One of my TMP Times members wrote in about her 4.5 year old son. She'd been trying the two-choices script (i.e., “You have two choices - blue jacket or red one, this shirt or that one”), and he wasn't having it.
She wrote: "He 'sees through' that and realizes that there is a decision behind that that I took. And I understand that, I get annoyed by that tactic myself when sales people are trying it with me."
This realization is so real. Children can see right through us sometimes.
My daughters are 8 and 9. They know how to shower. They've known for years. I'll say "go take a shower" and they'll moan and dawdle and I'll end up walking them upstairs to get them started anyway or I'll come back 10 minutes later to find the water running, both of them back in their room, completely absorbed in something else.
It used to grind my gears (still does sometimes) because in the moment it looks like carelessness. It feels like they just don't care about wasting water or listening or any of it.
But what I try to remind myself when I catch myself having those thoughts is: It’s never that deep.
The dawdling, the resistance, the "no to both jackets"- it's rarely actually about the jacket or the shower. It's information.
In this issue, I'm answering these questions:
- Why does my kid resist even when I give them choices?
- Does the two-choices script not work with my child, or am I using it wrong?
- What's my child actually trying to tell me when they refuse to listen?
- How do I hold a boundary without making the resistance worse?
- What do I say instead, and does the answer change as they get older?
