5.4 – Complying with our requests or instructions

How do we get our children to comply with our requests or instructions? It can be frustrating as a parent to get our children to do exactly what we want them to do. What we need to think about is ‘how’ we ask our children to do something:

• Are we shouting?
• Are we being clear about what it is, exactly, that we want them to do?
• Do they understand what is expected of them?
• Are we giving age appropriate tasks?

Being Clear

We could be setting our children up to fail if we are not clear about exactly what we want them to do; it is unfair of us to get frustrated and punish them if they make mistakes because we have not been clear.

If we are clear about our expectations our children will be better able to carry out our requests. This can start when our children are young when we can show them what we want them to do, for example, ask them to help put books back on the bookshelf. Show them which way around the books go, and whether they have to be in a particular order.

We should also give a reason why we want them to do as we have asked, for example, “Tommy can you help me put the cars in the box? If we leave them on the floor they could get broken and someone could stand on them.” You will be modelling the behaviour and showing them what you want from them at the same time – Children copy our actions!

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