Obeying Teachers and Following Rules
The problems children experience in school often have little to do with their academic abilities. Instead, problems may be related to a child’s inability to use certain social skills successfully. For example, many children who perform poorly in the classroom don’t know how to use the basic social skill of following instructions.
Obeying teachers and following the rules are fundamental to academic success — though a child may not be able to make that correlation easily. Therefore, as a parent, it is up to you to help your child understand this. Here are three steps to help you child understand the social skills of following instructions.
Setting Expectations
When children misbehave in school, it’s either because they don’t understand the rules or choose to ignore them. As with any desired action or behavior, the adult authority figure — whether it’s the parent at home or the teacher at school — must make the child aware of what’s expected of them. After all, how can a child be expected to follow the rules if they don’t understand what they are in the first place?
Making your children aware of their school’s code of conduct and reviewing it with them from time to time can head off many problems and make their life at school smoother. In addition, your children should be taught from an early age that adult authority figures must be obeyed and respected. Ideally, this should be taught well before your child reaches school age.
Issuing Negative Consequences
If a child chooses to ignore known rules simply because they don’t feel like following them, then this is a completely different issue. Instead of not knowing the rules, they are exhibiting a deliberately negative behavior that requires a negative consequence. One of the quickest ways to correct a negative behavior is to remove a privilege — especially one that involves the use of a personal electronic device, such as a smartphone, tablet or video game console. You’ll be surprised at how fast a once-defiant child comes around if you take away their ability to text and chat with friends.
The key is to deliver this negative consequence dispassionately, like a police officer giving out a speeding ticket. You don’t want to risk escalating the situation by arguing with your child. Instead, calmly explain the infraction, issue the negative consequence and explain how your child can regain the privilege.
Catch Them Being Good
It’s easy to take notice when children are doing something wrong. After all, if this is (hopefully) not a normal situation, it naturally will call attention to itself. But if all you do is criticize your child and issue negative consequences, you run the risk of reinforcing in your child a feeling that they are inherently bad in some way and that using bad behavior should be the norm.
Instead, we tell parents to try to “catch them being good” and praise them when it happens. In fact, we recommend issuing four instances of praise for every negative consequence. So, if your child keeps their room clean, praise them for it. If they bring home a good grade on a test, praise them for that, too. If they get through a family meal without fighting or arguing with a sibling, praise them.
We’ve even developed a downloadable tool that lists creative ways to reward your children for being good.
