137. How to Get Kids to Listen the First Time

If you’ve ever found yourself repeating the same instruction three, four, or five times while your child seems to completely ignore you, you’re not alone. In this episode, I walk you through a brain-first parenting framework that helps children actually hear, process, and act on what you ask the first time. Instead of escalating, repeating, or assuming defiance, we look at what’s really happening inside a child’s developing brain and nervous system—and how small leadership shifts from parents can dramatically improve cooperation.

I share five powerful steps that help children listen more effectively while also protecting the parent-child relationship. These tools work with toddlers, school-age kids, and even teens because they focus on communication that matches how developing brains actually function. If you want calmer mornings, fewer power struggles, and a way to lead your family without yelling, this episode will give you practical strategies you can start using immediately.

If you'd like to get the show notes for this episode, head to:

 https://leighgermann.com

Transcript

If you've ever lost your patience just trying to get your child to listen, this one's for you. This is Leadership Parenting: Five Powerful Steps to Get Kids to Listen the First Time.

Did you know that resilience is the key to confidence and joy? As moms, it's what we want for our kids, but it's also what we need for ourselves. My name is Leigh Germann. I'm a therapist and I'm a mom. Join me as we explore the skills you need to know to be confident and joyful. Then get ready to teach these skills to your kids. This is Leadership Parenting, where you learn how to lead your family by showing them the way.

Hello there, friends, and welcome back to Leadership Parenting Podcast. If you are like me, one of the hardest things to manage as a parent is that moment when you've asked your child to do something very clearly, very calmly, and they just don't do it. Today I want to talk about why that happens and maybe get some ideas of how to go about working with that with our kids. Because most parenting advice, and there is a lot of it out there, it quietly assumes that if a child doesn't listen, they are being defiant.

But here's what neuroscience and child development actually tells us. For most children, not listening is not a motivation problem. It's often a capacity problem. Listening requires attention, a regulated nervous system, language processing, a temporary thinking space to hold instructions, and the ability to plan and act on them. There is a long list of all the things that need to happen for our kids to pay attention and then to execute on the plan or the direction that we're giving them. And those systems are all still developing in children. They're at different places. And they're literally under construction at all different phases.

So instead of us asking, how do I make my child listen? I want us to start thinking about this question. How do I lead my child in a way that their brain can actually follow? Very different question, isn't it? And that shift, I think, is very powerful.

So before we can talk about what to do specifically to help your child be able to listen and then act on the things you're asking them to do, I think we need to talk about us as parents, because most of the time we go right into parenting content about how to do this. And I don't want to skip over this because what's happening in your body when your kids don't listen is actually really powerful. It really matters because the framework that we're going to talk through today, it only really works if we're regulated enough to use it. It takes a lot of upper brain power to do the things that we're going to talk about today.

And when we get upset, and I I would often say rightly so, because it's so frustrating when you're the CEO of your home company here and you've got a lot of people you're managing and a lot of stuff to do, and you don't feel like people are working for you and with you, then it can be very, very, very difficult. And so we get dysregulated, right? It's not a criticism of who we are, it's just biology. When your child ignores you, especially when it's like the third or the fourth time in a row, your nervous system will read that as a threat. Not your conscious thought thinking through that, just a signal that your body picks up and it responds accordingly.

Your heart rate will go up, your jaw will tighten, your voice might get a little sharper or louder, right? We get into that frame of yelling. The part of your brain you need for calm and steady leadership kind of goes off line a little bit. Does that sound familiar to you? I know what that feels like from when I was parenting small children even to today, right? This is why we can know all the right things to do and still find ourselves doing the opposite.

It's not a character flaw. That's always where I want you to go because um, not go to the character flaw, but to recognize it's not a character flaw. It's your nervous system that's getting dysregulated. And isn't it interesting that as adults, we're working with children that often are dysregulated or aren't good at regulating themselves, and we still get dysregulated too. And nervous systems will respond when they get dysregulated.

And so the first job before anything else is to connect, connect with you to regulate yourself. And here's what that can look like in real time. I want you to notice the signal. I don't know where it comes for you. It could be heat in your chest or um kind of a tightness in your shoulders, whatever that is, or your stomach, maybe, whatever that is, that's your cue. It's not a reason to then be critical of your kids or of you. It's just information. And I want you to say something that sounds really uncharacteristic. I want you to say, my nervous system just got activated. I love that phrase because it's very basic. It's saying what is going on with your body.

Next thing I want us to do, slow things down. We don't even need a full pause, just even one breath before we decide what we're going to do next. One second where you can consciously drop into your body and loosen something. Maybe it's roll your shoulders a little bit. This tiny gap between noticing, and maybe you don't even notice your body's tension between that body tension and the gap between what you do, that is your miracle zone. That's your power zone. That's where your leadership lives.

Next step, I want you to talk to yourself like you would talk to somebody you care about, a friend. The things we say inside our heads in those moments can often be really harsh, right? Like we can be very critical of them. Why won't they just listen? What is wrong with them? And then it can also flip back on us, what is wrong with me?

Instead, let's try replacing that with something that is actually true. Their brain is still developing. This is a skill gap, not a character flaw. We've talked about this in one of our most recent episodes on the two kinds of love every child needs. Understanding that we have skills to teach our kids. And if they're not doing something the way we want them to do it, and especially even the way we think we've taught them to do it, I want our first assumption to be that they don't have it down yet. That's so important because that's going to feel a lot safer and help us get a lot calmer rather than they're just completely disobeying me.

So their brain is still developing. Another thing to say, my regulation sets the stage for theirs. If I stay calm, they have a better chance of getting there themselves. Another thought. We can think clearly. Remember, your child cannot learn from a dysregulated parent. They can respond to a dysregulated parent. They might respond out of fear or out of their own sense of anger, but they're not going to really learn from dysregulated parents. And that's because their brain literally needs to feel safe itself before it can absorb teaching, especially deep teaching.

So when we raise our voices, we yell, we bring urgency or threat and intensity into the room, their nervous system activates too. And now we have two dysregulated people, and it's very hard to get where we want to go. Your calm is not weakness. Now, in some families, it it the power came with intensity. And intensity is a nice word for harshness or yelling or anger. And it often can be misunderstood that calm and not being angry, right? Being quiet is weakness.

But I want to say to you, it's absolutely the opposite. Your calm is your whole strategy. And when you can't manage your calm, when you do raise your voice, when the frustration wins, that's not really the end of the situation. That's where it gets a little bit more complicated. Now, the good news is we have repair. Repair is in our back pocket. It should go with us everywhere we go because we need it. We need it a lot because we are not perfect. And we we're gonna talk a little bit more about that later.

But that's why at the beginning of this episode, I wanted to start with you because the most powerful leadership you have is the one you make inside yourself before you ever open your mouth. You lead yourself to a place of calm.

Okay, once you get that clear in your mind that you're taking a deep breath and you're getting ready to make a decision, I want to give you five steps that are in a framework. And there's specific leadership moves that you can use every single day. And here's the core principle that I want you to remember. Children cooperate when communication, that's our communication with them, matches their developmental capacity. So that means the state that their nervous system is in, right? Their temporary thinking space, all those things I listed out to you that they need to have going on to be able to listen to uh direction and follow through on it, that's a lot of stuff that needs to happen. And when that goes well, when our communication with them matches with what their abilities are, then things are gonna go great.

That's our job. And that's why we talk about having two jobs, loving our kids and teaching them the skills. Every time you're asking them to do something, it comes out of our mouth so innocently that we just need this thing done. They need to pick up their shoes, they need to go wash their hands for dinner, they need to turn off the TV, whatever that is. We think we're just giving them a direction that helps our day move smoothly. And we are. But deeper than that, we're teaching them skills. We're hopefully teaching them things that they need to learn to be able to manage themselves eventually. There's a lot on the plate there that the kid is trying to figure out.

And so we want to make our communication to match what it is they're able to do. And so it's really less about obedience and more about teaching the skills that they need to learn. Okay, do you see how that kind of changes this not listening and this talking back and all of that? What I really want you to know is that you are the adult. You hold the leadership, you hold the authority. Now, kids challenge that all the time, but when you know that your authority is your authority, then your child's behavior is going to be seen, hopefully through your eyes, as a skill that they're not very good at, that we're going to help them figure out with practice how to be better at.

So here are the five steps. Connection first. Next is size it right, a patient pause, say what you see, and a helping hand. And let's go through each one.

Step number one, connection first. We want to make the brain available to the thing we're asking our kid to do. Because kids live in these deep focused states. As a matter of fact, it's one of the things that I think I most admire about children that I miss as an adult. I think when they are playing, when they are building, when they're imagining, or even just when they're watching something, if it's on a screen, on a TV, their brain is fully in it. It's like they're wearing invisible noise-canceling headphones.

So when we, especially when we shout instructions from across the room, I don't mean shout like yelling, but like we call out to them from across the room and we think we're communicating. But honestly, the words often don't land in their minds. Think about the last time you might have been involved in something deeply. Maybe you were in a conversation with someone, or maybe you were looking on your phone and you were deeply engrossed in something you were doing, and someone said something to you, and you genuinely didn't really hear what they said. I'm gonna propose to you that that wasn't disrespect. That was where your attention was, and you hadn't shared it with the conversation that was kind of coming in through the other ear. You weren't paying attention to it because you were focused on something else.

We're talking about brain-first leadership, and it starts by making sure the brain is actually available before we give an instruction. Is here's a little bit of what that looks like in practice. When you have a child that's engrossed in something, clearly to make this most clear, we would walk over, crouch to eye level, use a gentle touch on their arm or shoulder, say their name, wait for eye contact. And remember, eye contact is not about control, like look at me, but get their attention. And that would be your signal that connection has been made. And then give them the instruction.

Now, I don't know about you, but with five kids running around my house, to think of doing that every every single time, impossible. I was I would not be able to go from child to child very quietly, tapping them on the shoulder, waiting till they give me their attention, catching their eye, making sure that they truly are attending to me and then ask them the thing I want them to do. It's frustrating. It takes a long time. But you guys, this is what a brain sometimes needs. And if you have children that are listening to you and doing what you need them to do and you don't have to do all of this, then their brain is ready for that level of instruction.

But if you're asking a child to do something over and over again and you're getting that kind of stony glaze or that they're not paying attention to you, a big reason for that may be that they just don't have their attention put on the things you're saying. Now, I know it's very common for us to say they don't want to pay attention. And you know what? We might be right. When you think of a mom asking a child to get up and put their toys away or their shoes away compared to watching Bluey on TV, which would they rather pay attention to? I think Bluey every time. Probably me too, if it was a show I was interested in.

But that doesn't necessarily mean they choose to be defiant. It means that they're leaning toward the thing they're engrossed in and their lack of connection and attention to us as we're talking to them is getting in the way of them listening and following through. Now, this is inconvenient for us, I get it. But when we have a problem with a child listening, this is a brain-based way to address it rather than yelling or punishing or threatening, because we are now actually solving the problem.

And this is another thing for us to think about when we give our directions, right? Because if we're giving directions when they're engrossed in something or that they aren't in earshot or in eyesight or able to be open to the instructions we're giving, then we ourselves may be setting up the situation for failure. So this is something that we're not looking for blame and responsibility. We're looking for opportunities for us to have better interactions and to have more success at what we're trying to teach.

Okay, so eye contact, it's a signal that your connection has been made. And crouching down to eye level matters way more than what people realize. This is a great exercise. Spend a couple of minutes on your knees walking around your house, looking up at everybody that is taller than you, and see for a minute how that feels, how it sounds different, how you don't see eyes and facial expressions in the same way. So anytime we're trying to get a message across, I see it as almost just respectful to be at our child's level and to soften the language and soften the voice that we're using so that a nervous system and a brain can take in the data. We're communicating safety, and safety is what opens up the brain to learning.

Okay, step number two. I call it size it right. Because I want us to make the ask, whatever we're asking our child to do, we want to make it doable. And I think it's honestly maybe one of the most understood steps. Inside your child's brain is what I call a temporary thinking space. We might call it like a whiteboard, right? It's that space where instructions get held, processed, translated into action. And adults have a pretty flexible version of this, and children do not. When we give too many instructions at once, that space gets overwhelmed and the information just kind of disappears before action can actually happen.

So when we say clean up your toys, put on your shoes, grab your backpack, and get in the car, what the child might be experiencing is overload. Sizing it right means matching what we ask to how much our child's brain can actually hold at one time. And there's some rough guidelines here. By around age 18 months, maybe one simple action. I think we'd be all feel pretty happy if our 18-month-old would listen to us and do one simple thing. Around age two, you might be able to put together two closely related actions. Around age three, maybe two unrelated actions. And around age five, maybe three unrelated actions.

So when we give a list of things, it's kind of like you telling me what you want me to get you at the grocery store, and you start giving me 10 or 20 things. I might catch a few of them and maybe a few stand out to me, but I probably would not remember all 20 things that you list for me. You would have overloaded my white space, my temporary thinking space. We do this all the time to our kids. And some of it is just our own overwhelm, right? We're saying out loud all the things that need to get done. But if you're experiencing some kind of pushback or a lack of response from your children, this might be one of the reasons.

So sizing it right means we match what we ask to how much their brain can actually hold at one time. And here's one more thing. Clarity really matters here because when we say cleanup, right? Clean up the room, that's kind of vague. Maybe we know exactly what that means, but our child probably doesn't know exactly what that means. Put the blocks in the box, and that's very clear to a child what cleanup means when you tell them you need to put your blocks away.

So these are all framed in the positive, right? What we want them to do, not what we want them to stop doing. So as we're communicating, we want to say walk inside instead of stop running, or sit down rather than don't climb. So we're not trying to be permissive and just allow them to do whatever they want, but we're trying to size it right for them and make it very clear so that they hear the behavior that we actually want to see. And um, and it fits with how they can hear it.

Okay, step number three. I call this the patient pause. After you give a clear, right-sized instruction, most of us skip this next step entirely. We need to just stay present, not walk away and get distracted with something else, but stay present, say nothing, maybe count to 10 in your head and wait. And here's why it matters because your child's brain has to process your words, understand the request, plan the movement, and then get their body to actually act on it. And sometimes that takes a little bit of time. And when we repeat ourselves or we hover or we escalate too quickly, we might actually be interrupting the whole process. So we want to be able to have confidence that they're gonna follow through with it and not so much urgency. So a little bit of a pause.

Step number four, say what you see. In other words, you're going to name what you want to keep seeing when they do it. If your child follows through, even partially, this is where you can actually teach them. You name and reinforce the thing that they did that you asked. Instead of good job, get specific. You put all the blocks in the container. You heard me the first time and you put your shoes on. That's exactly what listening looks like.

It's not just praise, it's actually teaching. You're showing your child exactly what success looks like, how you connect cooperation with connection, and you're wiring behavior that you want to see again. So this isn't going overboard on praise. It's just saying what you see like you want to keep seeing it, right? So you're rewarding them kind of with your pleasure around it.

Step number five, helping hand. Here's the step that separates leadership from permissiveness. If your child doesn't follow through after the pause, especially when they're younger, this is not the moment for consequences yet. It's the moment for teaching where you say, I mean what I say, and I'll help you do it. With younger children, this helping hand is physical. You simplify the direction, you add a visual cue, you break it down further, you get down with them and assist them if needed, and you stay calm and steady. This teaches them that expectations are real, that you're not kidding, but that you're offering them support and that stalling, which kids are so good at, that that isn't going to change the outcome.

So, as you say, it's time to put your shoes on so that we can get in the car. You've made sure that. That you have their attention, you know that they're old enough to get their shoes and put them on, and you give them a patient pause. And if there's nothing to say what you see that's positive, you might need to give them a helping hand. Maybe you grab the shoes and you walk over to them and you start to help them to put their shoes on. This is where we can give them some choices. Would you like to put your socks on or do you want me to do it?

All the time you are moving forward with your direction and your idea of where you are going. Their stalling or their hesitancy or their not cooperating is not going to stop you from moving forward and getting them in the car. This teaches them that your expectation is real and that you're going to support them and help them do it.

With older kids, the helping hand might look a little different, but the spirit is exactly the same. You maybe can't take a 10-year-old's hand and help them put their shoes on, but you can sit with them. You can lower your voice, you can get genuinely curious instead of frustrated. I used to do this with my own kids. I would sit down near them and say something like, Hey, I've asked you a couple of times and you haven't responded. So I'm just wondering what's going on right now. Not accusing, not lecturing, just actually asking.

Because here's what I found. Most of the time when an older child is not responding, something is going on. Maybe they're overwhelmed. Maybe they're upset about something else entirely. Maybe they're stuck in a way they don't have words for yet. Maybe they're just so engrossed in what they're doing. And I think all of us know what this looks like, especially with screens. Kids get so engrossed that they get into this trance-like state and they don't look away. You're wanting to assume that your child would follow through if they could and get curious about what's in the way. And that's going to hopefully move things forward faster than a quick consequence would, because that gets us into this threatening kind of back and forth, right? And we want to avoid that at all costs. We sometimes have to use it, but we really want to go into problem solving much faster than we do into consequence giving.

After that moment of connection, you offer the direction again clearly and calmly. And then you name what comes next. I need you to get this done. If this doesn't happen, here's what that means. No anger, no threat, just information. And that's where you would give a very well-aligned consequence. That's still the helping hand. You're still saying, I mean what I say, and I'm going to help you get there. Even if the help now looks like a conversation instead of a hand on the shoulder of putting their shoes on, exactly.

Over time, at every age, children will internalize this. They learn that you're steady, that expectations hold, and that you're someone who shows up with them rather than against them. And that's our goal.

So that's the basic formula. Most of the time, I believe this is going to work really well. Once in a while, and we might get into patterns where a lot more often we have times where kids just can comply and they don't. And I think that's where we get even more of our frustration and absolute kind of get overloaded with our own sense of resentment and anger about this, right? My child understands and is capable and still will not listen. And this is where the word defiance usually shows up. And I still want to present to you that I think that it's a little bit misunderstood.

True defiance is actually pretty rare. Most behavior that looks defiant is still a remaining skill gap or a nervous system interference or autonomy practice or a power struggle that's created between us with our kids. Defiance is not our starting assumption, is my hope. It's something that we often arrive at after we rule those other things out. Because what true defiance actually is, is when the child really understands the request, is regulated enough to comply, has the skill, has the complete ability, and completely understands the expectation, and then still chooses not to do it.

Now, when this happens, this usually shows up later in development. Around ages four to six and beyond. And here's the reframe I want you to hold on to. Even defiance is not out and out rebellion. It's boundary testing in the context of your relationship. At a really deep level, this kid is asking, Do you really mean what you say? Are you strong enough to hold this limit? That sounds a little sassy, doesn't it? I don't know they think it that way, but I think that's how I want us to look at it. Is the structure still here if I push on it? Am I safe inside your leadership? Yeah, we won't be hearing a kid say that, but that's the question their brain is asking.

They don't test boundaries because they want chaos. They test boundaries to confirm the safety and containment of the leadership of their parenting. When your kid is old enough to know better and it feels like a battle every time, the leverage moves from your hands to the relationship you have with them and the structure you've built. And the goal is still to stay in your calm leadership, but it looks a little bit different.

You know, our goal isn't just pure blind obedience, it's building a relationship where we cooperate with each other, where we treat each other with respect. That's the long game. And that's why having a brain-first approach, especially when they're younger and you've been doing this over time, it leads to that because we've no longer asked them to do things that they're not capable of doing. And they've experienced our irritation and our upset, and oftentimes they don't even know why. They just know we're mad at them. And so this is something that we can start when they're young, and even if your kids are older, you can start it now by staying calm and regulated yourself and trying these five steps.

Here's the thing I want you to really take away. A dysregulated child needs co-regulation. A child that is not capable of doing everything we're asking because their brain isn't ready yet. We call that a learning child, right? They haven't learned the skill yet. They need our patient teaching. And a defiant child, in air quotes, they need our steady leadership because they're testing the limits. They're figuring out their autonomy and the boundaries of things. Brain first leadership is knowing which one you're facing and when.

So think of these steps when you're in your next situation where your kiddo is not listening to you, and take a deep breath and give it a try. If your kids aren't listening the first time, it's not evidence that you're failing, it's evidence that you are a real parent. It means something in your child's system is still developing and needs support. We have all been there, and I think we will continue to be there for as long as we parent children.

I'd love to hear what you guys think of these ideas. Please send me an email, Lee at LeeGerman.com. I'll respond to you. I love the thoughts that you have. You mamas are in the trenches with these beautiful children. And I hope this week you can feel some calm as you will inevitably have a child that doesn't listen. Take a deep breath, know you're in good company, and we're all about the same business as raising healthy, happy children. I will talk to you all next week. Take good care.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with others. Or help others find me by leaving a rating or a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.

The Leadership Parenting Podcast is for general information purposes only. It is not therapy and should not take the place of meeting with a qualified mental health professional. The information on this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition, illness, or disease. It's also not intended to be legal, medical, or therapeutic advice. Please consult your doctor or mental health professional for your individual circumstances. Thanks again and take care.