Ep 39: Getting Kids to Listen to You

Chris Smith, bestselling author of The Conversion Code, reveals a
step-by-step formula for how to get kids to listen to you and
follow your rules. Learn how to deal with teenagers and use
Pattern Interrupt statements. Getting kids to listen to you is
easy when you know this.


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Full show notes


Do you ever have trouble getting kids to listen to you and do
what you ask? You’re not alone. Getting kids to listen is the
most common problems parents have when they find this website.


The problem is that teenagers stop listening to you because they
want a good reason to do something besides “I’m your parent.”
According to neuroscience, they want to know how doing their
chores or studying hard can benefit them. The “I’m counting to
three” method of parenting becomes completely useless unless you
back it up with some extremely heavy consequences. But that just
backfires and creates resentment from your teen.


That’s why this week’s episode of the podcast is all about
getting kids to listen to you and follow through with action. The
secret to dealing with teenagers who don’t respect your
authority?


Sell them on you want them to do


To discover the secret to getting kids to listen, I spoke with
Chris Smith and worked through a step-by-step plan that will
teach you all about getting kids to listen. Chris is the
bestselling author of The Conversion Code, and the Co-Founder of
Curaytor, which is one of the fastest-growing companies in
America. He’s an expert at selling products over the phone and
he’s trained thousands of salespeople around the world how to
adopt his pitch.


In this episode, we go through an in-depth, step-by-step example
of how to deal with teenagers who don’t want to clean their room.
After tuning in, you’ll be able to use some of Chris’ actual
word-for-word dialogue he’s used with his own daughter to taker
her responsibilities seriously. But to use his method correctly,
you’ll need to know how it works. According to Chris, getting
kids to listen breaks down into a four-step strategy:
Starting with a “Pattern Interrupt” StatementFinding Something
Your Child WantsUsing the “Five Yes” TechniqueFollowing up with a
“Feature-Benefit Tie-Down”

You can apply these principles of getting kids to listen to any
behavior you want your teen to start doing. According to Chris,
the idea isn’t so much a script as it is a framework for
productive conversations. You don’t want to command your teen,
but rather get them to understand and eventually act from your
perspective. While you’ll have to tune in to the whole podcast to
hear the extent of Chris’ strategy, here’s just a peek into how
it works:


Establishing Authority


The first step of getting kids to listen is a bit sneaky. It’s a
sales technique that Chris calls the Pattern Interrupt statement,
which involves establishing authority early on in the
conversation through small, innocuous commands. For example, you
can start a conversation by saying, “I want to talk to you about
something. Bring your phone with you to take some notes.” The
small command of “bring your phone” puts your child’s mind on
track to be more receptive to directives.


The key to getting kids to listen by using Pattern Interruption
is subtlety. You want to give your teen a small order to follow
so it doesn’t seem burdensome, but you’re still opening your teen
up to be more agreeable. Given a minor objective, like “Turn off
the lights in your room before coming downstairs” or “Can you
pull up your calendar,” your teen is prepped to collaborate
without even knowing it.


Chris also recommends starting with a Pattern Interrupt statement
because it demonstrates that you are the authority in the
conversation. You want to be able to set the tone of the
conversation early on, and giving your teenager something to do
is an innocuous way of getting kids to listen and letting them
know that there’s more to come.


Digging Deep to Find Incentives


Getting kids to listen is important if you want them to adopt
your goals while also pursuing their own accomplishments. To do
this, parents need to use a technique called Digging Deep.
Digging deep means investigating the details of what your teen
wants to do and using their reasoning to support your own goals.
The idea is that if you’re going to help someone get what they
want, you have to know what it is. To do this, Chris says you
need to identify what your child cares most about so you can
leverage their desire to meet your goals as a parent.


Aside from getting kids to listen to you, your goal is to turn
your kids into responsible adults who want their own rooms to be
clean instead of reminding them to do their chores all the time.
So, if you can dig deep and find reasons to take out the trash
that benefit your teen, you can sell them on this idea of
personal responsibility.


Let’s say your teen wants to go to the movies but you want them
to clean their room. How do you align the two goals? First, you
need information about the event that you can use to build a
link. Chris says that most parents stop investigating after
asking their kids, “What are you going to do this weekend?” But
when you stop asking questions, you’re losing out on valuable
information that can help you better understand what your teen
wants.


Are they going out with friends? Why does your teenager want to
hang out with this group? When you dig deep and ask questions
like “when, where, why, and who,” you might find that your child
wants to fit in more at school and have something to talk about
with their friends next week. They want the social experience of
feeling accepted.


Once you have a better understanding of the situation, you can
tell your child that after the movies, their friends won’t want
to come over if their room is dirty and gross. Now they see that
having a clean room benefits them in the long run. By digging
deep and pairing your child’s desires with responsible practices,
you’re preparing your child for adulthood. Because without
realizing it, they’re building in good habits that they might
thank you for later on down the road.


The Five Yesses


Once you’ve listened to your teen and dug deep to figure out your
child’s incentives, it’s time to use the Five Yesses Strategy.
This works by putting the information you’ve gathered into a list
along with some of your own objectives, like taking out the trash
or washing the car. Then, you repeat the list of your shared
goals back to your teen with affirmative statements. Here’s what
that exchange might look like:


Parent: You want to go to the movies, right?


Teen: Yes.


Parent: And it’s for this PG-13 movie?


Teen: Yeah.


Parent: Got it. And you want your three friends to go with you?


Teen: Yup!


Parent: And you want to go this weekend, right?


Teen: Yes.


Parent: So, you know that means you have to vacuum the living
room before Friday in order to go, right?


Teen: YES!


Parent: Okay, that sounds like a plan.


The genius behind the Five Yesses technique is that you’re
building a compromise into the conversation without it feeling
like a ...