The school year is in full swing and, of course, you want to make sure your child completes homework, spends less time on screens, keeps a clean bedroom and get to sleep on time. As usual, your child’s agenda doesn’t exactly align with yours, so in an attempt to wrangle your child into submission you have become that parent — a nag!
Although nagging is the parenting strategy most often employed to try and convince kids to comply, it is actually the least effective technique, barely ever leading to the result for which parents hope. It can even backfire badly, communicating unintended negative messages and triggering even less compliant behavior.
To start, when a parent nags, it effectively models nagging as a normal mode of communication and way to ask for what one wants. When parents are frustrated that a child nags all the time, self-reflection will almost always reveal that the parent nags at least as often as the child.
[Read: Picking Your Battles.]
Nagging also makes kids feel that parent don’t trust they’ll get the task done. Of course, parents are positive that without nagging their child absolutely will not get to bed on time or study for the test. In some cases, kids do need close monitoring — but this doesn’t mean nagging is the answer. Other kids would get the job done, but may do so in a slightly different way or in a less timely fashion than a parent might prefer. In other words, nagging is often a parent’s way to ensure that goals are reached according to the parent’s specific directive.
This can seriously backfire because kids, and especially teens, need to learn how to take responsibility for the consequences — both positive and negative — of their own choices and behaviors. Nagging deprives a child of opportunities to learn what is important to the child (“When I study I get good grades”), and what isn’t (“A messy room doesn’t bother me at all”). It may frustrate a parent to not have all of their goals met (like a tidy room), but the trade-off — an independently thinking and responsible child — is well worth the trade-off.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, nagging tells a child that the parent can’t come up with a more effective way to communicate or effect change. Kids tune out nagging, ignore what their parents want and generally recognize nagging as inconvenient white noise rather than as a meaningful directive from parents requiring changes in behavior. As a parent, this might be hard to admit, but nagging dramatically reduces a child’s respect for a parent.
[Read: How Parents Can Be Happy on Purpose.]
Given all this, here are five rules for communicating with a child that will instantly change any parent from a nag into a fantastic communicator. Start by telling your child that you are tired of being a nag and explain that you want to get better at communicating, so you will be making these changes immediately. Now that your child knows what’s coming, these are the steps to take:
1. When you want to make a request, make sure that you have your child’s attention, which means that you have eye contact and you are not competing with a screen or another diversion. If gaining your child’s attention means stepping between your child and a screen, do so!
2. Say something once. Say it clearly, firmly and without whining or yelling. Be specific. “Please turn off the video game in five minutes.”
3. Request a response from your child — for example, “‘Please tell me what I just said to you.” If it is clear that your child was not listening, go back to step one.
4. If your child doesn’t comply with your first and only request within the expected time frame, immediately enact a consequence. “You were asked to study for the vocabulary test before 7 p.m., and now it’s bedtime and you haven’t studied, so tomorrow’s social activity will be canceled.” This is the most important step because it teaches your child that you will enact consequences, instead of just continuing to nag. It is critical for you to follow through 100 percent of the time, no matter how difficult it may be. This means that consequences should always be practical to enact. For example, don’t threaten to take away a family vacation if you don’t intend to do so. Empty threats are as ineffective as nagging.
5. Recognize that natural consequences are also to be expected, and your child should not be protected from these.
[See: The Importance of Setting Limits for Your Child.]
Learning how to nag less and communicate more effectively is incredibly powerful because it creates a calmer home, encouraging respect between family members. It also reduces stress between parent and child and empowers children to take greater responsibility by forcing them to reflect on the consequences of their own behavior, rather than relying on the parent’s nagging to make sure that things get done.
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Are You a Nagging Parent? originally appeared on usnews.com
