Parenting Strategy: When Your Child Won’t Listen

You feel like you’ve asked your kid twenty times to take out the trash. Or clean their bedroom. You feel like you aren’t asking for much, and yet you still see them sitting on the couch, and the chores are still not done. It’s so frustrating when this happens.

Kids don’t resist the task-they often resist the lack of choice. Offering a small choice: “Do you want to take a shower or brush your teeth first?” can turn resistance into cooperation. For older kids and teens, giving them some choice of a deadline can be helpful.

Kids’ prefrontal cortex (the part of their brain that helps them plan) isn’t fully developed yet. Your job as the parent is to be their prefrontal cortex. Help them plan, break the task into small chunks, and then success will come.