Three guidelines for stating rules that increase compliance in children
Ever start to feel like a broken record? Have you considered recording those instructions and reminders you say to kids again and again?
Don’t throw things in the house!
Have you done your homework?
Leave your brother alone!
Sit still and stop talking!
See my video courses here.
What follows are some tips for how to phrase rules and reminders to increase compliance and decrease your parrot act.
The three guidelines for stating rules that increase compliance in children are:
1. Highlight consequences for others- “When you keep poking your sister like that, she can’t relax and enjoy herself, and neither can I.” “Do you realize how much it hurts your mother when you keep getting in trouble for skipping classes like this?”
2. Speak to their character- the kind of person they are “You are not the kind of person who wants to hurt their family.” “I know you are a kind person who believes in using their energy to make others feel good, not bad.”
3. Emphasize why the rules are important as a value statement- “We treat each other with kindness because that’s what makes our family feel safe and valued.”
When do you NOT explain and engage in discussion about why?
When either you or they are very upset. If you are really mad, just say so plainly and state there will be a discussion about the behavior and consequences later, right now you need time to calm down so you can think clearly. This is modeling the right way to be mad and take care of yourself to deal with the feelings before trying to solve the problem. If you state a consequence when you are very upset, you run the risk of being too severe and then facing the dilemma of enforcing something too harsh or deleting/reducing the stated consequence and potentially teaching that you don’t mean what you say, so they don’t need to listen. If they are very upset, you may have noticed that they do not think or act rationally, it’s better to take a break and speak with them once they have calmed down.
If you simply repeat warnings and wait until you are at wits end, then yell, say mean things, and deliver big consequences, you run the risk of your children thinking you are just being mean and a failure on their part to connect their own behavior to the consequence they get.
Want to know more?
Carolyn Zahn-Wexler, Mrian Radke-Yarrow, and Robert A. King. “Child Rearing and Children’s Prosocial Initiations Toward Victims of Distress,” Child Development 50 (1979): 319-30.
Eleanor Maccoby, “The Role of Parents in the Socialization of Children: A Historical Overview,” Developmental Psychology 28 (1992): 1006-17.
Joan E. Grusec and Erica Redler, Attribution, Reinforcement, and Altruism: A Developmental Analysis,” Developmental Psychology 16 (1980): 525-34.
Adam Grant, “Raising a Moral Child,” New York Times, April 11, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/opinion/sunday/raising-a-moral-child.html.
Christopher J. Bryan, Allison Master, and Gregory M. Walton, “Helping vs. ‘Being a Helper’: Invoking the Self to Increase Helping in Young Children,” Child Development 85 (2014): 1836-42.
Christopher J. Bryan, Gabrielle S. Adams, and Benolt Monin, “When Cheating Would Make You a Cheater: Implicating the Self Prevents Unethical Behavior.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 142 (2013): 1001-5.
Oppositional-defiant behavior and how we create this by accident
https://www.verywellfamily.com/ways-deal-childs-defiance-non-compliance-1094947
https://foundationspediatrics.com/blog/increasing-compliance-children-parenting-strategies
https://childmind.org/guide/parents-guide-to-problem-behavior/
You can also learn more here, from my blog at intensivecareforyou.com and the free resources page, which I have indexed and organized to make more user-friendly: http://intensivecareforyou.com/resources-for-free/
I hope you enjoyed three guidelines for stating rules that increase compliance in children. Raising kids can be a roller coaster ride!
