You can gain cooperation, but not by nagging

The Bad News

If you’re a parent you know that you can’t make your child do anything. You can lay the baby down in her crib but you can’t make her go to sleep. You can probably force your child to take his hat to school but you can’t make him wear it while he’s there. You can teach your kids right from wrong how to live and what to do but — as you may have noticed — you can’t make them do as you say.

The Good News

There are things you can do to inspire your children to choose to do what you want them to do. For example a child may not want to clean her room but when faced with being grounded she chooses to do it. The task of cleaning is not as unpleasant as the prospect of being denied the opportunity to get together with her friends. Inspiration to cooperate then can occur when a child is forced to choose to cooperate or “pay the price.”

Inspiration to cooperate occurs in more pleasant ways as well. Children sometimes want to do what their parents ask them to do not because they want to do the required behavior per se but because they want to please the parent. Acting in ways that strengthen the parent-child bond (i.e. following the 80-20 rule or employing other approaches to achieve warm emotionally attuned parenting) is a good way to enhance the likelihood of cooperation even without unpleasant demands. The child may have no interest in cleaning her room but chooses to do so because she knows her parent will be pleased.

Inspiration to cooperate also comes from a joyful parental model. Adults who hate cleaning for example have trouble inspiring their children to clean. An adult who considers tidying up to be a pleasurable activity and who therefore performs it with ease and enthusiasm finds it easier to get her children to approach the task in a similar way.

Nagging

There are children whose warm and loving parents provide a beautiful model for dealing with all kinds of challenging boring or otherwise uninviting activities but who nonetheless balk at performing such tasks themselves. For example there are parents who love to cook up a storm but can’t get their teenager to scramble an egg. There are parents who carry themselves modestly but can’t seem to get their daughter to cross her legs neatly.

Not knowing what to do these parents often resort to the tried and not-true technique of nagging. They ask the child over and over again to do the dreaded activity: make her bed clean up after herself sit nicely start her homework or engage in whatever other action the child is avoiding.

There are many reasons why nagging is never a recommended parenting technique. To begin with it trains a child to ignore you. If you’re willing to ask and ask and ask again the child learns that there’s no need to rush to comply. What the child is waiting for — the second reason nagging can’t be recommended — is your complete meltdown.

When after a certain number of times of asking you finally lose it the child might do what you were asking but he won’t integrate it into his being. He will typically revert back to his uncooperative position for the next round failing to have acquired any life skill other than how to delay the inevitable (handy in adulthood when it comes to paying taxes spring cleaning and other unpleasant tasks).

A third reason to avoid nagging is that it’s extremely destructive dangerously eroding the parent-child relationship. In short nagging is out.

Step Back

In the light of all this what’s a parent to do when a child simply refuses to cooperate? If a parent has pleasantly taught joyfully modeled and duly consequenced a youngster for noncompliance and the child still refuses to comply it’s time to step back. In some cases professional attention is required and in others wait-and-pray is the best approach.

It’s always appropriate — and sometimes helpful — to continue to be loving and positive. Children like adults continue to grow and change; it’s possible that they will do a complete turnaround at some point. Meanwhile do everything you can and remember what you can’t do: you can’t make a child do anything.