Over the weekend, I sent you an exercise to help you discover how much your child ‘wants’ to listen to you, the operative word here being ‘want.’ Have you had a chance to do it?

If you haven’t done it, I really encourage you to focus on the exercise questions I suggested for at least one evening with your child to see what you discover.

Stepping back to observe your interaction with your child will give you valuable new awareness and insights about yourself and your child. In my coaching and parenting classes, I frequently suggest parents observe a particular area of their family relationships to see what they discover. They often return with unexpected new insights.

Many parenting techniques rely on fear, rewards, and control to manage a child’s behavior and to get him to listen. Yet these approaches actually limit your child’s capability and full self-expression.

Plus, using bribes and reward dramatically harm your relationship with your child both now and in the long run. In the younger years, these strategies may appear to work and yield the results you want; however, as your child becomes a teenager, these old techniques put huge distances between you and your child.

Teens refuse to be controlled by their parents using these techniques.

Your child of any age wants a mutually honest, loving, trusting relationship with you. Without this kind of relationship with you, their desire and ability to listen diminishes.

A good way to begin to improve how much your child listens to you is with this easy, little-effort exercise. I encourage you to do it tonight!

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Here are the steps of the exercise:

1. Go about your day or evening observing the reality of your child’s desire to listen to you. Ask yourself these questions:

~ How much does my child want to listen to me?

~ What does she do that makes me feel this way?

~ What are the things I do that seem to cause her to pull back and not listen?

~ What are the things I do that seem to invite her to be closer and more connected to me and to want to listen and cooperate more?

2. Have fun observing yourself and your child.

3. Take a few moments and write your answers to the above questions.

4. Last question – What is my most important discovery or insight from observing how much my child wants to listen to me?

5. Share with me and other like-minded parents what you discover.
Share your discoveries and insights below.

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New Teleclass Next Monday! “Why Johnny Doesn’t Listen and What You Can Do About It”

An essential component of Joyous Parenting is having your child listen to you. Trying to raise and live with a child who doesn’t listen is exhausting and stressful. As a parent, you work much harder than you need to.

If you wish getting your child to listen were easier, I’d love to have you join us next Monday for this valuable class filled with practical tools you can use immediately.

If you’re busy next Monday, don’t use that as an excuse not to get this useful information that will make a profound positive difference in how your child listens to you and how much you enjoy one another.

Click here to sign-up and for more info.

Many people believe that parenting is one of the hardest jobs on the planet. It doesn’t have to be. With a few simple tools and insights and your willingness to grow as a person and a parent, parenting can be the truly joyous experience you envisioned when your child was born.

Here’s to making parenting easier and a lot more fun!

To your Joyous Family!
Connie