Sit. Sit! Sit!
I give parenting talks at preschools and frequently get questions about how to avoid the need to repeat a request 10 times. I recently ran into a mom who had been to one of those talks and told me that the most helpful part for her was a story about training dogs. “I always think about that when I’m trying to get my kids to do something and they aren’t listening!” she said. So here it is:
In college and graduate school I worked as a dog trainer. I taught classes with 5-8 people and their dogs. Because it is easier to un-train a dog than to train a dog, my philosophy was to teach people to train their own dogs instead of having me do it. With every group there would come a point when the owners would start repeating the commands while the dogs acted like they couldn’t hear them. Sound familiar?The dogs had already been taught to “heal,” which means that they would walk right next their people on the left side and sit automatically as soon as they stopped. I asked the group to walk around in a circle with their dogs in a “heal” position until I asked them to stop. I told them, “Give your dog a second to sit without you saying anything. If they don’t sit, tell them to sit. If they don’t listen, tell them again. If they still don’t listen, tell them a third time and then put them in the sitting position by gently pulling up on the leash and pushing down on their rump.”
Practically every dog in the class would stay standing when the owner stopped and stay standing after the first two “sit” commands. But almost all of them would sit after the third command, before the owner actually placed them in the sit position. Why? Because dogs are very sensitive to body language and tone of voice and therefore to intention. The dogs knew that their people didn’t really mean it the first couple of times.
Children have similarly tuned antennae. Kids can feel it when you ask them to do something at a time when you can’t walk away from the pan cooking on the stove, or don’t want to get up off the couch after a long day. It feels very different to hear a parent holler, “Stop hitting your sister!” from the next room if you know that they are on their way in to deal with the problem.This is partly why it helps so much to get down on your child’s level, touch their shoulder, and ask them to look at your eyes when they are focusing on something and you want them to shift gears. This helps them to “unlock” from whatever they are doing. But it also demonstrates a level of involvement and intention. They can feel the fact that you are there to make sure whatever you are asking of them actually happens.
Intention isn’t the be all and end all. It doesn’t create perfectly attentive and compliant children. But it does make a difference. And like everything else with kids (and dogs) it works best when it is consistent.
