A short spoken advice segment (YouTube) by Ming @ Agents of Speech explaining why children may deliberately seek to irritate adults: irritated reactions reward the child's behavior. The speaker advises parents to give clear, limited instructions, follow through by guiding the child physically if needed, and consistently reward attention/listening with praise rather than minimal responses that teach ignoring.
When you hit a certain irritation level. When they see you irritated, they're happy. They smirk at you, laugh and they do the opposite, right? When they do the opposite you get even more irritated and it actually rewards the behavior. Tell them one time and if they don't do it right, you tell them the feedback. Say it one more time, take their hand and do it for them. Don't let them just run off. They learn how to ignore you and maybe they will start liking you. Getting annoyed. I see a lot of parents call the names of their kid like hundreds of times and then looks over and then the mom just go so what's the point of calling them? And when they do look, your response is so minimum. Call their name or tell them to do something and reward them. Remember to praise. Do not take it for granted that their attention and listening to you as something that they should be doing. It's not. They have other things to do as well. Don't annoy your child.
