Parental Coaching: How to get young kids to listen to you

Are you effectively connecting with and influencing your kids?

On top of coaching highly functioning adults, I also spend a significant time with my own kids as well as coaching their teams whenever I can. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of coaching soccer for 4, 5, and 6 year olds, you may know that it is by far one of the most challenging things on Earth to effectively engage a group of young people. 

If you’re a parent of young children, you may want to master the art of getting kids to comply with your requests. 

Here are some things to consider if you  want to step up your parenting game and have a more peaceful home with less conflict and more harmony. 

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Firstly, it is important to understand there are essentially 3 ways to get your kid to do whatever it is you want them to do - play the disciplinarian, the motivator, or play pretend. Of these three, by far the most effective the overwhelming majority of the time is, maybe somewhat surprisingly, to play pretend. 

Let’s go over all 3 so you know exactly what I’m talking about.

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The 3 Parenting Strategies

1. The disciplinarian - This one feels natural to us as humans. We try to control our children with the threat of negative consequences for a lack of compliance. It essentially boils down to “you do this… or else…” This strategy has a lot of obstacles in order for it to be successful. The consequence you’re threatening has to be enough to deter your child, it is likely to create opposition and defiance in your child, and it often makes both parent and child go into a negative state - usually anger, sadness, or otherwise. 
   
2. The motivator - This is the opposite of the disciplinarian. The core of this strategy is “if you do this, this good thing will happen.” This strategy is often effective, but like the disciplinarian, has several drawbacks. Namely, the reward has to be higher than the kid’s desire not to do what you are asking. If it’s not, you find yourself in a negotiation. The positive here is that your kid will become an expert negotiator and may be an excellent lawyer someday, but often this process takes a long time and can become frustrating if, as the parent, you can’t find that right button to push to create the ignition in your kid. 
   
3. Playing pretend - This strategy is far and away the most effective strategy to create harmony between you and your child. It engages the child in a completely different way than the behaviorism based models already mentioned. You’re not activating the idea of a consequence, you’re creating a world for the kid to play in. This is what kids do anyway, so essentially you are speaking their language rather than asking them to speak yours. 
   

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Just yesterday I needed to make a trip to the store and I wanted my oldest son to come with me. He wanted to stay home and do something else. I could have gone the disciplinarian route and said “son if you don’t come with me, you’re going to lose your desert at dinner.” I could have gone the motivator route and said “son, if you come with me to the store, I may buy you some candy.” Or in the pretend world I can change my state to playful, change the tone and cadence of my voice to reflect urgency and say “ninja, I need to go on a secret mission down the street to find the magic item in the store. Without it, the aliens will take over the world! Help me ninja!” It’s a totally nonsensical story, but I know my son loves both ninja and alien based stories, so adjust accordingly. 

If you’re constantly having your requests resisted or denied, I encourage you to start speaking the language of little kids rather than trying to make them speak the language of adults. 

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It all starts with your state

No matter the strategy you pick, the key to being effective starts with the proper control of your state. What state you’re in controls the quality of your life minute to minute and this is especially important when trying to lead - even kids. If you are playful, happy, strong, or commanding you are much more likely to influence others than if you are frustrated, hurried, nervous or angry. 

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