Pittsburgh Nesties
egpitt22
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
So, what do you do when they just will not listen??
How many different ways/times can a mother tell her 5 year old to put his shoes on before she loses her mind?? We may be close to finding out.
I can't figure out what the problem is. Does he really just tune us out? Get distracted? Not care? UGH!
Any methods you've used to help improve listening skills that you care to share? Sometimes he's great, does exactly what he's asked to do the first time I ask (and I'm always sure to praise this when it does happen, even if it's a rare occasion) but other times, it's like I'm not even there. Whether it's putting on shoes, cleaning up toys, going up to brush his teeth, etc....totally oblivious to what I'm asking.
Re: So, what do you do when they just will not listen??
We've run into this a lot too--although Brinley usually offers a very "legitimate" reason for doing her own thing.
What is he doing instead of listening? If Brinley is watching TV instead of putting her shoes on, I turn off the TV. If she's playing with her horses, I tell her that unless she puts on her shoes right now, the horses are going in time out.
DD is younger, but sometimes I feel like she needs more direction than "clean up your toys." It works better if I say, "Can you pick up all the crayons and put them in this box?"
Racing works for us too. If I challenge her by saying, "I bet I can get Nolan dressed before you put your boots on." She'll usually accept the challenge.
This is jackson after bath most nights. He will not listen or do anything to begin getting ready for bed. and he always runs from his bedroom in his towel to the playroom, where Steve is usually rocking Michael to his bedtime show of choice, Pajanimals.
I've taken to giving Jackson several times to listen, warning him that if he doesn't begin to follow instructions he'll have to stay in his room for the rest of the night, rather than coming downstairs to play with me and his toys for another 30 minutes. It's not going perfectly, but it's helped a lot. He didn't enjoy spending that time in his room the days he's had to do it.
AmyJoy--I definitely use some of those tactics (though I like the idea of putting toys in timeout, haha!)....but it's usually just him wandering away, or blatantly ignoring me. then it's a vicious cycle....I say something like, "you have until the count of 3 and if you aren't (insert whatever here) doing it when I hit three, then you're going to lose (insert TV show, bedtime book, etc...here) Sometimes it works, other times he pays no attention, until I say "Ok, I warned you, so you just lost your shows for the day" which of course gets his attention then, and generally causes a stage 3 meltdown. Then, of course, I get upset with him getting so upset.
Jake - 1.15.08
Liam - 5.17.11
usually we have to turn off the tv
) Maybe we just have this problem when we are leaving in the morning, and that is what she is doing. But that is enough to get her to move upstairs and put her shoes and coat on. (along with remembering she needs a toy to cuddle with at nap and forgot her medicine, and wants milk for the car ride)
Cleaning up is really hit or miss. Some Saturdays she will just clean her playroom, unprompted. Other days she will find any excuse to avoid putting a single toy away.
If it's something like getting his shoes on where I NEED him to do it in a timely fashion so that we can get out of the house, I generally start going over what needs to be done before we leave well before it's time for him to get ready. He responds well to knowing what's on the agenda. However, if he isn't listening to my repeated requests when the time comes, I do it for him and explain to him while I'm doing it that I would really appreciate his help/sometimes it makes mommy feel frustrated when he doesn't listen/usual parent reasoning that I'm not sure really ever works, etc. Which he doesn't pay attention to either, but I am usually rushing and frazzled any time we are trying to leave the house, so I do everything in my power to not let his poor listening skills add to that or make the process any more difficult.
If it's something like cleaning up, brushing teeth, or something that we are not in a time crunch for, I go to the usual sticker chart for chores/make a game of it/usual parent tricks that I'm not sure really ever works. If he's still not listening, then depending on what it is, I will also do it for him while explaining to him how I would appreciate it so much if he would help. I will also put one of his toys in a "time out" or take away his bedtime tv show or something like that. This usually results in a meltdown, which I then completely ignore.
So basically, when he doesn't listen, I try a bunch of stuff that doesn't always work, then ignore and move on.
The toys in timeout is one that works the best for us. Brinley typically gets on a kick where she wants to play with the same thing all the time for a few days/weeks.
So if the horses are on the verge of going in time out for a day it usually gets her moving. Caution--occasionally this back fires and she goes into complete meltdown mode.
Sort of this. The worst part of having a 3 year old and a 5 year old at the same time is that neither is known for their awesome listening skills...I'm hopeful that 6 and 4 will show us some improvement.
The morning is a constant loop of DH and I reminding the kids to stay on task and what they need to do next. Bedtime is similar, but on less of a time crunch. Right now, Todd's meltdowns are huge crying jags and Heather seems to be moving to a pouting/standing still response. It's no fun, but we can't seem to find anything that consistently motivates them to cooperate.
And then there are times that they do what we ask without complaint or delay. It's sort of a crapshoot.
Mornings are next to impossible for us. At least 50% of the time DH is gone before I get DD up. She is the biggest putzer on the face of the planet. I usually get her up around 6:30 a.m. and aim to leave around 7:15 (7:30 at the latest.)
Every morning we deal with "My socks don't feel right, my shoes are too tight, my pants are too small, etc." I can forcefully put her shoes on, but then she'll say they bother her and then take them off and throw them across the room.
It should not take an hour to get a 4 year old dressed, get her to drink her milk, her teeth brush & hair combed, and her to use the potty. I can threaten any of a number of things with her, and she immediately reacts telling me that she doesn't want to lose X, Y, or Z - but it still doesn't make her follow my directions or move any faster. So it seems like we start the production all over again. (and we don't turn the TV on at all in the mornings because that would make things a million times worse.)
I just told DH this morning after 2 AWFUL mornings in a row that I'm going to start waking DD at 5:30 a.m. when I get up because then she'll have 2 hours to get ready. But we have to figure out something else to motivate her because I can't take the horrible mornings anymore.
And this is why we do morning tv. Motivation. "get dressed so we can go downstairs and watch PBS while daddy finishes getting ready"
Rich does week day mornings 90% of the time, but we do morning TV too. A 20 minute Jake episode while Mason eats morning snack/breakfast, and gets himself dressed, is critical for us to get him to cooperate in any way. He knows when the show is done, it is time to leave. It's still not always pretty or easy, but without that TV time to ease into the daily routine, it would be a disaster. He really needs that zone out time to get going. I try to keep in mind how I feel in the morning - I am by no stretch of the imagination a morning person - I'd be even crankier if I had someone telling me to hurry up and get dressed, etc. (Once DH made me get up super early for a golf thing and got on my case to hurry up...pretty sure I had a tantrum like reaction, haha!)
yes, all of this. except sub in K for Rich. And the harder K pushes for her to get moving, the more she resists (I am certain she gets that from me)
Maybe we need to start using it that way. We used to let her watch a little while she was drinking her milk. But then she wanted to finish the entire episode/show (and would throw a fit if I tried to turn it off before that point) - and she's extremely focused on the show when she's watching it, so it's not like she could put her shoes on while she was watching.
I dress her as soon as I wake her up in the morning, so she's basically still laying in bed when I do it. But then she spends 20 minutes drinking like 4-6 ounces of milk and having a small snack. This morning it literally took her a half hour to eat a piece of toast with her milk.
We used to do that, but it didn't really work for us. She cannot watch TV and get other things done at the same time. Heck, it took her 30 minutes to eat a piece of toast and drink about 6 ounces of milk this morning. If we threw TV into the mix, she'd have still been eating it an hour later.
So i generally feel like the more you ask them, the less likely they are going to listen to you, i'm a firm believer in cause and effect, consequences etc. All the talking probably goes in one ear, out the other.
But, turning off TV if they dont do their chore is a definite, claire is really distracted by the TV.
One HUGE helpful tip our preschool teacher gave us, was to dress the kid in their regular clothes at bedtime, that way in the am, all you need to do is go to the bathroom and put on sox/shoes/jacket,etc. This has cut back on a lot of tantrums in the morning. And you get to take your time at night, the kid picks out their clothes, etc.