Why do I always have to count till 3??

amother

Blonde

Wed, Dec 23 2015, 2:50 pm

I'm always finding myself counting to three in order to get my kids to listen to me. for anything! come to the table, put on pjs...whatever it is...... they just don't listen the first time. and counting till three doesn't even always help.
what do you do?
what do you do when your child just says no??
how can I teach them to listen in a more positive way?
when they do listen right away I always make sure to compliment them on that........

amother

Mistyrose

Wed, Dec 23 2015, 3:02 pm

I say, don't count to three. eventually they wont even hear it or consider it a threat. say your piece and go on. wait till they are ready to have dinner, go to bathe (run the water and they'll come running, usually) get dressed. when they come to you to ask you finish what you're doing and then do what they asked. obviously, your kid needs to be a certain age to understand.

seeker

Wed, Dec 23 2015, 3:46 pm

How old are the kids?

You can try preemptive positive reinforcement/expectations - instead of waiting until they do it to praise them, start out with something along the lines of "I'm so excited to see my big mitzvah girls run to the table!"

It often helps to give advance notice before something needs to happen - for example, instead of saying "pajama time" and expecting them to listen right away, you start a little earlier and say "5 more minutes playing and then pajama time" and then "almost pajama time so finish up now" and THEN when you get to pajama time they won't feel like they need to finish what they're doing first.

No more counting to three, it is a silly habit that doesn't really teach much if anything - it ends up sounding threatening which is no fun for you or the kids, and essentially they learn that they have 3 more counts to do what they want/not listen rather than learning to listen right away.

Sarah Chana Radcliffe in more than one book has an approach that is similar in concept to the counting to three but much more efficient. You give the command once. If the child doesn't respond or says no/but, you stop and think whether this is something important enough for you to enforce or if you want to let it go. If you let it go nothing really happens, it wasn't important anyway and will just kind of fade into the background noise, it's not reinforcing not-listening the way losing a battle would. If you decide to enforce it, you think of a consequence and give exactly one warning. If the command is not followed, they get the consequence - no mishigas with three counts, second chances, etc that just create ambiguity and water down your authority.