those expectations are so that everyone communicates and it's using around privileges and using language around consequences and using language around contribution and regularly catching up with our family about these sorts of things and not allowing things to build up. So we'll talk about this when we look at number three, which is all to do with consistency. But the first step is about setting clear and developmental appropriate expectations. Number two is you need to communicate these expectations effectively. And this needs to be done in advance with clear consequences which relate to the misdemeanor. So it's going back to this notion that if we set clear expectations and we communicate them effectively, everybody knows what the expectation is, rather than what sometimes happens is we kind of know what we expect. We don't really communicate it as effectively as we think we do. Or what we tend to do is we embark on a very long lecturing speak. I am so guilty of that, where we go into a bit of a monotone and we just simply spiel out a whole load of information for our children. We lecture at them. We do all of the talking. Our children don't acknowledge what needs to be done whatsoever because we've done all of the talking. We think our children have understood what we've asked of them, but they haven't at all. And so understandably, we don't get any changes. Now, there are no quick fixes to these things. We have to spend the time up front. And I want to explain a particular strategy that I use called a talk through. And do not worry about making loads of notes. You can always re-listen to this. But my give this week is the actual how-to sheet for a talk through. But the talk through is a really important process because what we want to shift away from, if we want our children to take more decisions, if we want our children to be more independent and to make choices and take on behaviours as part of what they do without us needing to constantly nag them, then we need to make sure that we've had a conversation with them and that they have taken ownership for it. So a talk through is simply a process of talking through a new routine. And a new routine is really anything that we want to establish with our children where they take ownership. And I would always recommend this in a non-confrontational perspective. So you've done a bit of reflection, you've understood and you've made a decision together, collectively with your partner, about what you might want to change in terms of the patterns and what's the one thing that you're going to work on first to stop the nagging and encourage our children to take ownership. So that may well be you've taken on my advice and you're going to talk about contribution for the house. Or it may be about making sure that the children are ready first thing in the morning for school. Or it may be about them coming to the dinner table as soon as you ask them. Or coming off their electronic devices. Whatever that might be, what we want to do is we want to have a conversation with our children about this change in what we're going to be doing. And it's called a talk through. So it always starts with my special phrase, which I would love you all to use, just because I find it the best way to start these sorts of conversations. So it's a quiet moment where you can get together as a family. And you start with, I've noticed that. We've noticed that. We've noticed that we're not all helping out around the house. And what happens is mummy and daddy end up nagging you all of the time to tidy up after yourself. You don't do what we ask you straight away. And then we get cross and it ends up with us shouting and everyone is then unhappy. We've noticed that in the mornings when it comes to getting ready for school, there's a lot of us having to ask you time and time again to put your shoes on. And then we get cross and you get upset. And it's really not the atmosphere we want first thing in the morning. We've noticed that when we ask you to come off your electronic devices, we have to ask you lots and lots of times. We find ourselves raising our voices and shouting and getting really cross, which creates a bit of an atmosphere and it ruins the rest of the day. You get the idea. It starts with a, we've noticed that. And you talk through the scenario that is going to change. Contributing at the house, whether that's the change in terms of electronic device usage and coming off, whether that's coming to the dinner table, whether that's going up to bed, whatever it might be, it starts with, we've noticed that, I've noticed that. The reason why I encourage you to use that particular phrase is it takes us out of finger pointing and accusation mode. And it comes across much more as an observational. I've noticed that. This is something that we've talk about together so that's the introduction piece. And there's always needs to be a little bit of humility from us as parents is that we have to acknowledge that we do some nagging, that we may raise our voice. Maybe you are a parent listening to this and you have never shouted at your children. And I would phenomenally congratulate you for that because you've done a better job than me, because I have regularly shouted at my children. So it's that we need to be humble in some ways and acknowledge that sometimes we don't always behave in a way that we would like to. And the reason for having the conversation is that we want things to be different and we want to have that discussion together. So we've noticed that we acknowledge our part in that and we were basically setting the scene for something being different. Now, depending on what it is, will depend on how you then approach the next thing. So, for example, if we if you are committing to your one thing being everyone helping in the home and a contribution, then you need to set the scene about the fact that this is our family home. We all live here. It's a place that we love and cherish and we all need to make a contribution to its upkeep. That's quite a clear this is what needs to happen. And in the same way, when we're talking about bedtime routines, we're being clear that we need to go up to bed and we can't continue to have in and out of bedrooms or constant requests to come upstairs. So you're setting the absolute tone. But what you're then doing is opening up the discussion to a little bit more problem solving. If we know that everyone needs to make a contribution to the upkeep of our home, how may we as a family make sure that that happens? If we know that we need to be upstairs and going through our bedtime routine with our lights out at 8 p.m., then that's an absolute. But what we're open to as a family is a discussion around how can we make that happen where we remove some of the friction. If we know that we need to leave the house and everybody needs to be ready to get into the car or to begin to walk or get on their bicycles by a certain time and we're having these frictions in terms of getting ready, what might we do? We're trying to encourage that this is the definitive boundary that I'm setting as your parent because that's my role to scaffold. But I'm opening up the design of that build, that home to you as our children so that you can then input and then together as a family we can problem solve and come up with a new set of routines, a new structure to how we might go about the next step. So it's really important that we empower our children to feel that they have a voice, that they are able to have a say in reaching that end goal, in reaching that end target because we've set the framework, but we're surely open to how we get there. And what I find is where we remove the dictatorial aspect. So, you know, I'm your parent. This is what this is how things are going to be. We're going to do this. Then we're going to do that. And if you don't do this, there's going to be a punishment of that. But instead, if we say, look, this is what needs to happen. This is the end goal. But how we get there, I'm pretty flexible with. And I'm really keen that as a family, we have a conversation about how can we make best make this happen within the framework. We're not simply allowing our children to make every kind of decision and every choice. But what we're trying to do is help them help us as a family come up with a with a definitive routine. So we're doing that. And when you do that collectively and the idea is come from your children and come from them, then they are so much more powerful. So we've noticed that we've offered a little bit of humility in terms of our reactions. We've opened up to problem solving. Now, if you're listening to this and you've got a young family, then they potentially aren't going to struggle with the problem solving. Or if you are an ex dictatorial person such as myself, who is very used to telling people what to do and feels much more comfortable telling than collaboratively. Coming up with a solution, then your children might find it more difficult because they're just not used to that approach. So if you get those scenarios, then start off with it. Well, I wondered whether we might try this. I thought this might work by doing it this way. Or we might try that way. What do you think? Which would you prefer? Or do you think that there's some there's another way of doing it? So you're in fact sort of giving them a bit of a prompt, which then helps them creatively think up their own solutions. So you're probably going to find that it's a bit more difficult. And I think that's a good way to start off with it. So you're problem solving and you are coming up with a new definitive plan on what it might look like for everyone to make a contribution to the family home, what it might look like in terms of establishing a bedtime routine, what it might look like in terms of establishing something that works much better in terms of children coming off electronic devices. So we've set that. Now, the important with a talk through is we're talking through what this new routine is going to be. But there are some important aspects that we often then miss. The first one is we then talk in advance with our children about what the consequences will be should our children not adhere to this new routine in this new plan. And those consequences should relate as best as possible to the misdemeanor. So talking earlier, we've talked about this idea of everyone having a contribution towards the family home because that's what we all get to live in it. We all get to sort of be in that space. So a natural consequence may well be that we don't get to use those certain spaces if we don't make good, for example. So that might be one of the things that we do. So it's trying to think what might be a natural consequence, because really, we're trying to encourage our children to think about what we want to teach our children, what happens in the real world. And in the real world, unless we break the law quite spectacularly, we don't tend to get punished. But there tends to be a consequence for our behavior. There tends to be a consequence for our actions. And that can both be positive and negative. So it's talking through those consequences. So try and make sure that the consequences are as natural and sort of a natural thing to come out of it. So that's the first thing that we do. And then the last bit is the most important piece to moving this new wonderful routine away from a lovely discussion where everyone feels like, oh, yes, things are going to change and nothing does. To things actually changing. And it's, as the title suggests, you then talk through. So at the end of it, you've done the I've noticed that we've had a bit of that humility from us. We've had a problem solving exercise. We've talked through the consequences. Now what we want to do is ask our children to reiterate. So we want to use language like, OK, so just just so that we're clear, we've talked about the fact that it's not working particularly well around sort of everyone making a contribution at home. And it usually ends up with us. And then things don't always come out really well. And then we all end up being upset. So can you just tell me, Bob, what have we just what have we just agreed? And ask your child to give you a run through of what you've agreed. If you've got obviously more than one child, you then may say, Sophie, and what do we then agree with the consequences if we didn't stick to this new routine? Perfect. So what you're trying to do in that moment where you've had everybody together is just get some clarification that. If we've done all of the talking that our children have fully understood and you will be surprised at how often we think we've been really clear and our children have not actually really understood what this new routine, a new structure is going to look like and have really taken on board what the consequences are going to be. So we need to do that. And then we kind of close off that meeting. But what we must do is at least seven to nine times in addition. Yes, you heard me right. Seven to nine times in addition. If you want to make sure that this moves from us nagging to our children doing this independently, what we must then do seven to nine times independently with each child is have a quick catch up while they're in the middle of something that isn't emotionally charged or isn't an issue is just have a very, very quick literally takes a few moments. You go up and say, Oh, so Sophie, I just wanted to quickly check. You know, we were talking earlier on today about what the new bedtime routine is going to look like. Can you just remind me what we agreed? And then your child would say, well, we've agreed that we're doing this, this and this. Okay. And what was the consequence, Sophie, if that didn't happen? Okay, brilliant. Sorry to just check. I just wanted to make sure that everybody understood. Amazing. Go back to whatever it is that you're doing. And you need to do that repeatedly because children are much more likely to do what they say. So if our children have confirmed the routine several times out loud, they are much more likely to take that on board as something that they are independent in doing than if we have told them. And then we say, and remember, we've got this new routine. And remember that this is what you're supposed to do. And remember what the consequence is going to be. Our children just go back into that sort of moment where they don't really listen. And they switch off switch and we turn the tables and we ask them to confirm. Then we're much more likely to get that independence. So our three simple rules are first set clear and developmental appropriate expectations. Number two, communicate these effectively with our talk throughs. And three, we have to follow through and be consistent. Now you're likely to meet some resistance initially. So do not bite off more can chew. Focus on fixing one set of behaviours. fully, comprehensively and consistently before embarking on another. Each step builds on the other. If you want to see lasting change, then small steps lead to big changes. So be consistent and choose your moments, choose your time when you're going to set up these new talk-throughs, these new routines for a period of time that you know that you can be consistent. Don't start a talk-through and a new routine when you know that you've got lots of guests coming or that things are going to be a little bit more unusual and you're not able to consistently follow through. It's much more important that we find the right times and that we then apply them consistently because that's where we're going to notice the big changes. So I'm hoping that that's going to be really helpful and I'm going to hit that like button. I'm going to hear some lots of positive feedback from all of you to say that you're noticing some changes. For some of you, you may notice some significant changes almost immediately. For some of you, it's going to be slower and that's okay. It doesn't matter. This isn't a race. We're in this for the long haul and that's why it's really important to view it that way. So my give this week, as I said before, is my talk-through how-to sheet. So head over to my free resource library, drmaryhand.com forward slash library, where you'll find the link to download the resource. All you need to do is pop in your email address to get instant access if you haven't already done so, and you'll get access not only to this week's talk-through, but all the other free resources across all my other podcast episodes. So as ever, if you have enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you could follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So until next time.
Speaker 2I'll see you next time.
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