Periodic disobedience of a child is a normal occurrence in a child’s development. It is nothing unusual and new, but as a parent, I understand those who are worried during these times.
Speaking to a friend doesn’t usually help much as our friends always have flawless children and look down on you pity you thus making you feel like a bad parent. However, don’t ever feel like that! Since you are straightforward and care about your child’s behaviour, that makes you a better parent than the one who doesn’t admit their children’s imperfections.
Solitary or Social Beings
I am not here to judge you or brag about my parental skills, thus I am not going to look into the reasons for children’s misbehaviour. What I wish is to point out the things that can help more with developing social and cooperation skills.
Using mobile phones and playing too many games make children nervous and destructive. They become solitary rather than social beings, selfish and unable to express their thoughts and emotions. Their speaking skills are reduced to the minimum because the only conversation they lead is short and simple usually using abbreviations via the keyboard.
How to engage them in a real conversation instead of the virtual one?
Toys, especially wooden toys, demand cooperation. Cooperation in the real world instead of the virtual one is characterized by social and communication dimensions. Children’s companion has to be real and present. Accordingly, their conversation has to be constructive leading to planning their actions.
Playing with wooden toys teaches children patience and calmness, totally opposite of the abilities produced by phone use. They have to practice tolerance as this is one of the most needed skills in today’s world. However, real play encourages children to develop real-world abilities through make-believe scenarios and companions.
Finding Out the Cause of Disobedience
Younger kids are many times unable to say what annoys or makes them nervous. We have to be a parental version of Sherlock Holmes in order to find out what makes them disobedient and unwilling to respond to parental requests.
Speaking from my own experience, setting up a wisely planned play may be very helpful in this matter. If you are suspecting that something happened at the kindergarten then play the kindergarten game. Let the child take the role of the teacher and you take the role of a child. Take out the toys and start playing. Now listen to your child carefully and you will know what makes them annoyed or whose behaviour your child imitates.
This way you may find out a lot, about teacher-child or child-child cooperation and what’s bothering them. Consequently, you can help your child with any difficulties they may be facing. Moreover, you can work on the development of the skill that you see your child is struggling with by modelling the situations or conversations.
Listening to the Instructions
The best way to teach children is through play. Again, a call for play and a playmate will be the first step toward obedience. If you don’t have many toys, you may want to consider buying one. Please carefully choose the right toy, choose natural, choose wood and read the review before you decide to buy it, find out about the skills and the sensations it rises in the child in order to choose the appropriate toy. If you are not sure how to choose, please read my blog here.
In this case, the play should demand full attention and cooperation. Therefore, I will give you an example. Choose wooden blocks and imagine a construction but don’t tell the child what it is or say it’ll be a surprise. Pay attention that your construction is short at the beginning and each time you repeat the play make it bigger. This way you can also practice patience in your child along with listening comprehension.
Now give your child instructions to combine the blocks. If the child obediently performs the action commanded by you, please think of a small reward that will encourage them to listen to you again another time. In case a child starts misconducting in the middle of the play, tell them they will miss the best part, but if they want you can continue your play later. Be flexible and give the child enough time to consider restarting your play.
The reward or incentive should be a small one but still satisfying. It depends on the age and child’s interest, so I leave it up to you to make your child willing to play more listening games and thus, unconsciously accept obedience.
Modelling Good Communication
In order to fix disobedience in your child, you need to be the model the child will learn from. Hence, model good communication, and practice it on a daily bases with all family members including the disobedient child. You may want to swap roles with your child so that they know how you feel when they behave disobediently.
For further practising communication, you can use wooden dolls and make imaginary situations. Pretend play helps kids enhance their communication skills and overcome the obstacles they face in various situations. This kind of play with toys along with parents’ modelling inclusive vocabulary aims at embracing diversity and understanding others.
Dramatic play with wooden toys emulates real-world situations where children are allowed to express their emotions and try out a variety of different roles to find the one that suits them best. The best role should also be indirectly suggested and given incentive by a parent depending on what a parent wants to practice with their child.
Conclusion
Every child needs play in order to practice skills that are important in their life. Here, a disobedient child mostly needs to be involved in pretend play in order to practice communication and social skill. Children need to understand and accept diversity thus refining tolerance and understanding.
Construction play is helpful in constructive language use. They need to exercise listening skills, patience and obedience along with attentiveness. Drilling those skills in your child also demands your attention and patience. Nonetheless, your incentive is your goal.
Remember, these changes do not happen overnight. Building communication habits is not like building a castle with wooden blocks. It takes a lot of time, effort and patience. Hence, keep playing with your child and you will get to the goal.
