Why Won’t My Child Listen To Me?

The answer is probably not what you think.

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Why Won’t My Children Listen to Me?

“Kids. They just don’t listen.”

It really does seem that way, but only because we have a fundamental misunderstanding about how children listen.

Why don’t our children listen to us?

Because children don’t listen with their ears. At least not in an actionable way. Oh, the sound waves of our voices do enter their ear canals and the little bones in their middle ears vibrate and send the sensation of our words to their brains. But that is not the resonance we are really after—the actual hearing. We want—and need—our children to respond to what we say.

Most of the time, when parents complain that their children don’t listen, what they really mean is that their children don’t obey. They believe that their words and their children’s reactions should somehow be on the same sympathetic frequency. And to that end, there is a plethora of advice about how to say the right words in the right way in order to get our children to do what we reasonably expect them to do: clear their places after dinner, brush their teeth, stop hitting their little brothers, etc.

But this well-meaning advice misses the whole point.

Small children—those under age seven—are imitators. They learn by watching and imitating what others do. Oh, they are listening, too! That’s why, when they drop something, they blurt out, “Sh*t!” with just the same force and inflection we give it when we drop something. Similarly, our children will learn to greet the neighbors with a friendly wave and a “Hi, how are you?” if they see and hear us doing it that way consistently.

Children listen with their whole bodies, not just their ears. Their operating language is action. It is all about what we do, not what we say. Children need to be shown what to do—over and over and over—not told what to do.

So if you are rushing to send off a last email and wolf down a last bite of toast while calling out that it is time to get jackets and mittens on, your children will likely continue “their” play, until you get up and put on your own jacket and mittens.

And just as children learn by imitating what we do, they also learn that our words don’t really mean anything when we do not match our words with our actions. When a parent tells her child that it is time to leave the playground but then stands in the parking lot chatting with a friend for a few more minutes, her words may have said, “Go,” but her actions have said, resoundingly, “Stay.”

The real answer to the question, “Why don’t my children listen to me?” is: because you are talking.

If you want your child to hear what you say, by all means, speak. If you want your child to do what you say, act.