Run Your Home Like A Business: No Means No

It is a given that most parents feel that it is just important to explain what they think about a certain situation to their children in the hopes of making them understand the bigger picture. Although this is harmless in a micro level, you have to remember that along the way, wanting your child to understand every decision and every point that you have can easily shift into wanting their approval, or their acceptance of your reasons.

This is not the situation that you would want to have because when this happens, you as a parent can get stuck in a rut where you over-explain things to your children. At work, do you find your boss explaining to you why you should come to work on time? Have you heard of a manager sit beside an employee and explain to him in detail the dos and don’ts of the company? Experts believe that as long as you have already given your child a reasonable amount of input, any further explanation defeats the purpose.

Have you been trying to over-explain or over-negotiate with your kids frequently every time a misunderstanding transpires? If you have, then it is very likely that every time your child tends to challenge your authority, decision or rule, you keep talking to your child in order to make him understand why you have made the rule to begin with – you tend to defend your own rules, in your own home.

This habit usually continues even until your child gets a little older, and you find yourself compromising some more and changing the rules a bit every time your child disagrees with you. Realize that by over-elaborating things to your kids, you are training your child NOT to accept the rules.

Keep in mind that when you tell your child “No, not right now”, and he keeps insisting that he should, then you end up giving in and letting him do it anyway, you just trained your child not to listen to you.

When you come to think about it, giving in to your child even after you refused is just like training him how to break your rules. And you don’t want that.

Look at it this way – when you told your child “no”, they will think that you are letting them challenge your authority, the consequences that you gave, or the responsibilities that they have. When you explain your reasons to your child over and over and eventually give in to his whim, you are actually giving him permission to challenge your authority without even knowing it.

That is why it is important that you show your child that he is bound to certain limits. These limits could be anything from establishing a curfew to saying “No phone calls by 8 o’clock”. When you set these rules without over-explaining yourself, in effect, your child experiences those limits as being told “no.”

By: Katherine Thompson

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