Helping children follow instructions by providing reasons for requests

Updated Aug 22

Imagine that every day you received a hundred instructions to follow, most of which you didn’t understand the rationale, relevancy or reason for. All day you listened to people saying things to you such as:

Do NOT put red items on a wooden table.  NEVER speak while you are holding something.  You MUST NOT blink in the kitchen!  Pink socks should not touch your hands!!  Please make sure you reverse those cushion covers BEFORE three pm.

You might learn and “know” these rules pretty quickly, but not fully understanding the reasons to the rules, make them tiresome and less likely to be followed. 

This is the world our children live in sometimes.  We often give instructions to kids before they fully understand the reasons and rationale behind these instructions. When this occurs, it is more difficult for them to be motivated to follow them.   Sure they might be able to do what we ask, but they are more likely to "forget" or not be bothered doing things exactly as asked.

This is especially true for children with big feelings, and emotional health challenges. Of course not fully understanding the reasons for instructions is not the only reason children have difficulties feeling co-operative. There are many different factors which lead to difficulties with co-operation.

But one of the ways we can support children to feel more co-operative is to try to keep spending time explaining (in reasonable, age appropriate ways) providing information and context to our requests.

Often the more information children and teens have about a range of life issues, the reasons why the things we ask them to do matter, the reason why the things we DONT want them to do causes them and us problems - the more likely they are to act in positive ways. It won’t be a quick fix - and it’s not always appropriate in every situation - but it can be helpful for many children over the long term.    

Here are some every day examples which might be appropriate for some kids:

Instead of:

“Pack up your toys now please”

When you pack up your toys, we can walk through it without falling and that way we can all stay safe.

“Only eat in the kitchen”

Please keep the food in the kitchen, then we don’t have to clean up the whole house at night time, which means there is more time to relax and watch TV after tea.

Eat your vegetables

When we eat vegetables, we look after our bodies which makes us stronger and healthier.

“Take turns with your brother”

When you let everyone have their turn in order, people feel happy and no-one gets upset.  And we can stay a bit longer because there is no fighting between you kids.

“Get dressed for school quickly please”

Getting dressed for school  before 8.30am means that you and I can have some fun talking time about the day and I won’t be getting frustrated with you.

It’s XXpm, you need to get to bed

The reason I would like you to go to bed at this time is that your brain actually grows bigger while you sleep.  When you get lots of sleep at night, you get smarter and smarter and that means you will be able to learn quicker at school and even play xbox/gaming/sport better!

Stop looking at your sister’s cards!

Please keep your eyes on your cards only.  When people cheat it means no-one really feels like playing anymore.

Stop whinging!

Please don't interrupt me while I'm talking to your Dad, because I have some information I need to give him.

Please try to talk in a normal voice

When you talk in a whiny voice, adults can feel stressed and are more likely to not listen properly to you.

A few points about how and when to give information to children.

It’s about information not guilt!  When we give reasons and information to children, it is not about trying to make a child feel guilty, or worried or resentful.  We are simply giving information and knowledge to them.  This means giving information in a calm and caring voice not an angry one.  It also means being very brief, rather than this being a lecture.  It can be more helpful to say it once, quickly and move on.

Try to sometimes give this information before or after the instruction, rather than right at the time.  If children are resisting an instruction, then sometimes giving information can turn into an argument.  To avoid this, try to give information and reasons to children before critical times.

It needs to be done at developmentally appropriate level.  Obviously giving a 2 year old complex information about what nutrients are needed for a healthy body is not going to work.  When in doubt, make information short and simple.

What about when it just becomes an argument?  If children are upset about an instruction they will naturally want to debate the reasons given.  This is not a excuse for us to refuse to provide reasons, it just means we need to put limits on how much we will talk about it.  For example, once clear information has been given, a parent can choose to not give anymore.  “I’m very sorry that you are upset, but I don’t want to talk anymore now about the reasons for this:”.

What about “just because I told you so”?  Although there are definitely times when giving explanations may not be important (or may even be unhelpful). However, giving information and reasons on a regular basis, supports children - especially those with challenges - to gradually over time be more likely to act in positive ways.

Our online resource Calm Kid Central has videos, activity sheets and tip sheets for children and parents/carers on helping children with tricky behaviour. To find out more click below:

8 Skills to help Children manage conflict with siblings

Updated Aug 22

Siblings all over Australia today have spent time playing happily together, then fighting, then playing again. Some research shows that younger siblings fight on average every 17 minutes.

It's challenging to help kids play well with their siblings. This is true for all children - and may be especially true for children who are managing additional emotional, mental health or life challenges .

But if we can spend a few minutes every now and then, coaching and talking them through starting play, maintaining play, managing conflict and ending play kindly - then the rewards are great - for them and us.

It can be helpful to consider what skills are involved in siblings playing well together, and then think about which ones children are doing well with and which they need support with.  

Here are at least 8 skills kids need to play with siblings/peers - they need to effectively:

• Start the play – i.e make a suggestion about what to do and how, and invite their sibling to join in

• Maintain the game/play – come up with new ideas about what to do next when things get boring

• Compromise and be flexible when their own ideas don’t work or are rejected

• Help out a sibling when they get stuck, hurt or frustrated

• Calm themselves down when they get angry

• Adjust rules or expectations when other siblings can’t cope with the current play

• Be able to follow directions or suggestions made by siblings

• End the play gently when they have had enough without hurting people’s feelings

How skilled are your children at doing each of these things?  

More importantly, what is one skill you can pick to work on with them this week?  

If you would like to help your child work on these skills, you might like to:

a) Have a conversation with them (when they are not already fighting or upset - ie before they are playing)
b) Ask them questions about how they are going, what they would like to work on, what they do when things go wrong.
c) Explain a skill, what words they might say or not say and explaining the benefits of the skill
d), Ask them to role play the skill with you.

Working on coaching skills like this can be time consuming. But even just doing a little of this (a few minutes at a time) - can over the long term, sometimes save parents/caregivers hours of time in dealing with conflict because instead of children needing us to sort things out every time - they are gradually getting better at avoiding or managing the conflict themselves.

If you'd like to read more about this issue:  I've been following the work of Dr. Laurie Kramer on this topic recently - really interesting read for those interested.

http://www.mom-psych.com/Interviews/Kramer-GS1005.html

Kirrilie

Our online resource Calm Kid Central has modules for parents/carers of children with emotional health needs about helping siblings get along with fewer fights and coaching children to be kind to friends and siblings. To find out more click below:

Can students really study effectively while listening to music?

Updated Aug 2022

Most students we work with tell us they listen to music while studying.   In contrast, many parents/caregivers we talk to feel concerned about this, wondering:  “can they really concentrate with that going on in their ears?”

Like many things - it’s not a simple “it’s fine”, versus “it’s terrible” situation.

First, let’s consider the potential advantages for some students in listening to music while studying.  These are as follows:

1. Many students say listening to music helps them study for longer.  This makes sense: homework can be boring, hard to persist with and tedious at times. If something can make it slightly less boring, students are more likely to keep doing it for longer.  

2. Listening to predictable music has been found in several studies to be LESS distracting than listening to random or unpredictable noise - ie like that which might happen in many offices/households noise.  So if the level of noise in the house is both high and unpredictable, then having music to block that out can help students concentrate.  

3. Music puts students in a good mood.  Some studies have found it makes people feel less stressed, more confident and happier. This may be helpful for studying because the better mood we are in, the longer we persist on hard tasks and the better we do at difficult tasks:  good news for students.

So with all of those potential advantages, what’s the problem with music?  The other side of the record (a pun for those over 35) is that research consistently shows that compared to silence, people are less skilled at doing complex tasks while listening to music.  

For example, some studies show that if you give people a problem solving task and then compare people who do it in silence compared to people doing in while listening to music, those working in silence do the task more accurately and more quickly compared to those listening to music.  

In other words, it seems that music interferes with our attention and cognitive skills.  This is especially true for music with lyrics and music that is “unpredictable” in some way (ie potentially music which is less well known by the listener).

It’s important to note that these studies just look at the effects on music on the average person - and it may well be different for different people. For example, some studies have found that introverts are more likely to be more negatively impacted by listening to music than extroverts.

It may also be that children and teens with emotional health concerns or who are neurodiverse respond either more positively to listening to music while studying (ie helps regulate emotions and increases coping) OR less positively (they have more difficulties with splitting their attention or feeling distracted).

Given the advantages and disadvantages, here are the recommendations we give students about this issue:

• Listen to music when you feel like you really “have to” – when you are bored, in a bad mood, feel a need to manage your emotions, having difficulties with motivation and feel like music would help

• Listen to music if your house is really noisy (or unpredictably noisy) and you can’t shut it out any other way.

BUT recognise that you are quite likely to be distracted or less accurate when listening to music so try to:

• Turn the music off when you are doing something quite hard (e.g revising for a test or trying to understand difficult concepts)

• Listen to music without lyrics if you can (e.g classical, electronica), music that has a predictable beat/tune or music that is very familiar to you.

• Turn the music down a couple of notches compared to the volume you listen to it normally.

Almost all students listen to music at some point while studying but it is worth having a discussion with them about what works and what doesn’t, what their plan will be to manage it and to ask them how they will monitor how it helps or hinders them.