The Nagging Trap

"Put your shoes on. Put your shoes on. I told you, put your shoes on!" Sound familiar? Rick and Madeline dig into why nagging feels like it works (it's the same intermittent reinforcement that keeps people pulling slot machine levers) and what it costs the trust bank you share with your child. They share what animal trainers can teach us about changing behavior without nagging, plus practical alternatives like specific requests, fair timing, heads-ups before transitions, rewarding small steps, and offering choices.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome back to the Starborn Parenting Podcast. I'm Rick Cabina.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

And I'm Madeline Jurgensen.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Madeline, I once had a coach, and this was way back in the day when I used to run track. So we're talking like eighth grade. And this coach was an exquisite nager. He would nag me and everyone else about things all the time. Make sure that your shoes are tied. Make sure you have the right clothing on. Make sure you do your sprints. You know, make sure this and that. And all of this was constantly uh saying the same thing again and again and again. And although it was nagging, I will say that the positive side of this is all of us did those things, the coach says. And uh it had a positive story, but the delivery felt like, oh, this guy's gonna be on me and riding me. But essentially, you know, that's a person that I was thinking about during this episode. He came back and we're gonna talk about nagging today, but I don't know anybody that's alive that hasn't either been nagged in some way by someone we love, by someone we don't love, in some capacity. And I'm sure you could tell a hundred stories about people in your life who has had an impact on you with their nagging.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, let's define a little bit about what nagging is for viewers, because I think some people have different definitions than others.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yeah. So a nag, very simply put, is when you ask somebody to do something multiple times. The the thing about the nagging is it can have a different flavor. Sometimes the voices rise, sometimes there can be some other characteristic with the tone or the way, and and then the nagging can take on a very different flavor. But it's pretty simple. You're repeating the request again and again and again until it happens.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

The classic, you know, put your shoes on, put your shoes on, put your shoes on, put your shoes on.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

I told you put your shoes on. Yeah. Exactly. You fit in the category and raise my hand up here. I'm guilty of doing this in my lifetime. I have three kids who are now adults. I can guarantee you, if you ask them, hey, is your dad ever nagged you? Yes, because it works. And that's the real kicker here. Nagging can work.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

It's not the best way to build the relationship or keep good behavior because I think the person that ends up being nagged is doing it out of trying to get out away from the nagging situation and not because they actually want to do this situation and there's no positive interaction. It's it becomes quite negative for everybody.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Yeah. That's really it. Imagine playing a slot machine, and let's say on every seventh, maybe it's every 11th, sometimes maybe it's every fourth, but probably a higher number time when you pull that lever, oh, I won. That's exactly what happens in nagging. Let's say you tell someone something 10 times, and on the 11th time, they do it. From your perspective, nagging has worked. And we have one of the fundamental behavioral principles at work. We call that relief. And that means from the perspective of the person who's being nagged, they want this unpleasant thing to go away. And it doesn't have to be, you don't have to be saying this to be mean. You could just be saying it, hey, clean up your room. Did you clean up your room? Hey, did you clean up your room? Even if you're saying it nicely, hearing that 10 times, then on the 11th time you do it. Well, what effect does it have on the person who's doing it? From their perspective, their behavior has just been rewarded. If you from you do this again and again, and that's the thing with rewards, you don't have to do something and the behavior just happens immediately. You know, the behavior reward happens. The stronger that that relationship happens, like if if again, let's take slot machines, if you pull that thing 15 times or 20 times, and then something really big happens, that can maintain your behavior, and then you're just gonna keep doing again, again, again.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Well, it's a powerful uh response there. The slot machine idea is that it's you know, it might not happen the first time, second time, third time, but then when it does, it goes in our mind as oh, it works and we're gonna keep doing it.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Think back to what you said just a little bit when you're talking about relationships. There is a famous animal trainer. One of the things I've done is a lot of animal training. I'm an amateur animal trainer, and I've been around professional animal trainers. And one of the pros, one of the big people in the field, his name is Steve Martin. Not the comedian guy, Steve Martin, but the animal trainer, Steve Martin. And he has this really great analogy about a trust bank. And the idea with the trust bank is if you do something positive with an animal, then that builds in the trust. So let's say you deliver a reward positive. Let's say you do something that rewards that animal's behavior, like you pet it or whatever, that goes in the trust bank. However, you could do things that take things out of the trust bank, which would be maybe you deliver some kind of aversive. The animal doesn't do something, and you say, hey, or whatever that negative thing is. And if you look at the balance between the positives and the negatives, that is your relationship.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

I think parents get kind of lost in the day-to-day in that if you know you got meals to make, you got, you know, soccer practice to go to, you have clothes to wash, and and I think the relationship between a parent and a kid sometimes gets deprioritized, and you end up just trying to get your child to just comply, just comply with everything that you're doing. And at the end of the day, if the kid puts the shoes on, if the kid, you know, sits at the table, if the kid gets in the car, that's all like check, check, check in your mind. If I've done it, but like like how did the kid get to put it on the shoes? How did the child get to the table? How did the child get to the car? Were these positive interactions between you and the child, or were you nagging them, berating them, you know, just and then it's just negative, negative, negative energy the whole day through. And, you know, maybe the kid has complied the whole way, but you're not adding to that trust bank idea.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

It really matters. That relationship matters so much because if you do give a couple instructions, depending on when that relationship, the way it lands, it's gonna be different. If this is someone that's got your back, someone that you have a positive relationship with, you could probably tell somebody to do something three or four times, and they're not gonna be like, that is annoying. However, if you have a relationship that you have more negatives to the positives, then all of those interactions are gonna be tinged with like not again. This person's asking me to do this again. And that is something that we want to avoid. I like to think about like those people who are listening to us who are new to behavior science. We talked, we've talked a few episodes back about the behavior loops. It is astounding to learn that something happens before a behavior, you have a behavior, and then something happens after the behavior. And you learn that some of these things that happen after the behavior can make that behavior go up or make it go down. Just that insight alone is incredibly powerful. However, what very few people do in the field is think about this in the aggregate. I like to think about uh a batting average. So for those of you who maybe this is a poor analogy to use, but in baseball, if you're familiar with that, you know, batting averages, how many times when the you're pitched, how many times do you get a hit? If you're batting 300, that means roughly every every uh three opportunities, one time you're getting a hit. Two times you're not. So imagine this average we have with people in a relationship. How many times are you positive with that person? And if you're not positive with that person, then let's say you're indifferent and you are missing opportunities where you could have been positive, and then there's the negative side. It just you can imagine that these numbers all add up, and these numbers are going to dictate the type of relationship that you have with the person. No one wants to be around someone that is nagging for two encounters in one encounter, you know, they're positive. I mean, just think about that.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Yeah. Parenting is tough. And keeping in mind that there is this kind of trust bank going on with each of your children, I think is important because we're going to mess up as parents, we're going to nab, we're going to raise our voices. And your kids are much more forgiving in those moments if you have a lot of trust built up with them, a lot of positive interactions, because it's like, oh, this is a one-off. But if you're neutral or negative with your child and then you go really negative, you have nothing left in the bank for the child to kind of like to cushion that blow. Um, and I mean, I use this with my husband as well. My husband and I are cognizant of like behavioral tactics. He's not behaviorist, he's a physicist, but it's kind of fun because he gets to kind of learn my field, I learn his. But we use this in our own relationship in that, you know, when you have little kids, you can get very like just you, you're constantly asking your partner to do something. You know, can you pick this up? Can you do this? Take the kids here, put these dishes away, fill the bottle over here. And you never give these positive interactions. And your relationship can really deteriorate over time if you're not cognizant of this. So, like I always try to think of, okay, for every like one correction or request, I try to give two positives or something. And it becomes first when you start doing this, it feels kind of manufactured because it's like, you know, great job packing the lunch, or like the house looks really clean, like, you know, you cleaned it. But over time, it becomes much more natural. And I think it's with the kids as well. Once your kid starts doing something, giving them little bits of reinforcement and positive praise throughout the day really, really goes a long way.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

I think about my interactions with my grandkids. And whenever I'm around them, what kind of goofy face can I make? How can I tickle them? Can I get on the floor and play games with them? All of these things really matter because you're building up this positive rapport. And there was this one time when Drew, my granddaughter, when she was little, she was very sensitive to people yelling. And I was in the room and I yelled about like there was a football game on, and I was like, no, and because I was really mad. And she started bawling because she thought I was yelling at her. And uh, I was like, oh, and then everyone's like, no, Grampy wasn't yelling at you, he was yelling at the TV. But you know, those things didn't matter because you overcome them. And nagging is one of these things that if you do it, it seems innocuous, but it's a draw on that relationship that you have with the other person. And the more you do it, the more problematic it can become. There was a book that that I recommend to people to read. And the book is a, I won't say it's older, but this was uh based on a column that was written in the New York Times, I think. It was by a woman named Amy Sutherland, and she was a journalist, and she went into working with these animal trainers, and she was at SeaWorld, and she wrote this post that went viral. So back in the day when you know news and media were really more elevated. This went viral, it was a big thing. So she wrote a book about it, and the book is really small, and it's called What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage. Of course, this was written before the time all the abuses and the things came up with like all those documentaries with SeaWorld. Nevertheless, she learned from these animal trainers and she talked about her husband in this book. And she she says, and this is her words, she said, I was a big fat nager. And she talks how he would come home, like this is one thing. He would come home from traveling and he would just leave his suitcases in wherever they were. And she'd be like, Hey, put your suitcases away. Hey, put your suitcases away. And she realizes that this wasn't working, it wasn't a positive dynamic between her and her husband. So she did what animal trainers do. And animal trainers, like if you've if you've had a dog, if any of you have had pets, you could nag at that dog or nag at your cat. It's not going to get behavior change. What will get behavior change is rewards. So what she did is she would start rewarding a behavior that was either towards moving those suitcases or when he actually did it. Never nagged again, just worked on rewards. And she said that it worked wonderfully. It strengthened their marriage and it was just a positive thing. She wasn't worrying about it, he was happy. And this is the power of behavior science right there.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Mm-hmm. I love that. It's such a good story. I think we think about all these relationships with our kids and our loved ones. And I mean, don't we all just want more positive relationships? And I don't think we realize how much that of our own actions go into making those things positive or negative throughout the day. I mean, our family, we try to start my husband's really sensitive with when he wakes up, he wants something positive. Like if I if because I tend to wake up before him because he stays awake a little bit later than me, because he for the kids and everything. And and if I wake up and I enter the first thing I say to something like a complaint or something, like even not to even towards him, but just something in general, he gets so sour about it. And so we have this rule where it has to be, you know, the first interaction's always positive, and it's uh it's really helped. That is fabulous.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Building on that, what can you do as a parent if you want to stop nagging? This is the real question. And just like that story that I shared, this is a very simple behavioral technique that you can engage in. What's the behavior that you want to happen? Rather than nag, what you can do is, yes, you can tell people. And by the way, I'm not saying there's not a place to tell people, you know, like when you're raising kids, you have to give them rules. You have to tell them that there are things to do. And sometimes it might, you might think it's unpleasant because, like, hey, you gotta clean your room. What kid is gonna welcome that message? Oh, yay, it's time to clean a room. However, there could be a time when kids would actually act like that. And when would they act like that? Is if there was something positive they would get out of cleaning their room. Like my my grandkids, they will clean up with no problems. You know why? Because we play the cleanup song. Cleanup, cleanup. I've heard that song a million times. They love that song, it's the kids' version. The adults will start cleaning things up, it becomes a game, and now they're learning responsibility, but there's something positive, there's a reward that's being built in. And then when it's done, we all cheer. And this is a way to turn it around. So, how can you either just figure out of rewarding this, whatever this behavior is, or maybe what you do is maybe you you think of a way to reward steps to doing that if it's not something that's easy, where like in the cleanup, hey, you got this thing that's over here, you gotta put it over here. That's very simple and discreet, but there could be something that has multiple steps, which might you might have to handle that a little bit differently.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Yeah, I think even and looking back at what was the first, what does the nag actually look like? What does the request look like? Because if you're yelling from the kitchen to go do something, the kid might not be, might not hear you. And so the first nag for you is maybe not even heard by the kid. So it's like, is it does a child hear that first request? Is it stated as a request and not just like a complaint? Maybe you walk in the room and say, Oh, it's really messy in here. To you, that might be like, Oh, I asked my kids to clean up or I asked my husband to clean up. But in reality, you're just stating a a statement of what you see. So it's better to say, you know, pick up your toys or pick up this or put the Legos in the bin, something very like distreet and uh and specific. And then also is the timing fair is something that I think about a lot. Is if my kid is deep in focus on one task, our family really prioritizes focus. So it I we try not to interrupt our kids if they are focused on something, because it typically, you know, doesn't last super long. So we kind of like we try to keep that time sacred. But so is she's really focused on building this Lego thing, and maybe I can wait a couple minutes before asking her to do something. So kind of being fair about that both ways is you know, is it is it really the best time to ask?

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Every one of those is major. I think a lot about going back to what you said about just making a complaint. Wow, it is really dirty in here. If you say that, the idea behind it is you're displeased with something, and the people around you, because of your relationship, they don't want you displeased, therefore they're gonna do this behavior. That is the the dynamic there, but little kids, they're not thinking about that. Like you as an adult could get that, but kids, you have to be very explicit, and it doesn't hurt to be kind when you're delivering these. And as you mentioned too, the timing. That's another like what would you do if your kid has to go to bed and they're really focused? What's something you could do if bedtime is at eight and it's uh 7.55 and they're focused?

SPEAKER_01 17:59

For us, we we're okay pushing the time a little bit. We have time for bedtime, we have time zones like ranges. We don't have specific at 8 o'clock they have to go because we found that when you become really rigid with a two-year-old, you're gonna break before the two-year-old breaks. So we have we have ranges where we kind of start the whole bedtime routine, lights getting low, you know, we put the baby to bed. So she could, there's cues for her. So if she's really focused in 755, I'll probably sit down with her. So if she's super engaged, I'll sit down with her and do some parallel play to kind of get her a little bit more open to becoming less focused. So it's not instead of it's just her focused on the on the toy in front of her, she can get very focused. It'll be now mom's sitting with me. Now we're playing together. And then I can slowly kind of pull her out of her focus without being like, hey, it's time to go to bed. Let's go. And she's like, wait, what? What's going on? So that's kind of our technique is we come into their world, play with them a little bit, that adds to that building that trust, all these positive interactions. Oh, wow, really cool tower. You made it super high. Like, oh, and you chose some yellow blocks and some red blocks. Oh, so neat. And you know, then we kind of and then as she starts pairing more with us as the parent, then it's like, okay, like time for teething, like brushing teeth, let's go. And then she's much more fluid to move instead of trying to do these like quick breaks.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

You nailed two techniques there. Number one is the flexibility. Oftentimes, when you have a rule and you think about enforcing the rule in a very rigid way, what are you doing? It's a power dynamic. I said bedtime is eight o'clock and you are gonna be in bed at eight o'clock. If you're flexible about these things, does it really matter if the kid goes to bed five minutes later? Like, sure, if if uh I I can I can imagine some people might say, well, if I give them five more minutes, they might push it to ten minutes, and the next thing you know, they're going to bed at nine. Within reason, right? All of these things are reasonable. And you, as the adult, could pick up on that and you would be able to detect that pattern. But being flexible, number one, so that it's not this showdown and this power dynamic, that's number one. But number two, essentially what you're doing is you're redirecting the child so they're engaged in this one little thing. And we'll talk a lot more about just like I see this a lot. Redirection is a super easy way to get kids to do something else. Even when they're upset, people use redirection. But we'll talk about that later. But that is a second thing that you can do, which is redirection. A third thing could be just do some preventative things. Like, hey, it's getting close to bedtime. Want to give you a heads up, they can keep doing it. Oh, hey, it's getting a little bit closer to bedtime. Like having those preventative things can then help because kids don't have a very good sense of time, especially when we're talking about the the young ones. So those are three things that you can do that can help, depending on the situation, steer the behavior into a productive path versus going down this other path, which is going to be withdrawing from the trust bank.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Yeah. Yeah, that's so good.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

There are a few other things that you can do when you're at this stage. And this gets at when you are delivering some type of directive, what does your face actually look like? Going back to early on, I I learned so many valuable lessons from the animal trainers. And one of the things that I did in the past was I worked with chickens. I did chicken camp. Whenever I say that, people are like, What? You did chicken training camp? And then they'll make some kind of joke like, Oh, did you get to eat them afterwards or whatever? Uh I get that all the time. But chickens are incredible animals. And the reason why chicken training was so valuable is because if you don't have Really good behavioral techniques, that chicken's not going to do what you want to do. Like you could tell a chicken, like, hey, step over here, or hey, use your beak to do this. They're not going to listen to you. And you learn to deliver rewards when the chicken will do something that you wanted it to do. And you have this little cup that has these little pellets in it. And guess what? Chickens like to eat pellets. So what you do is when the chicken does something you want, you click this button, it goes click, and then you let you put this thing in front of it. It's like a little cup, and the the chicken pecks in it. But the the valuable lesson that the animal trainers taught us is when you hold that, you you put it right here, don't make any facial expressions. Because believe it or not, chickens will pick up on your expressions. And it's if a chicken can pick up on it, guess what? Your kid is definitely gonna pick up on this. So if you have a stern look, or if you're angry, or if you're disgusted for whatever reason, whatever that look is, and again, this doesn't necessarily have to be because you're disgusted of your child, just because of, like my instance, something you're watching on TV. That is going to get paired with the request, and it can have a very negative impact. So having a blank face or being neutral is very important when you're giving these requests, commands, directives, whatever you want to call it, for a child to do something.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

That's so true. I I used to train like behavior analysts working with clients, and that was something you always had to work on, especially I was working with uh a lot of undergraduate students, and uh there were some kids that would I remember this one girl, she would always start each request with, can you just and it's like, okay, let's work on this a little bit because it's like she's already annoyed and the kid hasn't even done anything.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Yeah. Delivery matters. The other thing that I alluded to earlier, which we could talk about, is if you have one behavior and then you reward that behavior, great. But what about something that might be more complicated? Some kids have a chore like cleaning the dishes or cleaning up after a meal. What are all the steps that are involved in cleaning up after the meal? Well, maybe you get the plates and you take them, and then you take them either to a dishwasher or maybe you take them to the sink, and then you have to rinse them off, and then you put them in the dishwasher. There could be multiple steps that need to happen. It's very challenging to just let someone do all of those and then deliver the reward at the end. So, what would be the first thing that you could in this scenario reward? All steps along the way.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

So maybe picking up the plates, moving them to the dishwasher. Boom. Like the first indication that they're doing the right thing. So if my daughter even moves towards putting on her shoes, like walking to the shoe area, it's like, oh, look at you, you're walking to the shoe area. Great job, you know? It's like really little steps along the way, and then she's like, Oh, cool, we're doing this.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

It's fun now. And what will happen is kids just crave attention and approval. Like as parents, that is such a major thing for kids. Like we know this in our field with behavior science. We know how powerful attention is. It is just so powerful. I can't emphasize it enough. And these little these little kids, and even not just little kids, teenagers, like it never goes away. You know, we have these relationships with these people in our lives, and the way they respond to us with attention is very powerful. So, like you said, if children really want that attention and you are using that in a way where, okay, let's let's help them, let's be positive. That first little step, then after a while, when they're doing it, then what's the next bigger step that you could pick? So you said with your daughter's shoes, it's like walking towards that. And now, after she can walk towards it, you can just wait till she's there. And then when she's there, that's when you deliver it. And then next thing you know, she's putting on her shoes. And after a while, it just becomes like kids will shift from having someone reward something externally to I like to put my shoes on because I like to run outside. And we don't none of us need our parents telling us how to dress in the morning. We do it for other reasons, and that's the shift that we need to make for for being good parents.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Yeah, that's so true. And uh, one of the other things with uh that can help is giving them options. And so, for instance, my my child puts all of her laundry away into her little like clothes buggies, and sometimes she's more happy to do this than others. And but what I've learned is that there's some items that she prefers to put away more than others. Like she just got potty trained, so she's very proud of her underwear. And so if I ask her to put her underwear away, she's like, Oh yeah, of course I'll put my underway away. And then once she does that, then she's more willing to put her shirts and her pants away. And uh, so starting giving, instead of maybe just having one thing that they're supposed to do, having kind of like an assortment or an options, or maybe I just lay out all the clothes and say, all right, which one do you want to put away first? And then she can put one away first instead of making this like a binary, either she's doing it or not, they can kind of quote unquote like non non-comply by doing something else, you know, instead of it just being like exactly what you want to do. So it's that whole flexibility thing, I think, is really important.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Well, for those who are listeners, if you would like to interact with us and tell us what are some challenging issues you've had around this nagging issue, if you're on YouTube, feel free to drop something in the comments below. If you're on our website, go into the forum and have a conversation with us because we would love to hear. Like you could you could do this as a homework assignment. Go out there and just look at your own behavior and be reflective and say, are there some things where I am repeating something again and again and again? And I would say there's no magic numbers in like when do you turn from someone who's repeating something because oh, they didn't hear it, or oh, they need another prompt to you've moved into the nagging territory. I can't say it's five or ten. I don't know what that number is, but I'm sure there's some average where, you know, there's some range where between this many you stepped into, like hey, you're you're just saying this many times and it's turning into a nag. So figure out what that might be and share it with us. We would love to hear it. We would love to hear how maybe you have changed your own behavior based off of the behavior science and have had a different experience.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Yeah, and you can you see you can also look at um how your kids respond to um your requests and notice like how does your kid respond to your request? How quickly are they responding? Because maybe your kid isn't being disrespectful or not listening to you or not following what you're saying, but instead maybe they just need an a second or two to respond. And I've seen that a lot is like I'll see a kid, parent say something on the playground, and then they start to respond, but the parents are already giving the request again. And it's like, okay, so you know, watch yourself, watch your kid, become more of an observer and you know, try not to get so emotionally invested in it. I think that also helped.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

That's the thing with behavior science, is it requires observation and requires data collection. Those are the two key things that we're gonna keep talking about it again and again, and we're gonna wrap that up around all of these different topics. So, with that, thank you all for joining us as we learn how to use this behavior science to help grow better humans.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Yep, keep building. We'll see you next week. Bye.