If you are the parent of a toddler, chances are that you sometimes feel like your child can not hear what you are saying to him or her. Most toddlers can hear quite well, and that is usually not the problem. The problem is that they are not listening to the words that they are hearing from you. If this sounds like a familiar situation to you, you may want to take some time to think about how you say things to your child.
It is possible that there might be some room for improvement regarding the clarity of the messages that you are sending to your child with your words. I realized today that I do not always send clear messages to my son when I am speaking with him. When we are just talking in a normal way, he has no problem understanding what I am saying and listens intently. Dylan is very curious and asks a lot of questions, so I give him as much information as I can and he just seems to absorb all of it. I enjoy communicating with him in this way.
As soon as the talk becomes about rules, discipline, or behavior, things change drastically. Dylan seems to shut my words out completely and locks in on what he wants, often repeating it again and again. As is typical of a grown up, I tend to use too many words in my attempts to get my message across, and those words are often interspersed with plenty of drama and emotion. My messages get lost in the drama, and as a result what I say is not heard, nor is it listened to. I can only imagine that as soon as I start to get upset, what might be happening in Dylan’s head is that he hears something like the teacher’s voice on Charlie Brown!
It is time to start repackaging my messages about rules, discipline, and behavior in ways that Dylan will understand and respond to. The first thing that I can change is my tone. When I sound upset, he tunes me right out but I know that he listens when I speak calmly. I can also shorten up the message by removing dramatic and emotional statements like “I am so angry right now”, “why can’t you just behave”, and so on so that I am only saying what needs to be said. Since I am a very emotional person, it will be challenging for me to speak calmly when behavior, rules, and discipline are at issue. As challenging as it will be, I believe that changing the way I talk about discipline, rules, and behavior will be very effective in getting my message across.
Photo by EmmiP on morguefile.com.