5 Steps to Help you to Stop Nagging Your Child
When my daughter comes home from school, she climbs. It doesn’t matter what it is – a human leg, a table, chairs, the sofa…if it’s there she’ll climb it. And it does my head in.
The reason it does my head in is because it’s relentless, also because I’m scared she’ll fall and hurt herself (all too aware of the stats surrounding the number of serious injuries that take place in the home), and because she just doesn’t listen when I tell her to stop.
So that’s the situation we face. She comes home from a long day of school and starts to clamber, and I confront this by telling her to stop. She doesn’t listen, I nag, she still doesn’t listen, I nag louder, she carries on, and then I either do one of two things: get properly cross and start threatening to take her good behaviour tokens away, or I’ll ignore it because I don’t have the energy to fight it.
I lie. That WAS the situation I was in. Until I changed it.
I sat about, as I do, trying to identify what it was that was causing her to climb. It had something to do with the end of the school day as this was when she always wanted to do it. In all likelihood it had something to do with overloading of school rules – having to sit, stand, stay still when told to do so, and climbing was her way of letting off steam, of letting her body do what it wanted to do.
Then I thought about what she gets out of climbing and if I could replicate that through some other activity that wasn’t going to cause me to start pulling clumps of my own hair out.
It’s really tricky, in the moment, to hold back from repeating ‘stop’ or ‘don’t’ over and over, but if you analyse it and look at when nagging is effective, it actually only ever happens when you lose your cool. And what’s happening is the child is responding to the shock of being sharply shouted at, rather than deciding to comply. So, actually, nagging is not really effective at all. And more often than not, a yelled or repeated instruction won’t be acknowledged because the child actually hasn’t heard it. I don’t mean that they’re deaf, it’s just they’re not hearing it in the way that you want them to.
Take, for instance, ‘Stop climbing on the furniture!’
What I actually mean is: ‘I don’t want you to climb on the furniture, because I don’t want you to fall and hurt yourself.’ It actually hasn’t got anything to do with me being against climbing as an activity in itself.
When I say ‘Stop climbing on the furniture!’ I’m giving an instruction, a command. I’m not qualifying it with the reason. I’m not giving my child the chance to exercise any insight into why this activity needs to stop. Importantly, I’m not giving a suggestion of what she could do instead.
Imagine doing something you like doing (listening to music, maybe), and your friend or partner walks in and tells you to stop doing that. You’d feel quite affronted. If it were me, I wouldn’t just stop because they’d told me to, I’d want to know what their problem was.
Same goes for kids.
So, with my own daughter I use this technique:
1. Verbalise the observation: “I can see you’re climbing all over the furniture”
2. Verbalise your feeling about this: “and I’m worried that you’re going to fall and hurt yourself, and because I’m your mummy, it’s my job to make sure you’re safe. Even if you think you’re safe, I can see this isn’t a safe activity.”
3. Invite a solution: “Can you think of something different that you could do?”
4. Help find the solution: “Maybe you could go and bounce on your trampoline instead?”
5. Give positive feedback for making the transition to a different activity. “Wow, look at you bouncing. That’s so much safer and that makes me happy.”
At point four you’ll need to find a solution that provides an alternative to the activity you want to prevent, but that isn’t too far removed from it. In my case, I knew my daughter wanted to be active with her body, so suggesting she sit still and watch telly wasn’t going to cut it. A bounce on the trampoline, an assault course, practicing cartwheels on her IKEA crashmat, or doing some Yoga (YouTube is great for kids yoga by the way), was an alternative activity that satisfied the need that originally led her to the behaviour I found problematic and dangerous.
When you’re thinking about your own child’s behaviour and what you’re nagging them to stop doing, keep this in mind. Maybe you want them to stop being rough with their sibling? Maybe they’re seeking physical feedback, so a run or a bounce or an obstacle course might fit that need. Maybe they’re listening to music too loudly – provide some earphones. Perhaps you want them to stop drawing all over the walls (!) – find an activity that allows mess making like crafting, finger painting or clay. Maybe your child, like mine, likes to splash about in the bath so the water goes absolutely everywhere – instead of crazy splashing, maybe you can contain this activity by offering water target practice in the bath with a water pistol/squirter (at your own risk, that one!) or at least something that involves having some fun with water in the bath.
Giving a little is so much better than getting into a battle of wills.
By investing that little bit of extra time to verbalise the problem, state your feelings about it and find a solution, you’re able to take the nagging out of the equation. You’ll find yourself saying ‘STOP’ and ‘DON’T’ a lot less often and start engaging your child in making problem solving decisions of their own.
**This strategy will only be effective with behaviours you want to DECREASE, and not behaviours you want to INCREASE. So if your nagging doesn’t start with a ‘STOP….’ Or a ‘DON’T’ Then this strategy isn’t likely to help. If your nag is more of a ‘can you PLEASE tidy your room’, (tidiness being the behaviour you want to increase) there are other strategies to try, and that’s a separate blog post.
