Page 95 - The Intentional Parent

Chapter Nine Provide Information
M ost every time we speak to kids we provide them with information, a lot of which they often tend to ignore, and sometimes I can’t really blame them.
Some parents give kids waaaaay too many orders at once, and this happens to be so at all ages, in my opinion. I recently recorded the following conversation between a mom and her ten year old child while they were walking past me apparently on the child’s way home from school. Now mind you this is ONLY the conversation that transpired in the minute or so it took for them to walk by:
What did you do in school today?
I just asked you what you did in school.
It can’t be that you did nothing, you had to do something.
Did you remember to show the homework we did last night? Did you eat your lunch?
I don’t want you drinking soda during lunch, or juice. Just water, okay?
For this portion of the conversation, the child was literally non- responsive.
The way I saw it, he was practicing ignoring her. I am completely awestruck whenever I see a kid practicing ignoring their parents. Because, what I can’t believe is why parents will then ask me why their kids don’t listen to them or why their kids tune them out.
Less is more. Kids often pay more attention to what their fathers tell them than what their mothers tell them. That’s because most kids
The Intentional Parent by Peter J. Favaro, Ph.D. 95