If Your Child Won’t Listen in Public, You’re Probably Missing This
If Your Child Won’t Listen in Public, You’re Probably Missing This
Watch this episode on YouTube!
If you’ve ever found yourself frustrated because you have a child not listening in public, it can turn a simple outing into a stressful experience. You are not alone. Whether it’s the grocery store, Target, or any public place, these moments can feel overwhelming and even embarrassing.
But here’s the truth. Most of the time, when you have a child not listening, it becomes a pattern; it’s not because your child is trying to be difficult. It’s because there’s a gap in child expectations from parents that hasn’t been clearly communicated.
In this episode, I walk you through how to get your child to listen using simple, effective strategies rooted in positive reinforcement for kids and clear communication.
Why Your Child Isn’t Listening in Public
When we experience a child not listening, it’s easy to assume our kids are ignoring us on purpose. But more often than not, they genuinely don’t understand what we expect from them.
Think about it. We walk into a store, assuming our child knows how to behave. Stay close. Don’t touch everything. Use an inside voice. Don’t ask for toys.
But if we haven’t clearly explained those child expectations from parents, how would they know?
This disconnect is one of the biggest reasons a child not listening happens so often in public.
The Missing Piece: Clear Expectations
How to get your child to listen, the first step is setting clear expectations before you even walk into the store.
This means clearly stating your child expectations from parents ahead of time:
Stay close enough that I can reach you
Keep your hands to yourself unless I say it’s okay
Use a calm, indoor voice
We are not buying toys today
When child expectations from parents are clear, your child is much more likely to follow through. Without that clarity, a child not listening becomes almost inevitable.
Why Positive Reinforcement Changes Everything
Once expectations are clear, the next step is using positive reinforcement for kids to encourage the behavior you want to see.
This is where most parents miss an opportunity.
Instead of only reacting when you have a child not listening, you want to actively notice when they are listening.
That sounds like:
“I love how close you’re staying to me”
“Great job keeping your hands to yourself”
“You’re doing such a good job listening right now”
Using positive reinforcement for kids consistently makes listening feel rewarding. And when it feels good to listen, your child is much more likely to keep doing it.
This is one of the most effective ways of how to get your child to listen without yelling or escalating the situation.
What to Do When Your Child Still Isn’t Listening
Even with clear child expectations from parents and strong positive reinforcement for kids, there will still be moments of a child not listening.
That’s normal.
When it happens, instead of jumping straight to frustration, pause and ask:
Did I clearly communicate what I expected?
Did my child understand what to do?
Have I been reinforcing the behavior I want to see?
Often, improving just one of these areas can quickly help you learn how to get your child to listen more consistently.
Give Your Child a Job
One of the easiest ways to reduce a child not listening is to give your child a role.
When kids feel engaged, they are far less likely to drift into behaviors that lead to a child not listening.
Simple ideas include:
Finding the reddest apple
Putting items into the cart
Spotting their favorite cereal
This pairs beautifully with positive reinforcement for kids, because now you have even more opportunities to praise and connect.
Why This Approach Works
When you combine clear child expectations from parents with consistent positive reinforcement for kids, you’re doing more than just improving behavior in the moment.
You’re teaching your child:
What is expected of them
How to succeed in different environments
That listening leads to positive connection
Over time, this dramatically reduces a child not listening and helps you figure outhow to get your child to listen in a way that feels calm, confident, and sustainable.
Final Thoughts
If you have a child not listening in public, making outings feel overwhelming, know this: you are not alone, and this is something you can change.
By setting clear child expectations from parents and consistently using positive reinforcement for kids, you create a structure that makes it easier for your child to succeed.
And when your child succeeds, everything feels easier.
That’s how to get your child to listen, not through pressure or frustration, but through clarity, connection, and consistency.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Watch this episode on YouTube!
Episode 29: Why Praising Children Matters More Than You Think with Julia Lair
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[00:00:00]Leah Clionsky :Leah Clionsky Welcome to the Educated Parent Podcast. It's me again and Dr. Leah Clionsky, and today we're going to talk about how to get your young child to behave more appropriately. A store and that means the grocery store. That means target, that means a store in the mall. All of the places where we are frequently embarrassed as parents with temper tantrums and our kids running away and not listening to us and having strangers side eye us in the aisles.
[00:00:32]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky It happens to all of us, and that's our topic for today. This is another one of our chats, just you and me, no guests. And this is just such a frequent issue that I help parents with all of the time in parent child interaction therapy. And it comes up so often and it comes up so often even with my own children, that I thought that this would definitely be something everyone would relate to.
[00:01:04]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky Part of being an adult out in the world is taking our kids into public and often taking them into stores. Now, we can avoid this more than we used to because pre COVID, you always had to run your errands in person, and now we can get a lot of things delivered to us. We can get our groceries delivered. We can get, a Walmart delivering to us.
[00:01:28]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky There are prescriptions delivered. There are lots of times that we don't actually have to go into public. The thing is, is that you want to be able to go into public with your children if you choose not to. You don't want it to be because you couldn't, or you were too anxious, or you were afraid to, or you were too upset about the last time.
[00:01:49]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky You took your child into public and there was a giant temper tantrum, or they were really upset because they didn't get that special treat, or they were just running around the store in chaos and you were running after them. That is miserable and I don't want that for you. And so the good news is that there are things that you can do that will make that a lot less likely to happen.
[00:02:15]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky When we have parents in parent-child interaction therapy with us, that's our evidence-based treatment where we help parents learn certain skills to help improve the play and their connection with their child and reinforce good behaviors. And then we teach them how to give. The kinds of directions that kids listen to and follow through with consistent, but fair consequences.
[00:02:39]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky Once those things are a lot better, often parents will bring up this. I can't take them out into public problem. And the good thing is, is that there's some tools that you can start using right now, but in order to highlight the first tool, I'm going to tell you a story about the first time. I brought my daughter to the grocery store post COVID, so I, if you have not figured this out, just listening to someone called, who has a Educated Parent podcast, I was someone who was pretty conservative about COVID.
[00:03:17]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky I really didn't wanna get COVID, especially before there was a vaccine. And so in my family. We did not go in person to the grocery store for a really long time, and we definitely did not bring my toddler to the grocery store because you remember, or maybe you don't 'cause you've blocked it out, but how hard it is to keep a mask on a toddler in public.
[00:03:43]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky So she had not gone to the grocery store in literally like a year or two the first time that I decided to bring her. But you know, one day I decided it was safe enough to bring her to the grocery store. So I walked into the grocery store with my daughter, who must have been around two, and we walked in and the first thing she did was run away.
[00:04:09]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky She just random aisle of the grocery store straight up to the potatoes, and I felt immediately like panicked and also angry, like, why is she running away? You're supposed to stay near me. Why did she leave? Why is she now petting potatoes? And then I realized something I had never ever told her that she was supposed to stay near me.
[00:04:34]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky I had not set that expectation at all. This is something that we frequently do with little kids when we take them into a public situation like a store, which is we don't tell them what we are expecting. So in her case, she had literal zero idea that part of going to the grocery store was to stay close to me and not run away like she, she had no experience at the grocery store, and I hadn't bothered to tell her.
[00:05:06]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky Telling kids what we expect of them when we head into public is generally a very helpful thing to do. So I do. I always remember to do this with my own kids. No, but when I have, when I'm well regulated, when I'm thinking like a child psychologist, when I have my clinical hat on, what I do and what I would encourage you to do when you bring a young child out to the store.
[00:05:34]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky Let them know your expectations before you bring them into the store. So I guess I'm just jumping right into strategy because as I've talked about on several other episodes, if you don't communicate to kids. What to expect then you can't expect them to know what to do, and there tends to be a lot of frustration for kids and for you when you know that your expectation is to stand near you and be in your line of sight and keep their hands to themselves and their expectation is that they're gonna run through the store.
[00:06:10]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky There's another expectation too that's really important for us to mention. Which is if you're going to a store, whether or not they will be able to buy something at the store, if you expect that no, you're not buying any toys or candy, and your child expects that, yes, you will be buying them toys and candy.
[00:06:31]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky If you don't figure that out ahead of time, you are setting yourself up for a meltdown. So to simplify this a little bit. Here is what you do before you go into the store, say to your child, we're about to go into HEB, that's the grocery store in Texas. If you're not in Texas, maybe you have Kroger or Stop and Shop or something else.
[00:06:57]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky So you could say we're about to go into the grocery store while we're in the grocery store. I want, I need you to stay really close to me, so close that if I reach out my hand, I can still touch you. That is the first rule of the grocery store. Stay close enough where I can touch you. The second rule of the grocery store is to keep your hands to yourself so you can't touch everything in the grocery store because then you could hurt the fruits and the vegetables or knock something down.
[00:07:28]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky So I'm going to touch the things and you can touch them after I give you permission. So that might be what you wanna set up in the grocery store. It depends a little bit what your expectations are. Do you have an expectation that your child uses an inside voice? This is a good time to explain that to them right now.
[00:07:48]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky So letting them know, what are you expecting behaviorally when you go in? Another expectation that I like to set is around the whether or not they get a toy thing. So this is my personal opinion. My recommendation, I think that it is not ever a good idea to buy your child a toy or a treat in the store for good behavior because this is what will happen.
[00:08:19]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky You'll be in the store and they'll be saying, mommy, did I earn the toy? Did I earn the toy? Did I earn the toy? Did I earn the toy? And what if they do something that you're not okay with? Like they run away from you and then they lose the toy. Meltdown, right? Like you're, you are setting yourself up to have a toy battle.
[00:08:40]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky Or what if you say they can earn a toy and then they pick a toy that is $50 and you are okay with the $5 toy? Now you are in a situation where you set yourself up for another battle. So if you wanna give a reward for good behavior in the grocery store, however you identify that behavior. Make it be something that they can get at home.
[00:09:03]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky If you do good listening and you stay close to me in the grocery store when we get home, you can have a Popsicle. , When we get home, you can watch Bluey. If you want to set up a reward for good behavior, just make sure that it is not something that's going to set you up for a fight in the grocery store because things are already stressful enough for you.
[00:09:27]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky So step one is lay out your expectations very, very clearly. What you're looking for in terms of behavior and what they should be expecting from you on the outing. Does that make sense? If I had done this with my daughter, even at two, if I'd said to her, we're going into this store, it's called a grocery store, you're gonna see lots of cool things, bright lights, lots of food, lots of neat stuff.
[00:09:53]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky I need you to stay close to me so that you're safe. And when I reach out my hand, I need to be able to touch you. I would've greatly decreased the potato escape situation, but I didn't tell her that because I wasn't thinking about what the experience would be like for her. And one thing I will tell you is that when you set up these expectations, you will have fewer incidents.
[00:10:15]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky So number one, set expectations that are very, very clear. Do not assume your child knows it's okay to remind them every single time because your priorities and their priorities are different and they aren't thinking about going to the grocery store or to Walmart or to the mall, or to target the way that you are.
[00:10:38]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky So set out those clear expectations. The second thing you wanna do. Give them lots and lots and lots of positive reinforcement and praise for them following those expectations. So you walk into the grocery store and your child is standing near you. You can start the praise right away. Thank you so much for standing so close to me.
[00:11:03]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky I love that you're following our rules about being close. Now I know that you're safe. This is such cool big kid behavior, how you're walking beside me. You want it to feel good to do the thing that you just instructed them to do. It's an actual safety issue, like you want that to feel impressive. You want them to tell that you're proud of them.
[00:11:25]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky You want to incentivize that behavior because if you walk into the grocery store and then you turn your attention completely off of them, often kids will do something to try to get your attention again, or they'll just forget that was the expectation. You want to really, really try to keep pointing out everything positive that they're doing.
[00:11:46]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky Great job keeping your hands to yourself as we went by the toys, I knew it was probably really tempting to touch that teddy bear. Great job keeping your hands to yourself. That was amazing. So that's another way that you can make sure that, or at least increase the chances that your child is going to behave the way you want them to in the store.
[00:12:08]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky The third thing you can do is give them a job. Maybe their job is to point out the reddest tomato. Maybe their job is to put the crackers into the actual shopping cart. Like maybe their job is to look for the coolest cartoon character they see on a box. If you can give your child a job or a mission.
[00:12:35]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky Communicate with them as that's going on. The chances that they're cooperating with you and engage with you do increase. So you may have a much more pleasant experience because you're working together as a team instead of frantically checking a grocery list on your phone while your child runs in the opposite direction, which is not what you want to happen.
[00:12:58]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky All right, so I'm gonna repeat these steps again. All right? You are going to tell them what to expect. You are going to give lots of positive reinforcement, lots of praise. Thank you for doing this. I love that you're doing this. It's so cool that you're doing this. Be really specific. If you need help, go back to that praise episode that I recorded with Julia Lair, a couple of months ago.
[00:13:23]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky And the third thing is to give them a job, give them an activity to do that's gonna keep them engaged and interested in shopping with you. When my kids complain about going to the grocery store, one thing I like to think about is that it's just a life skill. Like you, even if you could order things, it's important to know how to be in a store so that if we take you, you know how to handle yourself in that kind of situation, you know?
[00:13:50]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky And this can apply to all kinds of other things as well. And if you end up coming to us at Thriving Child Center or PCIT experts. We will absolutely walk you through it. Yeah. But I know it's hard. Being a parent of young kids is hard. Explaining the world to them is hard and sometimes these, so store situations can really be pretty challenging.
[00:14:11]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky But it's a common problem, and I always, when I see a kid struggling in the store, I always try to say something encouraging to that parent, because Yeah, I know what it's like too. So I hope you have an absolutely wonderful week. I hope everything goes perfectly for you, and all your trips to stores with toddlers are amazing and screaming free.
[00:14:33]Leah Clionsky:Leah Clionsky Alright, I will talk to you again next week.