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Children have a natural talent for getting what they want. Here’s a reminder of all your best influence skills from a willful and defiant toddler that might just remind you of who you used to be before you started doing everything someone else’s way.
My son, who is a 3 year old, does this thing that’s really cute. I know you’ll agree, so here goes.
I’ll ask him to do something and he doesn’t do it. Or I’ll ask him to stop doing something, and he doesn’t stop doing it. They’re both just different flavors of the same adorable non-compliance.
Here are a few of the variations on that. Sometimes, he’ll just say no. Other times he will take a subtler approach of ignoring me. Many times he will kind of smile and giggle and just keep doing whatever it is he’s doing.
If I push him, like on days where I really mean it, after his usually passive tactics don’t work, he will resort to first laughing his way out of it and then finally screaming, screeching, and possibly (hopefully not) having a full hizzy fit.
My toddler is very strong for his 35 pound frame. He can outrun me and he fits in places I have to crouch down into to pull him out of. I am afraid sometimes that when he’s screaming and having a fit that the neighbors will wonder what the heck is going on.
This can be especially a bad thing in the mornings when I really really really need him to let me put his clothes on because mommy has to be at work on time. It definitely matters when I need him to stop and listen for safety reasons.
But the truth is, a lot of the time, it really doesn’t matter that much. I’m asking him to do something or not do something because of some immediate need I have. Let’s dig deeper. Here are some of those needs.
- I sometimes have a need for more silence. As a working single mother my brain is literally imprinted with the pokey fingers of a hundred other minds by evening bath time. Cartoons and shrieks actually hurt to listen to sometimes.
- I have a plan for the day such as errands or a plan for his nap time that is supposed to coincide with some work thing I need to finish. Or some nap I need to take myself.
- I don’t want to clean that up again.
- I’m hot and I want to go inside.
My son’s will is strong and he does get his way a lot with me. You may think that means he will be spoiled or lack discipline, but hear me out.
My son’s push back on me, his happy push back, reminds me that when I stop him or steer him, I am interrupting his joy. He shows me he wants to keep doing his thing and puts me in a position to defend my need to stop him.
How often is he right? If I put authority and my ego aside, I have to admit, he’s right a lot of the time. So what if the room is messy. Whose problem is it that I can’t think in a messy room? It’s actually mine.
So what if I need to finish that when he naps. What is wrong with some other part of my scheduling that this thing I need to do has to be done with a dependency of a child’s desire to nap? Sounds pretty stupid of me when I think of it that way.
My need for silence. Well, this is one that though my brain really needs this and I truly can’t function without getting some, his time with me shouldn’t be spent calmly staring at the ceiling fan (my favorite past time).
I spend time with him in the mornings but as a single mom, that means I’m cooking our breakfast and getting lunches ready and brushing my teeth and combing my hair for work. So I’m not really spending that much one on one time with him in the mornings.
When I pick him up after school and after work, I’m cooking dinner and doing dishes and laundry. Our time together is bath time and living room playtime, which should be fun. It should be able to get noisy-ish. It should be able to get messy too.
Why should he have to fall in line and listen to me when the truth is he’s doing his job right. I’m the one who needs to fix other areas of my life that are impeding on our carefree time together.
I need more money for a part time housekeeper if I’m going to be working full time. Obviously that means that my current work isn’t producing enough so I need better solutions there too.
It means I need more support somewhere in the week for quiet time for myself. Where can I get that? Where can I work that in? Where can I have it that doesn’t overlap with my time with him?
While my son’s will is strong and he gets his way, he makes me think. How often in life do you think you’re being subjected to the will of others, who’s will is really just the product of some trap they’re in? In other words, you are a mouse on a board of someone else’s will, except the board is a maze, and their will is directing them/you down an endless series of corners?
When my brother and sister and I were kids growing up, my brother always got his way with my mom. We used to call it, ‘His Ways” and we traded them like currency. He would say, “I’ll use my ways for you if you give me (this or that).”
What my son has is a genuine life skill. Ignoring your way out of something, smiling your way out of something, kicking and screaming your way out of something. These are all natural born talents.
All kids have them. They naturally push for their desires without shame or the need to question it. We, as parents, teach them out of it because we need them to listen to and obey us.
We lose our ways as we get older and forget how to employ simple steps to compel and influence others to see our vision.
I make it a point to tell my son why I am asking him to do something or to stop doing something because sometimes I need to hear it out loud too. A lot of times when the reason is good enough and fair, he has no problem “listening”.
I tell him we’re going to see Gammi so he needs to help me get him dressed. No problem. His toes are already pointed ready for socks to get slid right on.
Somewhere in the pairing of giving him respect and offering an incentive, he decides to go with the my plan. I think that’s because people in general need to see, even in brief, a bit of a synopsis of your plan in order to go with it. Especially the smart ones.
If everyone in your life had to say out loud why they’re asking you to fall in line, you might find out that most of it is to accommodate some broken process.
And to be fair, a lot of things are broken, and in life, it’s essential that we can just listen and take direction as it’s given. You have to do a thing before you can fix the broken thing, and that’s just the way it is.
There’s nothing more annoying than having to explain yourself to someone who questions everything you’re asking them to do. You’d basically be just asking to get fired if you lived that way all the time.
The point I’m getting at is, for yourself, for your own self improvement, when you think it’s important and you can get away with it, push back a little. Make another person have to defend their plan. You can’t just go around following people’s plans all the time. We are born with the will to have things our own way and expressing that will is called our voice.
If you need a few tips on how to do this, just remember what worked when you were a kid and look at how it might relate to being able influence others:
Kids/Adults (not an exact science here):
- Ignore/Deflect
- Smile/Incentivize
- Laugh/Charm
- Run/Reduce
- Hide/Boycott
- Scream/Pressure/Complain
- Kick/Demand/Protest
- Surrender (hopefully it won’t be that bad?)/Move on/Learn
I don’t want to teach my son’s will out of him. I let him have his way whenever it’s more important to him than it is to the greater good (I’m not a perfect judge of that either). I let him push back on me and win, even if temporarily it’s at the expense of my sanity and little gray hairs start popping out of my head.
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