My Boys Can Listen. How not to nag your kids

Stop squawking and LISTEN!!

I've been around more than a few professional nags in my time and they are a hard bunch to listen to. Not only that, their nagging is pointless because they rarely get what they want from the person they are nagging. 

I don't nag my husband and I sure wasn't going to nag my kids. In my humble opinion, anyone who is constantly bombarded by a stream of instructions - be it nagging or otherwise - quickly learns to tune out ALL of it and not listen to anything. When the person doing the nagging is the parent and the child is tuning them out, the parent usually alters their tone or changes their language to get the child's attention. Things escalate.

So when the boys were small and I found myself asking them again and again and AGAIN to do things I suddenly realized I was turning into a nag.  Furthermore, our quiet peaceful household was being disrupted by ME who was doing all the yelling and screaming. 

I was turning into someone I didn't like and I wanted to stop it in a hurry.

If you catch yourself nagging your kids, you may want to try some of the tactics that worked for me: 

• tell your children about your new No Nagging Rule. Be clear! Look them in the eyes while you tell them. The boys were very small (about 2 or 3) when I implemented my own No Nagging Rule. I told them both "Mommy is tired of asking you to do things so many times. From now on I'm only going to ask you twice."
• be prepared to be ignored. Chances are they will ignore your No Nagging Rule just like they've ignored everything else you've said for the past 2 years. Stick to your policy. I always gave the boys choices (see my earlier post) but if I asked them twice to do something with no results, I would make the choice for them and step into action. Silently. If they asked me what I was doing, I would tell them that I asked them twice, they didn't listen to Mommy so now we were doing things my way. This always resulted in major protest as well as a lot of action on their part.
• be prepared for set backs. The boys would be great for very long periods of time. Months would go by with them listening to their choices and they'd make decisions and things like cleaning up and getting ready for bed would be smooth sailing. Then they would go back to ignoring me. I'd find myself asking them repeatedly to do things then the 'you're being a nag' alarm bell would go off and I'd have to start all over again by looking them in the eyes and explaining the No Nagging Rule. This cycle lasted for years but I always stuck to my policy of not allowing myself to turn into a nag.
• instead of repeating your instructions more often than your rule allows, ask them "What did I say?" They'll be able to tell you, believe me. If they aren't hopping into action, you'll have to take the conversation to the level of consequences. For example, the boys always prefer me to tuck them in rather than daddy. If I asked them twice to come and get ready for bed and they didn't listen, I'd tell them fine, daddy would tuck them in. Howls of protest but too bad so sad, I would not give in. For weeks afterward every time I said "Time for bed" they were there in seconds.
• they dish out what you serve so don't say anything to your children that you don't want said back to you. Thank goodness my husband and I don't swear so that's never been an issue but I've also been extremely careful never to tell the boys to "SHUT UP!!!" (even though I've wanted to on many occasions) because I don't want them saying that to me. Fair is fair. But what is very funny is now the youngest will say "Mommy, I asked you to make my sandwich and you're not making it. WHAT DID I SAY?" Yeah well.

A few days ago I asked the boys if they wanted a snack with their hot chocolate and since both ignored me their trays stayed empty. They wailed pathetically when they realized this but I said "I asked you and you ignored me so if you want a snack, get it yourself." They've been on point ever since and likely will be for months to come. 

Saying the same thing over and over is exhausting and constantly being ignored is hard on the self-esteem. But with a little fortitude and a lot of consistency, you can remain the normal person you love and not degenerate into someone you don't want to be like, for example, a professional nag.