3 Secrets Teachers Use To Keep Kids In Line (And They Work!)

by Natalie Hoage on October 7, 2011

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If you have a toddler or preschooler, you know what a struggle it becomes to get anything done. And it’s a struggle that goes on all day, everyday. While they are building confidence and finding their individuality and independence, you find yourself thinking “I can have this done in 2 seconds, but it’s taking him 2 minutes!” And it’s okay to feel that frustration! But there are some tricks that teachers use that can help you.

Think about it — you spend ten minutes trying to get your child’s jacket on and it’s a fight the entire time. His teacher at school gets his jacket, and 20 others, on and out the door in three minutes. How does she do it? Here are tips from teachers on how to get your young children to cooperate, while you save your sanity.

Follow Through

Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Teachers don’t negotiate or continue to say “okay, just one more cookie”. When it’s time for the kids to get to work, the teacher says it once and the kids do it. And if they don’t, there are consequences.

But parents often say one thing “We are going to do homework right now,” but then get talked into letting their child play for another five minutes, and then another five after that.

But where to start? Start by giving a few gentle (but firm) warnings starting five minutes before it’s time to leave the playground or start homework. Once five minutes are up, announce definitively and matter-of-factly what is going to happen. It may take a few times for your child to know that you mean business, but after that it will be smooth sailing.

A Race Against . . . Themselves!

Don’t let your child dawdle. If left up to my son, he will take an hour to eat one meal! Our first strategy was to set the timer, giving him a certain amount of time to finish a meal.

But another fun idea I heard recently was to have him race against himself. This helps him both hurry and learn time management. All you need is a stopwatch, and then to create a chart that shows the results each time your child finishes a specific task (in our case, it’s eating). At the end of the week, as long as he doesn’t exceed a certain time (say, 20 minutes), he gets a special treat (a Disney movie and popcorn).

Get Your Child’s Attention

One of the biggest issues I have with my kids is getting them to pay attention. I find the tips here for this problem both useful and easy.

The first is to sing instead of yell. Kids hear singing and they automatically quiet down. So instead of yelling, I just sing my request. The kids immediately perk up to hear what I’m singing, and they also forget what they were doing beforehand! This one really works!

Also, keep your instructions short and concise. Preschoolers can’t understand complex instructions. So if your little one is jumping off the couch, don’t try to explain why it’s a bad idea and how they can hurt themselves or others, first just say “Get down” firmly. Once they’ve complied, then you can explain.

Do you have any secret tips that work on children? Another one I’ve heard is whispering, but that doesn’t seem to work on mine!

Tagged as: communicating with preschoolers, communicating with young children, dealing with young children, teachers secrets

  • Ruby T.

    Short words and commands work pretty well most of the time. I’ve been accused of “dog training” my child because I will often just say, “Come now,” “Sit Down,” or “Eat.” with very little chatter.

    Once my child obeys her direction, then I get very friendly and chatty with her, so she knows she’s not being punished, she’s being told what to do and when she does it, life continues merrily. I hope it continues to work!

  • http://www.livingthescream.com Living The Scream

    These tips are great! My kids drive me craziest when putting there shoes on. They take forever. I think they would really enjoy the timer idea.

  • http://www.adventuresinbabywearing.com Adventures In Babywearing

    I have learned SO many tricks like this since helping out in my son’s class at lunchtime. Honestly I just watch the teacher IN AWE and have definitely taken notes!

    (Whispering totally works with my kids, too. I’ll whisper to them and usually they whisper back and will stick with it for a while.)

    Steph

  • http://www.cutmarkprint.com BethAnne

    I will have to try the singing technique. Thank You.

  • http://everydaygameplan.net Shiloh

    I’ve not always done the whispering, but I’ve definitely just stopped and stood, after I’ve given an instruction. If you do that for about …4 seconds, the kids closest to you will stop, and soon you only have one or two that haven’t. After that, you just give them a hard stare, and their friends will poke them.:) Works every time.:)

  • Jen

    As a former teacher, I learned to not reward for every little good behavior. Otherwise, you end up with the following conversations:
    Teacher: I need you to help me collect the papers, please.
    Student: What will I get?

    Often, kids crave a kind, sincere “great job” or “thank you so much for helping me!” over another sticker or prize or toy.

  • http://www.facebook.com/kimberly.ard Kimberly Ard

    I am an elementary teacher… whispering works in my class. It allows you to say what you need to say without embarrassing the child. Also, I read that for toddlers you should say the child’s name first, then provide the instruction. Children tune back in when they hear their name (although you may have to say it three times.) If you have already given the instruction and then say their name, they miss the instruction. Finally, give kids a choice. Keep the end result the same, but let the child decide how it should be done. For example, when I want my niece to pick up her toys, I’ll say, “Do you want to pick your toys up by yourself or would you like for me to help you. OR “Do you want to pick up your blocks first or the tea set?” Toys will still be picked up, but the child is allowed to chose and it provides ownership.

  • SusieQ

    Ok honey – ready….set… EAT! Yeah! You inhaled your food WAY FASTER today than yesterday! G’boy – have some popcorn!

    And then wonder why the child has an eating disorder. Encouraging a child to eat fast and then rewarding him for it is not good. How ’bout arranging his meal time schedule so he’s not under the gun to clean his plate like a vacuum?

    I can still hear my mother’s voice in my head when I eat (and she’s been dead for 40 years) “oh Dick and Jane, see how well SusieQ eats. She’s cleaned her whole plate and you two are only halfway done!” Needless to say, Dick and Jane did not grow up with weight issues and even today I have to remind myself to SLOW DOWN, and that it’s okay not to suck up every last crumb off the plate.

    The things parents do to their kids. Well what would all those therapists do if we grew up without issues, hmm?

  • molly

    I consciously made an effort to give my child two choices most times that I asked them to do a chore. Do you want to lay out tomorrow”s choice of clothes now, or do you want to have your bath first? My child was feeling so empowered and included, that I rarely had any issues with chores. In fact, my children learned to barter at an early age. Mom, if I get my laundry all done up today and vacuum the downstairs, can I have two friends over after school tomorrow? I raised the bar at an early age, and my children lived up to my expectations.

  • Dave

    When my kids were little the one thing I think that worked best was to be consistent. I could stay pretty calm but sometimes I would get mad and tell them I was going to do something…and then I did it. I told my daughters that if they did not clean up the toys, I was going to throw them all out. When they didn’t, I put them all in a garbage bag and took them outside and put them in the trash can. After a bit, I brought them back in and let them put them away. I heard a story about a woman who had a four hour trip to her parents coming up. A week early, she loaded the kids in the car, and took off. When they started acting up she told them to stop or she was turning around and going back home and they would not get to see grandma and grandpa. Well they acted up, she turned around and went home. The next week when she told them they were going to try this again, they were angels for the whole trip.

  • Dave

    Always remember that your kids really do listen to you. Once on a
    trip my youngest kept putting her beverage on the cooler between her and
    her sister. I would stop or turn and it would spill. So I told her that
    if she did it again, I was going to stop and leave her beside the highway. Well about two or three hours later, we stopped at the McDonald’s drive up and as I turned to go around the building, her pop fell over. Well I pulled into a parking spot, got out and pulled her out of the car so I could get to the mess before it soaked into the seats. she started yelling “Daddy don’t leave me!” and crying. It took me a bit to realize that she remembered what I had said hours before. This brought up the dilemma of how to get her into the restaurant to change into something dry without scaring her more. I finally had her sister take her and I told her that there was not way I was going to leave her sister. When they came back out I gave her a big hug and explained that I would never really leave her alongside the road. But she also did not put her pop back up on the cooler for the rest of the trip :) I think part of this relates to my earlier post, if you are consistent in doing what you say, they know what will happen.

  • Thesis Papers

    This article lists some very useful techniques that do work. I’ve used another direct teaching method, which takes into consideration that children will do the right thing if you tell them what the right thing is. Children are learning every day; they are not little adults who already know everything. I use this method when I need them to behave in public or in other situations where they need to demonstrate disciplined behavior. For example, this also would be useful when you need your children to develop a regular study routine at the same time, every day after school. What I do is simply tell them how to behave in a certain situation immediately BEFORE that situation occurs, or we arrive at that location. If you tell them after the situation has started, your children will have already asserted their own rules of behavior. It will be too late to gain the upper hand. You will be reactive, instead of proactive. Being reactive is never a good stance for an adult. This technique is similar to the referenced parent who did the test drive with her children (awesome, btw), and to the parent who tells her child what to do in commands first then gives warmth.

    I use my method, when we are all going to a store in the car; I talk to them in a pleasant, but efficient manner. Think Mary Poppins with less jolly, but neither harsh nor agitated. I’m not trying to scare them; I just want to create their new, sensible world for the future. Speaking the Mary Poppins way to your own children may be difficult to do all day, every day because you need to be overtly warm and nurturing to them for the majority of the time. However, when I require disciplined behavior, I find the Mary Poppins method works best. I tell the children, “OK, Harold and Maude listen to me. I’m going to tell you something very important. We are going to the store. This is what is going to happen in the store: you are going to walk next to me at all times; you will keep your hands at your sides at all times, you will not touch each other and you will not touch anything inside the store; you will use your indoor voices. Let me hear your indoor voices right now. That’s right, very good. Can you do those three things I just told you? Excellent. Do you have any questions? All right.” Then when we pull up to the store, before I even turn off the car engine and take off our seat belts (implying that we don’t have to get out of the car if this talk doesn’t go well), I review those same three (no more than three) things with the children, “Harold and Maude, remember. What three things are going to happen in this store?” I let them tell me. If they can’t tell me, that’s usually an indication there’s going to be a problem. If that is the case, do not go inside the store! I’ve never had that happen, though. Once they’ve told me the three rules, I verbally reward them, “That’s right; good job, Harold and Maude. Let’s start now.” I, also, let them show me they know the rules when we’re inside the store. I am always amazed at how well they follow those three rules. Children want to do the right thing. Now, if I want the children’s disciplined behavior to last, I have to behave a certain way, too. I must be consistent and reasonable. I don’t complicate my three instructions with a lot of extra talking inside the store; learn how to take ‘yes’ for an answer. I don’t ever change my demeanor from pleasant, but efficient; the children follow my lead. I don’t stay in the store forever; they are children after all, who are full of energy and need to run and play regularly. There’s no need to rush; get the few things you came for and get out of there before it’s too late!

    As this article says, teachers generate a different response from children
    than parents do. The reason is simple: teachers are not parents. Teachers don’t love the children as parents should do. Therefore, there are no emotional heartstrings to tug when the children want to change the teacher’s instructions and rules.

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