I’ve yet to meet a single parent who didn’t want their kids to stop, look, and listen when they were given a direction. 

Myself and my parenting partner included. 

It was a typical Sunday night, and both of my boys were vibing on a whole 'nother level. Your girl was spent after an exhausting weekend of serious home organization, and my children were flailing around like wild animals, yelling, and screaming—loud, but in a playful way. 

We were all wired and tired.

But still…it was 8pm and we had school the next day. I needed to gain their attention and get them ready for bed. 

So, I did. 

Within 10 minutes, the living room was picked up, teeth were brushed and the kids were in my lap for a book. 

“What sorcery is this?!” you ask. 

A magician never reveals their secrets—but in this instance, nope. No magic involved. 

Here’s what I said: 

“Kids, listening ears on, please. It’s time to put away our toys and get ready for bed. Let’s go.”

No magic, right? These are words we all say. 

So, why were they so effective? 

First, I was calm about it. Rather than overreacting to the excess stimulation, I named, framed, and claimed it so I could move forward with more internal peace.

Second, I gave a clear directive: “Listening ears on, please.”

Third, I paused and waited for both of them to turn toward me with their attention. This took about 5 seconds or so.

Fourth, I assessed their retention: “Who can remember what direction I just gave?”

They both looked toward each other: “Clean up!” and they worked together to put away the tornado of toys that was all over the living room floor. 

Then, I validated their efforts once I saw them starting to make moves towards putting those toys away: “Wow, you’re moving fast! Thanks for those listening ears. You’re really helping us get to books and cuddle time sooner!”

Finally, I prioritized the connection with my kids: “Now that our home is clean, let’s read some books together.”

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Ready to give this a try?

If you’re struggling with getting your kids to stop and listen to you, join us for our monthly Conscious Parent Coaching class, exclusively held inside the Conscious Mommy Community. In this 45-minute group coaching class, you will learn how to interrupt stress responses in the moment, regulate your emotions with compassion, and respond to your child without yelling or shutting down.  If you’re an anxious parent who fears you’re not doing enough, this class will help you break the cycle of reactivity and finally feel more confident, connected, and in control.

When you enroll in the Conscious Mommy Community, you receive:

⭐️ Weekly live classes with Bryana Kappadakunnel, LMFT—learn how the child brain actually works, why listening is hard for kids, and how to communicate in ways that land without yelling, threatening, or repeating yourself.

⭐️ Full on-demand access to the class library—revisit trainings on nervous system regulation, connection-based discipline, strong-willed kids, and the brain science behind cooperation so you always know what to do in the moment.

⭐️ A supportive community of parents practicing the same skills—ask real questions, work through power struggles, and receive grounded reflections that help you stay calm, clear, and connected when your child won’t listen.

⭐️ Evidence-based tools for strengthening listening skills—discover simple, brain-backed practices that improve attention, reduce resistance, and help your child follow through with confidence and ease.

⭐️ Direct access to Bryana for coaching and guidance—through live Q&As, somatic reflections, and interactive teaching, receive personalized support for the exact communication challenges showing up in your home.

⭐️ Ongoing clarity and inspiration—build a home where cooperation feels predictable, connection comes first, and listening grows naturally over time without power struggles or burnout.

If this kind of support feels like the right next step for you, now is the ideal moment to join and experience how different parenting feels when you’re not doing it alone. Enroll here. (Use code HOLIDAY at checkout for 50 percent off your annual membership through 12/31/25.)

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Why Listening Is Hard for Kids: A Brain-Based Explanation

Most parents who say, "My kids don't listen to me," actually mean, "My kids don't obey me."

Unconsciously, we believe we are owed our children's obedience simply for being the authority figure.

But your child's brain sees something different.

Obeying you isn't its top priority. Your child's brain is constantly trying to understand the world around it.

And so, getting our children to listen to us is more about our capacity to teach.

Listening is a complex skill, requiring several parts of the prefrontal cortex to work together. This “upstairs brain” (as Dr. Dan Siegel calls it) develops gradually throughout childhood. A child’s ability to follow directions depends on:

• Attention shifting
• Working memory
• Impulse control
• Emotional regulation

These are skills that come with time, patience, and practice. Kids who ignore you aren't bad kids.

They are kids who need more guidance and leadership—which is where you come in.

When you speak, your child’s brain has to do something incredibly complex:

hear → process → shift focus → decide → act.

For neurodivergent kids, this process may be exceptionally challenging.

Your primary job here is to create a home environment that supports your child's listening—rather than shutting it down.

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What Actually Gets in the Way of Listening

Children aren’t robots, and yet we often expect them to respond instantly the moment they're spoken to. Some kids have delayed auditory processing—it takes their brain a minute to interpret what was asked of them, and they often appear non-compliant during that process.

We expect an immediate response because we are busy and overwhelmed with our lives, and we often don't have the time or patience to meet our kids where they're at, pacing-wise. Unfortunately, if a parent moves quicker than a child can process, it can often interfere with the child's capacity for listening.

There are several other predictable factors that get in the way of listening:

1. Dysregulated nervous system

If your child is tired, overstimulated, or emotionally overloaded, the downstairs brain takes over. No number of reminders can override biology.

This is when you see power struggles or resistance.

2. Divided attention

Children have a narrow spotlight of attention. If they’re building, imagining, wrestling, or singing, you’re competing with a powerful internal world. If you come barrelling in, demanding they switch their focus to you right away, your child will likely struggle with that, especially if they are young.

3. Unclear or layered instructions

A long list of things (“clean up, wash hands, grab your shoes, come eat dinner”) overwhelms working memory. Too many demands at once sets you both up for failure.

4. Lack of connection

Kids listen best to adults when they feel safe. If we're yelling at them or being too rough, we'll train our kids to tune us out.

Connection is the way the brain becomes receptive.

5. Parental urgency

When parents are rushed, frustrated, or tired, directions become sharper, shorter, and less attuned. Kids feel that energy and react to the emotion, not the words.

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How Can We Improve Children’s Listening Skills?

Your child's listening skills expand when you support their brain and nervous system development. Traditionally, we've used complex behavior charts, threats, or punishments to get a child to comply—but these aren't needed, and can sometimes backfire.

What you need are the 3C's of discipline: consistency, clarity, and connection. When you are consistent with your approach, clear with your requests, and maintain connection through the process, kids collaborate much easier with you.

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Your Child’s Brain Needs Connection Before Direction

Before your child can follow through with your request, their nervous system must feel settled enough to receive information.

This is why yelling doesn’t work. And why threats backfire.

When you pause to attune to your child's brain and body, you're telling them (without words): You’re safe. You can take this in.

A child is far more likely to listen when they sense your:

• warmth
• presence
• predictability
• respect

Many parents worry that if they are warm with their child, particularly following misbehavior, that they will reinforce the negative behavior. This is only true if there aren’t clear boundaries, limits, and/or appropriate redirection.

This is not permissive parenting. This is parenting that just makes sense.

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Clarity Makes Listening Easier

Clear, specific, and simple directions require minimal interpretation from your child's mind. That's why these are generally the most effective and easiest for your child to follow.

We want the listening process to be successful. We do not want to trick our kids or accidentally set them up for failure with unclear or broad instructions.

Compare:

“Can you please pick up this room? It’s a mess.”

to

“Listening ears on. It’s time to put the blocks in the bin.”

The first is vague, emotionally loaded, and too global.

The second is clear, observable, and easily digestible.

Clear directions reduce power struggles because you’re speaking to the part of your child's brain that can act.

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Why Pausing Is the Most Underrated Parenting Tool

After a clear directive, the pause matters.

It gives the brain the few seconds it needs to shift from what’s currently happening to what’s being asked.

Parents often rush this moment, continuing to talk or repeating themselves. Every time we do this, we may as well be the teachers in the Charlie Brown series: "Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah."

But waiting five seconds—literally five—creates space for their:

• attention to shift
• comprehension to activate
• cooperation to begin

This is a simple, brain-backed skill that changes everything.

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Active Listening Builds Children Who Listen Better

Children learn listening skills by being listened to.

Not perfectly. Not endlessly. But consistently.

A 6-year-old's parents came to see me because she was "defiant" and "never listened" to her parents. Mom said her daughter frequently screamed, "You're not listening to me!"

So, rather than teaching them how to get their daughter to listen better, I helped them build better skills for listening to their children. Skills like:

• slowing down
• reflecting back
• offering support
• using warm curiosity

These aren't just social media trends.

These are real relationship skills that shape the architecture of your child's "upstairs brain" (another Dr. Dan Siegel catchphrase).

Here's why this matters: children internalize the experience of being heard, and over time, they become better listeners themselves.

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Practice Builds Skills: How Parents Can Support Listening Long Term

Listening isn't something you command today and they are flawless at tomorrow.

The fruits of listening—cooperation, collaboration—are the result of working through a lengthy developmental process.

In other words, it takes time for it to feel seamless and easy. There are stages of developmental cooperation, like turn-taking in preschoolers and increased personal responsibility in middle school.

You can certainly expect cooperation, but make sure your expectations are appropriate to your child's developmental age, and that they are delivered with warmth and respect: "I expect you to work together with me, and I believe you can. Let's help you get there."

Here are practices that strengthen listening skills over time:

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1. Keep directions short

One sentence at a time. One action at a time.

You can add on more complex directives once you see your child has mastered the basic ones without additional prompts or reminders from you.

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2. Stay connected in the process

Any time you need your child's attention, first make sure you have:

• Soft eye contact
• A gentle touch
• A warm tone

These cues regulate the nervous system and increase the likelihood that they will engage with you.

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3. Reinforce listening behavior

“Thanks for listening so quickly. That really helped.”

Specific praise like this is evidence-based to increase positive behaviors we'd like to see more of. Additionally, your genuine warmth and affection help the brain link listening to positive relational experiences.

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4. Follow through consistently

One of the most common barriers most parents face is consistency. It's a skill in and of itself to show up in a reliable, predictable way—especially if this is not how you were raised.

That being said, children significantly benefit from repetition and predictability. They learn what to expect, and when they know what to expect, the home environment feels safer and easier to navigate.

The safer, more consistent, and more predictable the home environment feels, the more children cooperate. This correlation is well established in the research.

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5. Offer support when listening isn't happening

For example:

“Looks like clean up feels tough right now. I can help you start.”

Support isn’t rescuing. It’s scaffolding.

And if your child needs a scaffold to be successful, then that's okay. Just like a building in construction, eventually it can stand without the support beams. But we shouldn't feel guilty for needing them, because without them, the building wouldn't be built in the first place.

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How Can I Get My Child to Listen Without Yelling or Threatening Them with Punishment?

This question comes up constantly in my practice as a licensed marriage and family therapist—and for good reason.

Sometimes, it feels like the only way to get them to listen is to become punitive—which feels especially true if you're stretched thin, overworked, and constantly on the go.

Here's the thing: punishments may get short-term obedience, but they weaken long-term listening skills.

You read that right: the more you rely on punishment, the more you risk conditioning your child not to listen to you.

Children listen best when:

• parents stay regulated
• directions are concrete
• the environment is calm enough for attention
• connection is present

When you care for the child within you and more effectively care for the children in front of you, then you get children who listen to and respect you without needing to become overly strict. I discuss this in my book, Parent Yourself First, available anywhere you like to buy (or rent) books.

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The Bottom Line

Getting your child to listen is not about gaining their perfect compliance every time.

It’s about helping your child’s brain master something challenging.

When you support the upstairs brain with attuned communication and connection before direction, you reduce power struggles and increase cooperation.

Under these conditions, kids listen not because they’re forced to, but because their brain is ready to.

That’s the shift.

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Join Us to Learn More

Once a month inside the Conscious Mommy Community, I host a Conscious Parent Coaching Meet-Up. Join us to learn evidence-based strategies to co-regulate and communicate with your kids in ways that truly support their listening, cooperation, and follow through skills.

You don’t need magic words. You need communication that lands.

Join us. Your future self will thank you.

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Relevant Resources:

🔗 Getting Your Child to Listen To You Exclusive Access inside the Conscious Mommy Community

📘Parent Yourself First: In stores now – order your copy and learn how to Raise Confident, Compassionate Kids By Becoming the Parent You Wish You’d Had. The guidance is practical, actionable, and straightforward. Your path to healing starts now.

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