How To Give Effective Instructions To Your Child Video

When giving instructions to a child, it's important to be clear and concise. Get more tips on how to give effective instructions to a child in this parenting video.

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Keep directions simple
One instruction at a time
Be precise
Be fair & consistent

About this Author

Dr. Ferrara has worked with children and adult survivors of abuse for over twenty years in CT, NY and FL. She is currently in private practice in Tampa, FL and affiliated with the University of South Florida as adjunct associate professor.

Dr. F. FELICIA FERRARA, PhD: Hello! I'm Dr. Felicia, the parent coach, and I've been working with children and families for over 25 years now. So, I'd like to share with you some important information today on how to give effective instructions to a child. This is very important. Often we say, "Oh, my child didn't listen to me. They're not listening, they're misbehaving", but that's not the truth. They either didn't hear your directions correctly or they certainly didn't get the sequence of your directions. What you want to do with children, you want to keep your direction simple. If it's one item like for instance, you want - "Please, pick up that dish". Don't say to them, "Pick up that dish, get the trash, throw it out, and then get back in here and start the dishes" because that's like three items all in one, and the children very often get mixed up. Now, this is especially true if your child has any attention-deficit disorder or any other learning disorder where they forget the sequence of things. Now, children often have selective hearing to begin with, so they're more likely to forget the things they don't want to do, like clean up their room. So, you want to be very precise and say, "Clean up your room and I'll help you" or "Clean up your room this morning" or "Clean up your room by 10 o'clock and then you can go to the pool". So, be very careful about keeping your directions down to a simple, one unified statement at a time, and then give the child the chance to process that information and go ahead and do it. It wouldn't hurt to model some of the behavior as well and do it alongside with them in the beginning to teach them. So, once they kind of get the knack of what you're doing and you show them kind of like teamwork, then they feel like it's more part of a belonging rather than just them doing the cleanup work, and by all means, be fair across all your children. If you ask one to wash the floors, ask the other ones to wash the floors, and if you're really lucky you'll get them to do it. They will wash the floors for you. But in the meantime, please be consistent across all your children and fair in the amount of chores you expect them to do. With that in mind, may you all have a very neat and clean home. God bless.

How to Give Effective Instructions to your Child Video

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