Use bacon flavored soda to get your kids to listen
The real reason it feels like your child often isn’t listening to you. And, how to get your child's attention, no yelling required.
Yesterday, my friend sent me a link to "Lester's Fixins Outrageous Wild Crazy Unique Flavor Soda Pop 6 Pack".
It is a six pack of sodas with the following flavors: Bacon, Peanut Butter & Jelly, Ranch Dressing, Sweet Corn, Pumpkin Pie, and Buffalo Wing.
When I showed the sodas to my son, he just yelled "Yuck" and ran away. This from a boy who has no qualms sucking his own toes.
But, of course, these sodas are selling really well because they are different than normal sodas. They stand out from the normal soda flavors, which is why they are selling for $26 instead of the normal $8.
This reminded me about something that Lisa Smith said when we interviewed her for our book How To Get Your Kids To Listen.
Lisa is a parent coach, speaker, author and host of the weekly podcast, Real World Peaceful Parenting.
She focuses on teaching parents how to enjoy parenting more, and become a more peaceful, calmer parent.
When I spoke to her, she talked about why it often seems that your kids aren't listening. You see, according to Lisa, kids are terrible at multi-tasking. In fact, often, even if they seem like they are listening, their attention is on something else and they don't hear what you say.
Lisa said that in order to gain our children's full attention, we need to have some way of grabbing their full attention. We need what she calls "Pattern Interrupters" to immediately transfer their attention from what they are doing to what you have to say.
If we don't understand this, we often end up yelling at our kids, which works in getting their attention, but also causes them (and us) to become upset.
Here's what Lisa had to say:
Then I come in the living room and I'm like, "Sue, put your shoes on right now!" and you look up at me and you're like, "Geez, mom, you don't have to yell." "Well, apparently I do because the only time you listen to me is when I yell." But the truth is, the yelling was the pattern interrupter. And I listen to you when you interrupt my pattern.
And so, my suggestion to parents is just that they use a different pattern interrupter. Rather than yelling, use calling their name. Come out of the kitchen and into the living room and make the request rather than yelling. It makes sense when you hear it. Most people, I explain this to them, and they go, "Oh, yeah, I get it."
But we get caught up in thinking our kids can multitask and as you and I both know, they can't.
Lisa Smith
In our interview, Lisa shared several examples of better pattern interrupters that we can use, as well as how to leverage your child's kindergarten or school teachers to discover pattern interrupters that are already working for your child.
Lisa also shared her four-step process for getting kids to listen during the interview.