How to get your kids to do stuff, while increasing agency, belonging and connection.
How to get your kids to do stuff, while increasing agency, belonging and connection.
3 Pillars Parent Newsletter #33
By: Glenn Collins and Catherine Lynch
Dear awesome parents,
Kids won’t do what you want? Convincing other people to do what you want them to do is an art, and it’s probably one you didn’t study before having kids. I studied it quite by accident while leading wilderness expeditions for youth at Outward Bound, and we called it leadership. The opposite, of course, is dictatorship, which we don’t recommend.
You won’t find this combination of leadership, psychology, neuroscience, and experiential education anywhere else.
Enjoy, and do let us know what works well for you.
How to get your kids to do stuff:
“Have you started your homework/cleaned your room/taken out the trash/…?”
“No, not yet”
“This is the third time I’ve asked you”
“I’ve been busy”
“With what? You’ve been on your phone for hours!”
“Stuff”
“Put your phone down now and go do what I asked you to!”
Does this sound familiar? Has something like this happened in your home recently?
It happened in our house all the time. We wanted our kids to do chores, homework, or something else that was important to us. They wanted to talk to their friends, play video games, or do something that was important to them.
Our priorities are usually not their priorities. Our kids are independent beings with their own thoughts, feelings, and desires. When these different priorities clash, there’s conflict. Conflict that can degrade our relationship with them.
This conflict plays out over and over in our homes: our kids want to do what they want, while we want them to do what we tell them to. We want to call the shots. We need them to do their chores, their homework, and a million other little things so life runs somewhat smoothly.
Being a parent is also about helping them learn the values, mindsets, and life skills we think are important. One of the primary ways we do that is by what we tell them to do - and not do. Do this. Don’t do that.
To complicate matters further, one of the life skills they need to learn is independence. How to successfully run their own lives when they’re adults. To make decisions and take actions based on their priorities to accomplish their goals. It’s a big part of what being an adult is about.
This creates a dilemma: How do we balance these competing priorities? More importantly, how do we do it in a way that builds our relationship instead of damages it?
How we handle this problem impacts not just our relationship and home life, but our kids’ future as well. If we give them too much agency, we risk chaos in the home, and they might not pick up the values, habits, and mindsets they need. On the other hand, if we discourage autonomy and make obedience a top priority, it can leave them unprepared for independent living and damage our relationship with them - perhaps for a lifetime.
Unfortunately there isn’t a single right answer to this dilemma. Ultimately every parent has to find their own answer for their family and their kid. All of that being said, there are principles parents can apply and questions they can ask that will help guide them to solutions that get the behaviors they want, let their kids have the autonomy they need, and build the relationship.
Here are 3 of our favorite questions to get you started:
The ABC’s of Getting your Kids to do Stuff
AGENCY: Can I encourage my kid to help me find a solution we both can live with that gives them more agency and responsibility? Kids are more likely to buy into a solution when they have a hand in creating it.
BELONGING: How can we move forward on this issue in a way that emphasizes community and belonging to the family? A shared sense of We?
CONNECTION: Is there a way to resolve this situation that prioritizes and strengthens (or at least doesn’t harm) the connection with my kid? A conversation with respect, trust, and openness is a good place to start.
As a parent you have other options - and you might need to use them. However, starting with the ABC’s gives you the best chance of meeting all your End In Minds. You can always bring out the big guns (rewards, consequences, or the Parent Card) later.
Parenting is an ongoing experiment. You and your kid might come up with a great, mutually agreed upon plan which lets them feel agency, belonging, and connection - and it doesn’t work. The thing you wanted doesn't happen or not to your satisfaction. This happens. Parenting is a continual experiment to find what works and sometimes the experiments don’t pan out. See if you can figure out where things when wrong and try something different.
Home Practice Ideas:
Ways to give Agency, as it relates to chores:
Let the kids come up with a way they think is fair for how to divide up the chores.
Let them decide how the chores are done - as long as it meets the parents’ standards.
Allow them to decide when they do their chores - within a set time frame.
Ways to emphasize Belonging, as it relates to chores:
Do some of the chores together.
Emphasize how a chore helps the whole family (not just the parents).
Can you give them the power to decide if a task is done well enough? This elevates their status, which is a powerful part of belonging.
Ways to emphasize Connection, as it relates to chores:
Play their music while doing chores together in the same room.
Initiate conversation about one of their favorite topics which doing chores together.
Make a plan to do something fun together immediately after the chore is finished.
Have fun, and let us know how it goes!
Backyard Thief!
Catherine put a sunflower head out to dry on the patio table. She wanted to save seeds to plant next year and to feed the birds this coming winter. Our backyard black squirrel had other ideas…he smelled dinner and decided to abscond with the whole seed head. Only in the nick of time did Catherine stop him from making off with this bounty!