3 Steps to Compliance

I didn't realize it had been so long since I have posted on this blog - I am a little embarrassed about it, but here goes. This blog will kind of feed into another one that I wrote earlier about following directions, in fact it might even repeat, but I believe it bears repeating.

I teach what I call '3 Steps to Compliance' to reprogram children to follow directions.

Step 1 - Give the direction and wait to see if they comply (usually no more than a minute). If they do not comply, move to step 2.
Step 2 - Simply state, "That was a direction." Make eye contact with them and walk away (again allowing only about a minute.) If still no compliance, move to step 3.
Step 3 - Simply state - "What was the direction I gave you?" When they repeat it, praise them for listening and a simple encouragement 'oh good, you did hear it, move along and follow my direction.' Should be enough. Honestly, most of the families that I have had put this into practice, never have to move onto step 3.

The families I have worked with who have put this into practice, cannot believe how easy it is. I explain in changing the way that directions are being given, they are in a sense, reprogramming their children. Children in this day and age (especially those who do not seem to follow directions when asked) are not really listening - they are listening to when Mom yells or when Dad's voice tone changes or even when a parent threatens a consequence. Then they know their parents mean business. It doesn't have to be that way.

Try it - 3 Steps to Compliance, it works.

To Consequence Or Not To Consequence

It would be nice if there were classes that are more geared for parenting as we get closer to the age of parenting. I am sure some of the reasons that these classes do not exist until we are actually parents is for the fact that many of us would go back to our parents and say, ‘you did this wrong, that wrong,’ and ‘I won’t listen to you talk to me like this anymore.’

However, as parents we have to discipline. I know everyone has their own way of doing things, and whether or not you believe a little swat now and then is alright or not, is a personal choice. I believe. I honestly prefer time-outs – see the blog on time outs for more guidance there. However, there will come the time that time-outs or a swat on the bottom is not enough and there has to be an extension of the time out.

One of the first things to remember is that you do not have to make the decision for the consequence right at the time you correct them. As a parent you have a right and a responsibility to think about the consequence and make sure you are calm enough to be giving a consequence. Again this goes to the benefit of time-outs. Also you might need to discuss the consequence with your co-parent. So much damage to credibility and trust occurs when one parent gives a consequence and the other parent talks them out of it or overrides it. Take your time – if your co-parent is not home, simply let the child know. I have to talk this over with – whomever when they get home tonight and we will let you know your consequence then.

The next thing that would be very important is to make the consequence reasonable, fair and related consequences. Basically, make the time fit the crime. A child that scribbles on the wall – cleaning the wall plus another is a fair and related consequence. A child that writes in a book, could do some chores to pay for a new copy of the book – do not increase their allowance if they are getting one, or it would also be fair to make that child write every word on the book that they scribbled on – if it is a picture book, they could copy all the words in the book. Obviously this has to be a child of writing age – younger than that, a time out should be sufficient and educating them on the books they can and cannot color in.

Sometimes it is hard coming up with a consequence that seems fair or related to the behavior or action being addressed. These can be tough, but one of the things to remember is the importance of not giving a consequence that you can’t follow all the way through. Last year I had a brother who was having trouble with one of his children at school and interacting with other kids, he tried to give her the benefit of the doubt and opportunities to be honest. As a consequence, if he found out she was not being honest (in addition to be the behaviors that were a concern), he stated he would take away her Christmas. He told me later that he wished he hadn’t done that – it was harder on him and his wife than it would have been on the child.

I stressed that we cannot make decisions on consequences without considering what we willing to implement. If you do not follow through with a consequence that is stated, there is a credibility that is lost that allows the child to think, ‘I won’t really get in trouble if I do it again.’ I think my recommendation at the time was to allow her to open her presents with the understanding that they were going into storage and she would need to earn them back, item by item. But then I also stressed that they could not be used again as a consequence – once she earned the item, she would get to keep it and they would need to consequence her as they would at different points in the year when they didn’t have gifts to use as motivation.

I explained they would need a clear plan for earning back the items – she had been on a checklist before and they could do it on a plan of earning 75% of her checks could earn her an item back and after 4 weeks of earning 75% they could move it to two items for another month, etc. until she earned all of her gifts back. I am not sure what they decided to do, but it was a hard lesson for them on follow through.

Follow through is key on consequences as well as rewards. Above when I talked about a child whose behaviors are poor in school and poor social skills, I recognize that it is hard to come up with fair consequences. We are past the point of a bite for a bite, as well as we recognize that while we cannot force a child with poor social skills to interact with others, and we also cannot keep him/her out of social situations. That would be more detrimental – how could social skills be learned. So what do you do?

That is when a reward chart or something like that becomes more necessary. Praise the positives you see, little rewards that can be made into big deals. You get to pick tonight’s dinner or dessert, stickers, a sticker chart to show the good days – start out by a reward for every 10 stickers – don’t make them have to be 10 stickers in a row but 10 stickers, make a party of it, even if it’s just in the family. Shower the child with praise for the good days, share disappointment for the bad, use time-outs if you have to, but make this more a focus on the positives and less of a focus on the negatives. Coach them, ‘let’s see if you can do better tomorrow.’ ‘What are some of the bad choices you made today? What could you have done differently? What will you do tomorrow?’ These are the teaching questions we asking in helping a child to recognize what he/she has done wrong and how they can handle the situation differently.

Consequences happen, need to be implemented and ideally will be teaching tools for parents. Remember, think about the consequence before stating what it will be – there is nothing wrong with saying, ‘I’m thinking about taking away you’re Christmas, that is how angry I am with you right now, but I want to think about the consequence before I tell you what it is.’ That still allows the child to know that you are greatly disappointed, but does not set you up to have to implement a consequence that you wish you didn’t have to follow through with. Because remember, follow through is just as important as giving a consequence. On a final note, not all poor choices or behaviors require a consequence, sometimes a time out is enough and sometimes it should be an opportunity to coach your child to make different decisions.

What Happens When I Get To 'Five?'

…Or three – what ever the number is that you have established when you are expecting a child to follow a direction. It is important that they know what number they are expected to respond by. Initially when setting up a routine like counting to aid them in making a decision to follow a direction or not, it would be nice to start it off by saying something along the lines of, ‘I’m going to count to five and you need to follow my direction by the time I get there.’

By the time I get to five, not after. It’s a very simple practice to start. ‘One…Two…Three…Four…Five.’ If they have responded by the time you reached five, you simply praise the child. ‘Thank you for following my direction.’ There should be a nice pause between the counting, but not too long. Also it is not fair to rush through the counting, ‘onetwothreefourfive.’ What would be the point of counting then. The goal here is to help them to rethink their choices. Helping them to learn that, ‘I have been given a direction and I need to follow that direction within a reasonable amount of time.’

If the child has not followed the direction by the time you reach five, it is important to follow through with the consequence. Sometimes the consequence is just a time out – and sometimes you have already said what it will be and you need to follow through. I will discuss consequences in another entry, but the important thing to remember is to follow through. ‘If you do not start picking up the room by the time I count to five, you are going to take a time out.’ I will also be discussing time outs in another entry. But remember to follow through. Follow through, follow through, follow through.

I can’t say it enough – when you have given a direction and then given them a time limit (like counting), you must also follow through with either praise for following direction or the consequence for not. If you do not, what did they learn from your counting but to also count to five. We all know how cute that is – when the child jumps in and starts counting with you. But laughing at it every time, probably will not be helpful in the long run, unless you are just doing it to teach them to count.

Checkers Teach Life Lessons

Checkers taught me so many lessons. I believe that many of these simple games that we learned when we were children were the cornerstone to our learning. Chutes and Ladders, Old Maid, Go Fish, LIFE, Monopoly. We learned the simple lessons of following directions, accepting the answers we were given and the rules of fairness. The added benefit was, of course, the time I got to spend with my parents.

When’s the last time you sat down and played a game with your child. Do you have a child begging to spend time with you, having difficult following directions or accepting the answer given? Do they have trouble interacting with their peers; are they getting in trouble so much that you feel like you spend a good portion of your time trying to deal with them? Do you play games with them? Or has Nintendo become the game that you can play with them, or the game you can use as either a reward or the way to get them out of your hair for a while?

You know what I am going to say. Start with the basics. Start over, pull out the game board or the cards and sit them down. Play by the rules and teach them the rules. Better yet, teach them to be a better player, you see a move or know they have a card that would be better to play – stop the game and show them their options, help them to see why one choice is better than the other. Allow them to play on their own and develop some independence, but don’t be afraid to jump in with a suggestion every now and then. Spend time with them, not worrying about the winning and the losing, but the better way the play the game. These games are such a simple place to start. You have a child who won’t listen, who won’t follow directions; this is the place to start.

When I start working 1:1 with a child who has trouble with impulse control or following directions, the first thing we do is start playing bit of UNO. It’s a good game to start with – follow the rules in this one and help them with playing the better hand. Depending on the age – I don’t necessarily play to the 500 points, but instead will play best out of 11 or something along those lines. So many children know this game that it serves as a good one to start to develop a rapport. You may not need to start in that area.

The next thing I do is teach them a new game, teach them checkers, mancala, or trouble. That way I get to start fresh, the rules are still there to follow – it’s something new for them, so my focus isn’t on teaching them to win, but teaching them how to stop and think and look ahead at what the best move would be. You may argue that many of these computer games can be considered to teach them the same thing. I disagree – they are missing the parental guidance, the human touch and someone to teach them what might be their next move.

Try it, over the next month, spend 15-30 minutes a day playing a game with your children and see if there is a difference in their behaviors, their response to you and their control of their impulses. It works.

The Steps to Following Directions

The steps to following directions, easy for most of us, right? Just do it. An adult tells you to do something and you simply do it, at least that’s the way it was when we were kids. I couldn’t imagine flat out refusing to follow a direction that my mom or dad gave. Now did I have ways around it, ways to sneak and refuse to do what they were saying, uh, yeah? No secret there, even though I tell people I was the perfect child, I know that I wasn’t. I had more trouble with accepting the answer given, I would usually sneak and do it anyway, but I was also the kind of child – I got caught at everything.

When I was at the hospital, we taught the steps to following directions in four simple steps: 1. Look and Listen to the person, 2. Say ‘okay’ and sometimes repeat the direction, 3. Go and complete the task, and finally, 4. After completing the task, come back and say, “I did it.” Simple, isn’t it. We would practice this over and over with the children, we would teach the parents, we would have them write and draw a little picture diagram. It was all good; I still use this mode when I am working with some of the children I work with individually. I make sure their parents have a copy of the steps and we role play practicing this. While I think this is one of the ways to go, it can work, but it calls for the parent to be consistent.

We live in different times. It doesn’t always work this easy. We worked so hard at not being our own parents that we have done some things wrong. Our parents did some things wrong, their parents did some things wrong, and our children will do something wrong when they themselves become parents. Ideally we are all learning from each other, and are not so stuck on ‘I’ll never be my mother/father,’ that we can take the things that worked, recognized the things that made us better people, and implement some of that into our own parenting styles.

I guess my main challenge at this time to many parents would be to re-claim their parenting rights, re-establish who is the parent. Recognize and lay claim to ‘because I said, so.’ I have no problem talking things through and rationalizing why I gave a direction to a child, I don’t care how old they are, I will talk them through and explain the directions, if they feel it is necessary…after they have complied with the directions. My thoughts are ‘do what I say, when I say it, and later, if you still have a question about it come and talk to me then.’ I won’t sit there and discuss it until the direction is completed. I start with stating the directions, repeating the direction once if necessary, making a simple statement of ‘that was a direction,’ if they still have not complied and then starting to count, ‘one, two, three’ and usually by two they have complied. I usually count to five if necessary; you can see my reasoning for that on another post, titled, what happens when I reach 5?

Simply, there are a couple of things you can do to re-teach or initially teach children to follow directions. Teach them to say, ‘yes, ma’am, yes, sir.’ I do have to add that I have never really done this, it is the point that I am trying to make. Teach them to acknowledge that they have been given a directions – it can be as simply as ‘okay.’ When I worked at the hospital, I would give a direction, or an answer and the children would respond in a variety of ways: arguing, bargaining, pouting, yelling, etc. – you get the picture. I would simply say, “You mean ‘okay, Bill.’” And I would repeat this until I was given the same response. For awhile it was funny because as I was teaching this, when I would take over for other staff, they would tell me, ‘I got 3 ‘okay, Bill’s’ today and we would laugh. But I would teach them the same thing; challenge the child to recognize they have been given a direction.

Second of all, have them complete the task. And then acknowledge that they completed it, they might not need to come and report they did it, go ahead and praise them. Allow them to see and immediate reward for following your directions. And sometimes if there was a lot of arguing/balking about the initial direction, offer the opportunity to discuss it and why they didn’t want to do it or felt it unfair. ‘Thank you for following my directions, you seemed to have some trouble with it, did you want to talk about it?’ Often they won’t, I think the fun has been taken out of the fight; they’ve already completed what you asked so there is no getting out of it, no argument. Sometimes, there is a valid discussion that you may not have been able to say or see and can have the foresight to consider the next time you give a direction.


Too simple or too difficult – what do you think. I have parents tell me, it can’t be that easy, I’ve tried, why do I have to be the one to change? Hello, somehow they learned these behaviors, let’s start over, it really is never too late. Give it a try.