How to talk so your child listens to you

Do you ever feel like your child isn’t listening to you, no matter how many times you ask? In this episode, Camilla McGill shares transformative strategies to help you talk so your kids want to listen. From managing expectations to adjusting your tone and engaging cooperation, you’ll discover tools that are effective and easy to implement. Camilla also answers a relatable listener question about getting kids to put on their shoes without a fight.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

1. Why Kids Don’t Listen Immediately
• Understanding their agenda vs. yours and why they’re not being deliberately disrespectful.
• How managing your expectations can foster empathy and patience.
2. How You Say It Matters
• The power of tone, phrasing, and concise instructions to grab your child’s attention.
• Tips for keeping your message warm, clear, and engaging.
3. Engaging Cooperation
• Fun and practical ways to make tasks manageable and enjoyable, like turning clean-up into a game.
• Using limited choices to give your child a sense of control.
4. Validating Their Feelings
• The importance of acknowledging emotions without dismissing them.
• How validation helps build connection and paves the way for cooperation.

Question of the Week:
This week’s question comes from Naomi:
"Why does my child completely tune me out when I ask her to get her shoes on? She listens when I whisper 'chocolate,' but not when it matters! What should I do?"
Camilla offers actionable steps to connect before directing, use empathy, and break tasks into manageable steps—all while maintaining calm and connection.

Resources Mentioned:

• Free Guide: “How to Get Kids to Listen Using the GREAT Method”
  Download here
• Book a Discovery Call with Camilla: Click here

Takeaways to Remember:

• Listening takes practice and understanding—manage your expectations.
• Your tone and phrasing are powerful tools for connection.
• Break down tasks and add fun to engage your child’s cooperation.
• Validating feelings is key to reducing resistance and encouraging compliance.

Next Episode:
Tune in next week as Camilla coaches Hannah, a mum of two young children, on managing parenting challenges.

Don’t Forget:
If you found this episode helpful, hit follow or subscribe for more parenting tips and strategies. Let’s raise kids with love and boundaries, together!

00:00 Introduction: The Struggle of Getting Kids to Listen

00:33 Personal Story: A Parenting Coach's Challenge

01:42 Principles of Effective Communication

03:11 Strategy 1: Understanding Kids' Agendas

04:47 Strategy 2: The Importance of Tone

08:42 Strategy 3: Engaging Cooperation

11:20 Strategy 4: Validating Emotions

13:41 Question of the week: How can I get my child to get her shoes on!

15:56 Recap and Final Thoughts

Episode transcript

Podcast Episode: How to Talk So Kids Will Listen

Do you frequently feel like your child is just not listening to you? Like you're speaking into a vacuum or they're deaf or something? Well, you're not alone as this is the question that I get asked about the most frequently. How do I get my child to listen to me? In fact, it's actually the first parenting book I ever read.

It's called How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. Fantastic book. And this is what I'm talking about today. The first part, how to talk so kids will listen. Now, let me take you back to a moment when I truly felt like just quitting being a mother.  If only. I was trying to get my five year old son to do his reading homework.

He wriggled on the chair. He made, he looked everywhere except the book. When he did look at the book, he made ridiculous guesses at words like at, and my blood started to boil. I started off calm and then I just began to lose it. Why wouldn't he just listen to me and do what I'd asked? I started to doubt myself.

Where had I gone wrong? What was I doing wrong as a mother? I needed to get supper ready for my other children. And instead of staying calm, I screamed, what's the matter with you? All the other kids in your class do their reading without a fuss. And guess what he did? He stood up, he shouted at me, he picked up the book, he threw it across the room, and he ran away.

Leaving me just feeling completely and utterly incompetent.  Now look, I'm a parenting coach. I have made loads of mistakes. You've just heard one of them. But here's what I want you to know. This really isn't about being a perfect parent.  It's about learning and growing, learning from our mistakes and trying again.

Over the years, I have used all the tools and strategies I'm about to share with you and they really do work  when we use them. But first, 

  As a parent, you know it's important to have clear boundaries, but you also want to be caring and compassionate, right? Well, I'm Camilla McGill, and as a seasoned parenting coach and mum of four, I'm excited to give you the principles, tools, and inspiration you need to raise amazing kids. Welcome to Raising Kids with Love and Boundaries. 

   📍  📍 Today I'm talking about how to get your kids to listen to you and I'm sharing three key strategies to help you talk so your kids will actually want to listen to you.

And,  Also, I want you to listen to the end because I'm going to answer this week's question from Naomi. Why does my child chew me out when I ask her to get her shoes on? She's all ears if I whisper so much as, if I so much as whisper the word chocolate. Does this sound familiar? So stay tuned because I will be answering that at the end and I promise you that you're going to walk away today with tools that you can start using immediately. 

So, first up, to get our kids to listen, consider their agenda versus ours. So, I just want to start with like a shift in perspective. When parents say, why won't my kid listen to me? What they're actually asking is, why won't my child stop what they're doing, and listen And do what I've asked, right away, without a fuss.

But here's the thing, kids have their own agendas. They're often deeply engrossed in something that feels incredibly important to them. Whether it's building a block tower, doing a drawing, playing with their Lego. And now look, imagine you're in the middle of replying to a really important email and they interrupt with, where's my Peppa Pig?

You might find yourself tuning them out, right? Well, it's the same for them. So we have to manage our expectations. It really is crucial. And instead of assuming that they're  ignoring us out of disrespect, just recognize that they are prioritizing their world. Just like we do. So pausing to acknowledge ourselves, to ourselves, that they have different priorities and focus before making a request really can make all the difference to our empathy and our understanding.

But here is a side note, do not expect them to listen if they're on a screen. Pause it or take the screen away first.  So I hope that strategy number one It's useful, and here is strategy number two to get our kids to listen. How you say it is crucial. This is a big one. The way we speak to our kids, our tone of voice, the words that we choose, and how we frame our request does, really does make a big difference.

So, I'm going to give you an example. And this happens so much with us as parents.  Instead of saying, Why haven't you cleaned up this mess? So you walk in and you see their room, and maybe you've asked them already, and you've come in and you've, and nothing has been, has done. Why haven't you cleaned up this mess, we might say.

I want you to phrase it differently. Say something like,  State what you see. Oh, I can see toys everywhere. And we need to have a clear floor before dinner time, bath time, whatever is coming up next. Um, so let's tidy this up together. Now you might say to you, uh, say, you know, you might well be thinking, well, you know, I would say that if they just did what I've asked.

But we really have to be aware that our tone of voice,  how they hear us.  Really does make a huge difference. What we say and how we say it makes a huge difference to how they hear us. Now, let's think about it. If you were talking to another adult, you'd never say anything like that. We just speak, think that we, we can sort of get away with speaking to our children with that kind of tone of voice.

But I promise you, it doesn't work. Another tip is to keep it short. Kids, tune out our long lectures. And if we've got more than one or two sentences in our to do list, they've probably stopped listening halfway through. So watch our tone. A warm, enthusiastic tone is just so much more likely to get their attention than a sharp tone or one that is just, you know, a sharp, critical tone. 

Look, I get it. We might start off with a friendly tone, but when we've asked five times, that's when we start to lose it. Nobody said that being a parent is easy, but I am here to help you make it so much easier. And today's episode is one of the many strategies that I teach parents with a step by step approach, but it really is an incredibly valuable one. 

However, if you'd like to get my personal help, um, with things like this, you're very welcome to book a discovery call. Just see the show notes below or go to my website, myparentingsolutions. com. I was just talking the other day to Melissa, my client who I worked with some years ago. She was going through a terrible time with her six year old, and I was actually just, I was checking in with her.

years, quite some years after we'd worked together. She was having endless fights with Clara. Clara was just refusing every single request. Now parents often ask me if they work with me, will it stick? Will I remember what I was taught? Well, Melissa and her husband and I, as I said, we worked together about four years ago and she reported that it is still So much better to how it was  

so she said that the biggest thing that she has stopped doing is using her angry voice and she has trained herself to use her kind and positive voice. And she said that really did change everything between them. Four years on and it's still working. They have a really strong, close relationship instead of being at war.

And when she does start to lose it, she said her oldest son will say something like, Mom, tone of voice. Um, she particularly used to clash with her daughter, Clara. So, on to strategy three to get kids to listen. Engage their cooperation.  Kids respond so much better when they feel involved rather than bossed around or told what to do and When they've broken down the task. 

Kids get overwhelmed when a task feels too complicated or unachievable  You know, which is why if we say to them do all your homework They will often run a mile and Because to them it feels too complicated or unachievable, which is why we need to help break it down. So one way to do this, if we're talking about a simple task like tidying their toys, is to turn it into a game.

So instead of saying, tidy your room, You might say, or tidy your toys, we might say, Hey, let's see how fast we can get all the red toys into this box. Or all the puzzle pieces put away. Or all the Lego pieces into this box. So we can break it down by colour, or by which type of toy it is. We can also offer limited choices.

That can really help as well actually. So would you like to start with the blocks? Or would you like to put the books away?  We've got to make the atmosphere positive, maybe putting some music on, singing in a, you know, in a sing, like a tidy up song, anything that makes it more fun.  You know, these strategies give your child a sense of control, and they also make the task feel less like a chore and more like a shared activity.

Look, yes, of course, we'd all like to just tell them to tidy their room, walk away and come back to a play area that is immaculately tidy and clean. But it's very, a very, very rare child that will do that. You might be thinking, why do I have to make such a big deal out of a simple task? Why don't they just do it  without making a fuss? 

But it really does come and come back to strategy one about managing our expectations and also strategy two, which is using that tone of voice that means that we prioritize. Our connection and our relationship with our children over everything. It doesn't mean that we do the job ourselves or doesn't mean that we fail to have boundaries.

We're just putting our focus on what works and being connected to them, breaking tasks down, using a good tone of voice. They all work. So now on to strategy four.  And this is something that comes up all the time in all areas of my work. But we're talking today about how to get our kids to listen to us.

So this one is all about that connection. When kids resist, it's so often because they feel unheard or they feel misunderstood. So instead of dismissing their emotions, we need to validate them. So if your child says, I don't want to stop playing to tidy up. It's not because they're rude and disrespectful.

It's because that's how they feel. They're really enjoying what they're doing. And frankly, tidying up is boring. I know I mentioned tidying up all the time, but you know, let's, you can replace that with whatever other things you're asking them to do. So, you know, if we respond by validating that emotion, I know.

It's really hard to stop what you're doing when you're having so much fun.  You've just been really enjoying that game. You've been playing a long time. And actually, you've been really creative  there. So, you know, that is engaging in how they're feeling about it. Um, and it's recognizing the emotion and it's adding in some praise that they have actually been creative.

We want them to stop now, but they don't want to stop. So we might, you know, suggest something simple, like how about we set a timer for five more minutes? Now you might say to me, Oh, you know, I've done that. And after five minutes, they still create for us. Well, because there are other strategies involved, but this is what I'm talking to you about today.

Um, and these things can really help. So validating their emotions, the reason why we do this is that it shows them that we understand their perspective, which does really make them much more likely to cooperate. It is a basic human need to be understood. So look, something like refusing to put their shoes on in the morning, this isn't about wanting to make us late. It's that they prefer the coziness of home to the idea of facing the day in another environment, even though we know that they're going to enjoy it when they get there, usually, not always.

So,  I hope that that has been useful so far, so back to this week's question of the week. It comes from Naomi who says, my child completely tunes me out when I ask her to get her shoes on. It's as if I'm not there and it drives me crazy, especially when we're in a hurry. We either wind up fighting or I just do it myself to avoid an argument. What should I do?

So here's my advice. Connect before you direct.  I know this is really hard because we're in a hurry and we just want to shout the instruction, get your shoes on, but this will ultimately save time and also build our connection. How often do we shout a command across the room? So I recommend, and I know this is really hard. I was terribly guilty of not doing this, but when I did, I know, knew that it would make a big difference. So get down to your child's level. Use their name and make eye contact. For example,  look at that Ella.

Look at the puzzle that you've been working on. It looks like you've been really enjoying that a lot.  And then you pause and you say, Ella, I need you to do something now.  And then engage with empathy. We can say something like, Look, I can see you're really busy with your puzzle. It looks so much fun.  And, so we're going to avoid saying BUT, because it negates what we've just said.

So we say AND, I need you. to get your shoes on before we go out. So how about you leave the unfinished puzzle there and then you can play it after school.  Then we've got to acknowledge their progress. Any small step they take, you move towards your shoes. That's a great start. We tend to leap in very quickly with, Can you just hurry up? We want to acknowledge progress because what children might do, and this is really typical and this is why our blood will start to boil, they'll lay on the floor and say, I don't want to do anymore, why'd you make me do this?

Come on, put them on now! But remember back to strategy two, how we say it is crucial. So by showing empathy and breaking down the task into  steps, you're just so much more likely to get cooperation without a fight.

So I want to recap today about what we've talked about. But remember, if you wanted to book a discovery call with me, I've also got some great free resources. So just check out the, uh, the show notes below or go to my website, My Parenting. Solutions. com. So to recap, we've talked about four strategies to help to get our kids to listen to us.

Number one, manage our own expectations about whether or not we should expect that they stop what they're doing straight away and do what we've asked without a fuss. It's unrealistic. Watch our tone of voice, which I've mentioned numerous times throughout today's episode. Engage their cooperation. You know, knowing that the more positive we are, um, the, the, the clearer we are about it, uh, the more that we do things with them that will really engage their corporation.

and validate their feelings. Validate the stuff that you know they find boring, they don't want to do, they've got other agenda, they want to do other things, where we need to validate their feelings. These tools really are effective. In fact, I'd call them transformative when we practice them consistently.

I know that consistency is really, really difficult. It's the hardest part of being a parent, which is why I'd love to help you more,  So again, just have a look at the show notes and see ways that I could help you with a discovery call or grabbing one of my free guides. Uh, there's a great one, which is about getting kids to listen using my great method.

Some of which I've touched on today. If this episode resonated with you, Please make sure that you follow, um, hit follow or subscribe and for more tips and strategies. And don't forget to tune in again to the next episode. Next episode you're going to meet Hannah and I'm going to be coaching Hannah on some particular challenges she has.