How to Get Your Kids to ACTUALLY Listen (Without Yelling)
How to Get Your Kids to ACTUALLY Listen (Without Yelling)
One of the questions I hear most often from parents is how to get kids to listen. You ask your child to put on their shoes, clean up their toys, or get ready to leave the house, and somehow it turns into a repeated cycle of reminders, frustration, and eventually yelling.
If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. In my clinical work with families, this is one of the most common parenting challenges I see. The good news is that learning how to get kids to listen often doesn’t require harsher discipline or more consequences. Instead, it usually requires small shifts in the way we communicate.
When parents focus on clearer instructions for kids and strengthen positive communication with child, children are much more likely to respond the first time they are asked.
Why Kids Don’t Always Listen
Before we talk about how to get kids to listen, it helps to understand why children sometimes ignore directions in the first place.
Sometimes kids simply don’t want to do what we asked. If you tell a child it’s time to put on pajamas, they might resist because they don’t want to go to bed yet.
But other times, the issue is actually about communication. Parents often give indirect or unclear directions. Kids may not realize that we are giving them instructions for kids that we expect them to follow immediately.
For example, many parents say things like:
“Do you want to put on your shoes?”
“Can you go get your backpack?”
These sound like questions. From a child’s perspective, the answer might simply be “no.”
When we shift toward clearer instructions for kids and more positive communication with child, we remove confusion and make expectations easier to understand.
The Power of Direct Instructions
One of the most effective ways to improve how to get kids to listen is by giving direct instructions.
Instead of asking a question, clearly state the behavior you want to see.
For example:
“Please put on your shoes.”
“Please bring your backpack downstairs.”
“Please give the toy back to your brother.”
These simple changes make your instructions for kids much easier to understand. The child now knows that this is something they are expected to do, not something they are being asked about.
Clear instructions for kids reduce confusion and dramatically improve cooperation.
Avoid Vague Directions
Another common mistake parents make when trying to figure out how to get kids to listen is giving directions that are too vague.
Parents often say things like:
“Be nice.”
“Be careful.”
“Calm down.”
“Clean your room.”
The problem is that kids don’t always know what these directions mean in practical terms.
When we focus on positive communication with child, we want to describe the exact behavior we want to see.
Instead of saying “be nice,” you might say:
“Please give the toy back to your brother.”
Instead of saying “be careful,” you might say:
“Please put your feet back on the floor.”
These clearer instructions for kids make it much easier for children to succeed.
Give One Direction at a Time
Another important part of learning how to get kids to listen is simplifying the number of directions we give.
Parents often give multiple instructions for kids all at once. For example:
“Go upstairs, get your backpack, put on your shoes, grab your jacket, and come downstairs.”
Even adults would struggle to remember all of that.
Children are far more likely to succeed when we give one clear step at a time. When we focus on one simple task and combine it with positive communication with child, cooperation becomes much more likely.
For example:
“Please get your backpack and bring it downstairs.”
Once that is done, you can give the next direction.
This approach reduces overwhelm and improves how to get kids to listen during busy routines.
Don’t Forget to Praise Cooperation
One of the most powerful ways to strengthen positive communication with child is by noticing when your child does listen.
When your child follows your direction, acknowledge it.
You might say:
“Thank you for putting on your shoes the first time I asked.”
“Thank you for helping me clean up.”
Praise reinforces the behavior you want to see again. It strengthens positive communication with child and increases the chances that your child will respond quickly the next time.
This is why strategies like these often come up on some of the best parenting podcasts. Many experts emphasize that small communication shifts can have a big impact on daily parenting challenges.
Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference
If you are struggling with how to get kids to listen, try focusing on three simple changes.
Give direct instructions for kids instead of asking questions.
Make sure your directions clearly describe the behavior you want to see.
Give one instruction at a time so your child doesn’t feel overwhelmed.
When these strategies are combined with positive communication with child, parents often see immediate improvements in cooperation.
That is why conversations about how to get kids to listen show up frequently across the best parenting podcasts and parenting resources. Communication is one of the most powerful tools we have as parents.
And sometimes, small adjustments in the way we talk to our children can make everyday parenting feel a lot easier.
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[00:00:00] Leah Clionsky: Welcome to the Educated Parent Podcast. It's me again, Dr. Leah Clionsky, and today we're going to talk about a very common problem, which is getting your kids to listen to you and getting them to listen to you when you need them to do what you tell them to do. It's a common problem. We've all been there.
[00:00:22] Leah Clionsky: We've all had situations where we're trying to get our kids to put on their shoes in the morning. We're saying, can you put on your shoes? Will you put on your shoes? Maybe we start out super nice and after a while we're yelling, put on your shoes. I told you to put on your shoes. And either they're ignoring us or they've said no and run away, and that's so frustrating for parents, the good thing is that there are evidence-based specific ways and things you can do that will increase your child listening to simple commands that you give them.
[00:00:57] Leah Clionsky: So that when you say, please put on your shoes, the likelihood of them listening is going to go way up. Now, some people are really concerned about their children following directions, meaning that they are afraid to teach their child to do what authority figures say, and I understand this. To some degree, right?
[00:01:21] Leah Clionsky: Like we don't want our children to blindly do what all adults tell them to do. We want our children to think we don't want them to be zombies, right? Because we're afraid that will set them up for dangerous situations where bad actors might try to get them to do bad things. We wanna teach them to be independent and to have conviction and to say no sometimes.
[00:01:44] Leah Clionsky: So I'm not advocating that we teach our kids to blindly follow rules, however. Sometimes we just need our kids to do the thing we told them to do and do it quickly and do it without an argument. So why is it that often kids don't do what we tell them to do? There are a couple reasons that are all reasonable.
[00:02:10] Leah Clionsky: The first one is sometimes they don't want to, right? You say. Hey, put on your pajamas. And they're like, I don't wanna go to bed. I don't wanna do this. I'm not interested in doing this. Right? So sometimes they just don't want to and so they either pretend we didn't say it and hope and go on doing something else, or they say no, and they're actively clear about and their communication, I'm not gonna do what you want me to do.
[00:02:37] Leah Clionsky: So that's one reason. Another reason is sometimes. We are really bad at communicating with them. We don't make it clear this is a direction that I need you to follow. Now, maybe if they understood that they would be okay with following the direction that we're giving. So sometimes that's the problem.
[00:03:02] Leah Clionsky: Sometimes the problem is that our direction is really unclear, so they don't understand what we want them to do. And sometimes the problem is that they don't hear us or they aren't listening at the time that we're talking, or they don't understand that this is something we're expecting to happen right away.
[00:03:23] Leah Clionsky: And what we can do is make some really specific shifts to our communication that will make the problem of we were unclear, go away for the most part. And if you do that. You will have your child listen to you more frequently. I'm gonna give you a personal example. Um, about a time when I was not listening to my husband, who, by the way, I don't expect to be compliant with, but there are times where, you know, if he asked me to do something, I would happily do it.
[00:03:56] Leah Clionsky: But there's a problem in our communication. So here is a recent example. He said to me, Leah, are you going to clean that pan? And I thought, yeah, sure. I'm planning on it. Just not right now. Right now I'm doing something else. So I said, yeah, I'm planning on cleaning the plan, the pan. And then like 15 minutes later, I heard him in the kitchen angrily cleaning the plant, the pan.
[00:04:25] Leah Clionsky: And I went in and I said, what's going on? Um, what's happening here? And he is like, well, you said you would clean the pan and you didn't. And I'm like, I did not. I, what? And it turns out that he was a very indirectly asking me. If I could please clean the pan soon, but I thought he was literally asking me if I ever planned on cleaning the pan, which I did, but not right then.
[00:04:56] Leah Clionsky: Right? Like I didn't know there was an urgency to it. I didn't know that it was important to him. There was nothing,
[00:05:07] Leah Clionsky: there was nothing about the way that he communicated. His desire for me to do that task in a way that I understood as being important. We had, we've had this happen actually multiple times because his communication style is so much less direct than my communication style. 'cause if I were in that situation, I would say, Hey, could you please clean that pan?
[00:05:32] Leah Clionsky: I really wanna get it in the dishwasher. And the dishwasher started really soon. And then he would've understood. There's another time I can give it to you off the bat where we were running late and instead of saying, Hey Leo, we're running late. Could you please hurry up? He said, are you ready soon? Are you gonna be ready soon?
[00:05:53] Leah Clionsky: Are you gonna be ready soon? And I thought he was just asking me. So this is a clear marital example of how communication. It can impact someone's willingness to act on something. If you don't understand, you don't do it. And this comes up in how we tell kids to do things. So one of the mistakes we often make is that when we want a kid to do something, we make it really unclear that they are supposed to do that thing.
[00:06:28] Leah Clionsky: That we want it to happen soon. So we might say, Hey, do you wanna put on your shoes? And they're like, no, I don't wanna put on my shoes. And there we go. Right? It's sort of like the pan example. Like they do not pick up on the fact that we want them to put on their shoes or we say, Hey, can you put on your shoes?
[00:06:55] Leah Clionsky: And they're like, yes, but then they don't do it. And that's because we didn't communicate that we needed that to happen quickly. So we have just not communicated that it's not a question, it's a directive. And also that we expect that process to be initiated in the near future. So without that information, kids often won't do that.
[00:07:23] Leah Clionsky: Thing, and this makes sense, right? This makes sense. So we can fix this by giving a kid what I would call in PCIT world, a direct command. And by that I know, and that sound very serious, but basically it's just a way of coding the way that people talk and a direct command communicates that this is not a choice.
[00:07:47] Leah Clionsky: You are supposed to do it, and it's supposed to happen now. So instead of saying. Hey, can you put on your shoes? I say, please put on your shoes. See how that's direct? You are the one who is supposed to put on your shoes, and I could give you even more context. I could say, we're about to leave the house within the next minute.
[00:08:12] Leah Clionsky: I need you to put on your shoes. So I'm also communicating timeliness often as normal, everyday parents functioning in the world. We expect our, the situation and our level of irritation to dictate how quickly we want something to happen. So it's like, if mommy sounds frustrated, you should hurry. But if mommy doesn't sound frustrated, then you can take as long as you want.
[00:08:39] Leah Clionsky: Or if it's Sunday and you don't have anything to do, you don't have to rush. But if it's the morning time, you do have to rush. And for little kids. That's just a lot of information to take in. So we wanna simplify, we want to tell them what to do. And you can be polite. You can say Please, but I could avoid, will you?
[00:09:01] Leah Clionsky: Let's do this, which implies that I'm going to do it. Um, can you, which sounds again, very questiony. Can you do this? Yes, I can, but it's not the same as. Please do this thing. Please put on your shoes. Please hand me the yellow block. Please get in the car. Um,
[00:09:24] Leah Clionsky: please bring your dish to the sink. Please sit on the potty. Like all of these things are really, really clear. Like I am telling you to do this thing I'm not asking. All right? So that's a really easy direct way. To fix some of that communication. The second mistake, a second very common mistake that we make as adults is that we give directions that are too vague.
[00:09:55] Leah Clionsky: So we say, let's imagine you have, I have my two kids in there fighting with each other, and I say to my daughter, be nice to your brother. What does that mean? That I want her to do? Like, is she supposed to hug him? Is she supposed to leave the room? Like what is being nice to your brother? And so however she interprets that is what she's going to do.
[00:10:22] Leah Clionsky: So she might say, fine, you can have the toy, but we're not friends anymore. And if I said That wasn't very nice, she could say, well, yes it was. I gave him the toy. So I've now left this open to wide interpretation. So we tell kids, be good, calm down, be careful. So imagine this, you know, my son is climbing the bookcase and I say, be careful.
[00:10:45] Leah Clionsky: And he thinks I am. I'm carefully climbing the bookcase, but what I want him to do is get off the bookcase. So instead of giving these general commands, we're gonna think about. What is it that I want to actually see happen? I'm gonna give a direction that means that, so if my kids are fighting over a toy and I think it's my sons and not my daughters, instead of saying, be nice to your brother, I would say, please give your brother the toy.
[00:11:16] Leah Clionsky: Now we all know what it is that I expect. Or if they're climbing the bookshelves, I'd say, please put your feet back on the floor. Or if they are, um. Um, like destroying something, please hand that sculpture to me. So you're thinking like, what can I tell you to do where we all have the same definition of having done it.
[00:11:43] Leah Clionsky: This happens a lot where we say to kids something like, please clean your room. What does that even mean? What are the standards? What are you actually looking for? Can you define what you want that to be? So instead of saying, please clean your room, you could say, please put that blanket back on the bed, and now everyone understands what it is you're looking for.
[00:12:04] Leah Clionsky: So I think we are often actually confusing. We think we're being clear, we are being confusing, and then we are mad when our kids don't do it. The third thing you want to make sure you're doing is giving one direction at a time. Another place where kids run into a lot of problems is if we tell them to do too many things at once and they can't remember them.
[00:12:30] Leah Clionsky: So if you say, go upstairs and get your backpack, and get your shoes, and get your socks, and get your coat and meet me downstairs in five minutes, there's a good chance your child is not gonna do that. Or they might show up with one of those things, or they might show up in 15 minutes with two of the things like it's too many things to do.
[00:12:50] Leah Clionsky: And let's be honest, us as adults, we're bad at getting multi directions at once. When somebody's telling us a whole bunch of things, it's like, wait, wait, wait. I need to write that down. And even then we have the awareness, like I can't keep this straight. So you are much better off having your child do one clear task at a time.
[00:13:10] Leah Clionsky: So it might be, instead of all of those things you say, please get your backpack and bring it downstairs. And now they understand what it is they are supposed to do, you know, and they know. And then you have a much better chance of them being willing to do it. So those three things are really gonna help.
[00:13:31] Leah Clionsky: I should make a caveat to the third one since I use the cleaning your room example. If you tell your child to clean your room, you're actually asking them to do like 500 things, and often they can't do it and that's why you hear no. So like sometimes our demands are more complicated than we intend them to be.
[00:13:51] Leah Clionsky: So if the living room is a mess and I say, you kids made this mess, please clean up the living room. Probably they're both gonna leave because they don't even know where to start cleaning up the living room. They're four and six. That was way too overwhelming. But if I say, Hey, you guys made a big mess.
[00:14:08] Leah Clionsky: You clean up this and you clean up this, and I stand right there and I help them, then there is a much bigger chance that that task will get done. So just as a recap, you're going to make your directions direct so your kid understands that you need them to do it and that you need them to do it. Now, the second thing you're going to do is you're going to make sure that your directions are easy to understand, and you're gonna say exactly what behavior you want to see, instead of assuming that you have the same definition.
[00:14:44] Leah Clionsky: And the third thing you're gonna do is give your directions. One at a time. Now, will this mean that your child never pushes back again? Of course not, right? Are there other things that are even better? Yes. I actually have eight specific things you can do, but that's too overwhelming for one podcast. But these three things, if you really take a step back, slow down and think, am I giving clear directions that my child really understands that are not reliant on us having assumptions about timeliness, about my frustration level?
[00:15:17] Leah Clionsky: About what I actually mean and expect to see, you will see your child do more of what you tell them to do, especially, especially if you praise them for listening to you, because that makes it better. You know, if I, my husband says, Hey, could you wash that pan as soon as possible? And I wash it and he says, thank you for doing that.
[00:15:37] Leah Clionsky: I was getting really stressed out. I wanna do that for him again. So if we say thank you for listening to me, thank you for doing that the first time. Thank you for helping me out. You know, thank you for doing what I told you to do. Your child will want to listen to you more. We all want to be thanked for our effort.
[00:15:58] Leah Clionsky: All right, so I hope this was helpful to you. So hard to be a parent. We're all doing our best, so I hope you have a wonderful week. If you have spring break now, good luck to you. I'm thinking about you and I will talk to you next time.