How To Get Your Kids To Listen

Dear fellow parent (or any caretaker of young kids between 2 and 10)

If you often get into needless power struggles with your young kids, or get angry at them, and say and do things that you regret afterwards...

If you sometimes go to bed at night feeling ashamed that you yelled at your kids again...

If you just want to have a great relationship with kids that work with you instead of against you...

Then this is going to be the most important message you read all day.

Here's why...

My name is Sue Meintjes. I’m a parenting coach, but more importantly I'm a mom with two young kids.

Both my kids are very strong-willed, and getting them to do what I need them to do has always been a challenge for me. Just getting them ready in the morning for school and kindergarten was a constant struggle.

One morning a few years ago, after yet another struggle to get my son to turn off the TV and my daughter to put on her clothes, I sat down on my bed and just cried.

I couldn’t do this anymore.

I dreaded each morning.

I hated shouting at my kids.

I hated having to conjure up threats or having to promise even more outlandish rewards…just to get them to do what they needed to do.

All I wanted was for my kids to cooperate without me having to resort to yelling or threats. I just wanted them to listen without power struggles or tantrums.

But as I sat there crying, emotionally drained, I realized that I was missing something...

I was missing some tool, some information, some mindset, something, which was preventing me from connecting with my children and making it sooo difficult to get them to cooperate with me.

I was falling back to the same parenting techniques my parents used - yelling, threats, and bribes - because I did not have any better tools in my parenting toolbox.

Reading parenting books helped a bit, but it was so difficult to find the time to actually finish a book, and then test out the advice or techniques. All I wanted was short, actionable parenting tools that I could test out immediately.

My family and friends also couldn't really help. It felt like the typical advice I received from them - "be stricter" or "don't let them manipulate you" - just wasn't in sync with the trusting, connected relationship I wanted to nurture with my kids.

I needed a way to guide my kids that didn't rely on fear, threats, manipulation, or trying to ignore their behavior. I wanted my kids to cooperate with me, but I also wanted them to take more responsibility for themselves.

That morning, as I sat there on the bed, I decided I needed help.

So for the next few months, I cajoled, coaxed, and begged the world’s leading parenting experts to answer one simple question for me: “What is your best strategy or technique for getting kids to listen?”

I spoke to over 30 leading parenting experts - child psychiatrists, family psychologists, parenting coaches, kindergarten and primary school teachers, and best-selling parenting authors - from around the world to find out their best advice for getting my kids to listen. Then, my husband and I tested out their techniques on our own kids, to see what worked best and got the best results.

The advice we received completely changed both my and my husband's approach to parenting. Now, instead of always falling back to threats or bribes when our kids don't cooperate, we have a whole toolbox of parenting techniques to use, techniques that actually improve our relationship with our kids instead of damaging it.

And because I have these positive, connection building parenting tools for getting my kids to cooperate, I now wake up each morning confident and excited to spend more time with my kids, and I go to bed feeling proud of my behavior and the strong, positive connection I have with my kids.

At the core of all of these positive changes are 3 Cooperation Secrets that I discovered after reviewing all of the interviews I did. Understanding these secrets has the potential not only to make getting your kids to cooperate so much easier, but also to make parenting so much more fun and rewarding, and to teach your children the skills they need to develop into kind, generous, successful adults.