You guessed it: you should probably stop saying it.
Has this ever been a day in your life?
“Please clean up the markers…Please clean up the markers…Please start cleaning up the markers!…Pick up the markers!!!…THE MARKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Anyone? I know that it’s happened to me. And I love that my initial reaction to being ignored is almost always that they must not have heard me. I’ll just repeat myself for them- so helpful of me. Of course, sometimes it’s true and they haven’t heard, but if I’ve repeated myself a couple of times, then I should know better. Shouldn’t I? After all, if someone was repeatedly telling me to do something, I might ignore them too just out of spite.
So how do we stop ourselves from being annoying? And nagging? And sounding like a broken record? And REPEATING EVERYTHING WE SAY? (repeat, repeat, repeat)
The simplest solution: Stop repeating yourself
But Katie, if I stop repeating myself then nothing will ever get done! Well then here’s my solution to that. Repeat yourself with purpose. Let’s revisit the mess of markers. If kids are doing something else, sometimes I do give them a direction for free. It is hard to listen when you’re busy with a task. Just try and talk to me when I’m watching TV and you’ll see that I speak the truth. But if it’s clear that they should have been able to hear you without distraction, then you’ve got to start doing a hard count on the task that you’ve asked of them.
“Joseph, I need you to clean up the markers please”…(wait a minute to see what happens- trust that he’s going to do it even if his start time is a little longer than you’d like)…If there’s no movement, then…
“Joseph, I’ve asked you once to clean up the markers. If the markers aren’t cleaned up in the next few minutes, then they’re going to have to be in time out for the rest of the day.”
Alternately, you can also use the wonderful “If (when)…, then….” statement to encourage kids to move.
“Joseph, I’ve asked you once to clean up the markers. When they’re picked up, then it will be time for us to go to the playground. But we can’t go until they’re cleaned up” Same formula, just more positive.
Once the expectations are set, either a) the markers will go into time out or b) the playground will be delayed (or maybe even canceled!), try to leave it alone. You’ve asked twice. Hopefully that should be enough. If it’s not, then you can issue one more warning reminding them of the positive or negative consequence that will occur. Then simply follow through on the consequence with only one sentence spoken describing the reason for the outcome.
“And now it’s time to go to the playground because you cleaned up the markers!” or “The markers now have to sit up on the shelf for the rest of the day because you didn’t clean them up like you were asked.”
And you’re done.
What are the problems with repeating yourself a lot?
#1 You start to sound like background noise. And who listens to background noise?
#2 You begin to annoy yourself.
#3 The more often you repeat yourself, the more times you’ll need to say something before it’s actually listened to.
I think that this might be the secret to why parents yell. Eventually you just get frustrated by having to repeat yourself. So you yell. Yelling sounds different than the repetitive directions you were giving, so it’s heard. It then seems like yelling is the only way to get results. But you have made it so that yelling is the only thing that is heard. The key to not repeating yourself is to make yourself heard without yelling.
Give it a try. Break the cycle of repetition and stop sounding like a broken record. I bet you’ll be heard.
From the Land of Pleasant Parenting 