How to Stop Yelling and Get Your Child to Listen

If New York is the greatest city in the world, then its subway system can be considered the essence of greatness. I wonder how many New Yorkers are still reading this and not thinking something is off here. Who am I trying to kid? Calling New York City’s subway the essence of greatness. Most of us just use the subway system to get from point A to point B. How great can that be, considering the condition of the system and all that comes along with it?

Over the many years using the subway system I learned that taking the ride with an open-minded and curious attitude, the kind of courageous state of mind you’re in when entering the spooky house, you can learn quite a bit on your journey. It still doesn’t qualify the subway system as being great, but it at least makes it a bit more bearable.

The subway can be a very noisy place, especially if you happen to ride it when the school children and teenagers come home from school. The enthusiasm can get to you. The decibel level too.

Today, however, neither the enthusiasm nor the decibel level irked me. As I observed a mother and a child interact, I started thinking about how we adults communicate with children and why it is sometimes hard to get them to hear and listen to us.

You see, the mom and child standing next to me for an hour-long subway ride were not talking; they were signing. I don’t know much about sign language, how it works, or how to even sign a single letter or word. One thing was clear though: The two were having a very lively discussion. In the span of an hour they were angry, happy, arguing, and agreeing. I wasn’t eavesdropping; they were just signing very “loudly,” flailing their arms to emphasize their opinions and accentuating their facial expressions to enthusiastically agree or disagree with each other.

This got me thinking about the essence of communication, and I jotted down a couple of insights I had at that moment regarding adult-child communication and its challenges.

1) Are you using too many words?

Using too many words, as in lecturing a child and giving speeches on his wrongdoings, makes it very difficult for many children to listen and process what you are saying. This is especially true for children who have attention issues such as ADD/ADHD. By the time you are done with your introduction and moving on to the main point, you’re lucky to still have a child standing in front of you. Some individuals who use sign language also use spoken language, but, by observation, it appears they use less verbal language than sign language, and I think there’s a lesson in this.  When communicating with children, less words is oftentimes more.

2) Do you have your child’s attention?

When observing mother and son on the train, the role attention plays in communication was blatant. They were looking at each other the whole time, and they were tuned in to each other more than other casual communicators usually are. When your voice is competing with the voice coming out of earbuds, computers, or video games, the odds are somewhat against you getting attention to your voice. Press pause or pull the plug first. Additionally, although the ears do the actual hearing, the eyes’ role in communication should not be overlooked. Getting down to the child’s eye level is advice as old as it is fail-proof, so bend down for a moment and make sure your child hears you with more than just her ears. When communicating with children, don’t start before you have their attention.

3) Are you only using words?

As illustrated in this post’s introduction, communication is not only the use of words. A study done at UCLA indicates that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues. Nonverbal communication consists of: facial expressions, tone of voice, and body motions. You do not have to be a ballet dancer or circus clown when talking to your child, but using words that do not match up with what you communicate nonverbally is a hinderance to your message being relayed successfully. Gestures are sometimes more powerful than words, and facial expressions more poignant than conversation. When communicating with children, use words but don’t forget the importance of facial expressions, tone of voice, and body motions.

4) Is your message getting lost in your stream of thought?

Going off on a tangent can be great. Getting up on a soapbox feels empowering. Free associating is cathartic. The problem is that all of the above are not effective methods of communication, particularly with a child. In marketing there is something called the “elevator speech,” in which you must have such a clear and concise idea about your product or service that you can pitch the idea to someone in the time it takes to ride an elevator with him or her. Creating an elevator speech forces one to focus on the core message he wants to communicate, leaving out all the extraneous details. When you talk to your child, is your message clear and focused? Or is it buried in a forest of words? When communicating with children, try using the elevator speech technique – deliver your message in a concise, focused way.

Communicating successfully, whether with adults or with children, is an art that requires practice.

5) Does your message get lost in too much emotion?

The fight or flight response is the way our brains react when it gets a message that we are in danger: to either fight the danger or to flee from it. When we, or children, get yelled at, our brains instantly go into the fight or flight mode. The child starts thinking: should I stay and fight or argue with you or should I run from you? Whatever the child’s decision, one thing is certain: the brain cannot be bothered to listen to the message contained in your screams when it is busy with self-preservation. When communicating with children, use affect and emotion as needed; overdoing it won’t leave many cute little brain cells to process your message.

6) Can your child process what she hears?

It might sound like a strange question, but hearing and listening are not synonymous. In fact, there are many children who can hear perfectly well when given a “hearing test”  by an audiologist but behave as if and appear to be hearing impaired. If your child shows the symptoms outlined here, such as appearing not to hear you or others, constantly asking “what,” and being slow at processing information, he or she may have what is know as auditory processing disorder (APD). APD is not a hearing disorder but a listening disorder. The child hears perfectly well, but the brain doesn’t exactly know what to do with the information it receives. There are various treatment methods to treat APD. When communicating with children and there is consistent listening difficulties, consider making an appointment at your local audiologist to check for APD.

7) Can your child hear?

This point is the obvious one, but an often-overlooked one. Is it possible that your child has hearing loss? I recently spoke to an audiologist who told me that there are many children being diagnosed with ADD/ADHD and/or autism spectrum disorder when in fact they have hearing impairments. Your child may have gotten the perfect results at his hearing test as a baby; in the interim he might be experiencing hearing loss for a range of reasons. For example, a common although temporary, cause for hearing difficulty in children is middle ear fluid. Fluid buildup in a child’s ear blocks sound from entering the inner ear where hearing occurs. If your child shows the symptoms outlined here, such as  appearing not to hear you or others, constantly asking “huh?”or “what,” and often looking very closely at people’s faces when they talk, your child may be experiencing some hearing loss. When communicating with children and there is consistent hearing difficulties, consider making an appointment with your local audiologist and/or pediatric ENT to check  for hearing loss.

8) Just a humorous illustration: The stop sign and the lessons it teaches us about communication. Enjoy.

We humans are social creatures, and communication is king. When working and parenting children we often find it hard to get our points across successfully and without much frustration. It’s a constant challenge. Although language skills in the majority of children develops spontaneously, communication skills do not. This list is not meant to be an exhaustive Communication 101 course, but I hope it moves you toward the idea that communicating successfully, whether with adults or with children, is an art that requires practice.

What are your thoughts on communication? What makes for successful versus unsuccessful communication between adults and children?

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Tagged as: ADD, ADHD, Auditory Processing, Auditory Processing Disorder, Communication, Language Skills, Parenting