When giving instructions to a child, it's important to be clean and concise. Get more tips on how to give effective instructions to a child in this parenting video.
Keep directions simple
Be precise
Give one direction at a time
Model behavior
Dr. Ferrara has worked with children and adult survivors of abuse for over 20 years in Conn., N.Y., and Fla. She is currently in private practice in Tampa, Fla and is 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 twenty five 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 directions 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 what 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 ten 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 they're 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.
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