Ming (Agents of Speech) argues that repeatedly telling children what to do leads to tantrums and confusion; instead parents should demonstrate actions, use non-verbal signals (hands) and observe the child's gestures. Reducing verbal instructions lowers complexity and frees parental attention for observation and physical guidance (e.g., holding a child's hand to show what to do).
If you keep on repeating, it's like, oh, you want cookie, you want cookie, you want cookie? What will you get? Like tantrums, right? You're asking for it. How you do this instead is explained by showing a lot and doing a lot instead of trying to tell. Because the word means you're using your verbal instructions. I see this a lot in parents. Especially how we tackle this is we tell parents to stop talking and just use their hands. And why does it work within the parents who are working with us? As you are not talking, you are leaving a lot more bandwidth for yourself to use your eyes to observe your child. All these words are meaningless because how does the child get to what they want is by doing some sort of gesture to tell you what they want. Right? So if you give so many verbal instructions, it adds the complexity to the whole thing. You don't want to add complexity, you want to remove things. Wouldn't it be easier if you just told your child by showing and holding his hand to do something?
