One instruction at a time
You say, “Put your shoes on, get your book bag and wait by the door.” Two minutes later your child is standing in the hallway holding one shoe. The book bag is still upstairs.
They heard you. The instructions just didn’t stick.
Why three steps at once is too many
A request with three parts asks a child to keep all of it in their head while they start on the first part. That mental notepad is called working memory, and children who find attention difficult often seem to have less room on it. By the time they have found the first shoe, the rest has gone.
It looks like not listening. Most of the time it is a full notepad.
What to do instead
Give one instruction. Wait until it is done. Then give the next one.
“Put your shoes on.”
Shoes on? “Now get your book bag.”
Keep each instruction short and concrete, and say what to do rather than what to stop doing. “Hands on the table” works better than “stop fiddling”. It feels slow at first. You will say “now” a lot. Stay with it for a few days before you decide whether it helps.
Try it this week
Pick the messiest part of your day, which is usually the morning, and run all of it on single instructions. At the end of the week, think about how much repeating you did compared with before.
With younger children
Add a gesture. Point at the shoes while you say “shoes”. Words with something to look at stick far better than words alone.
This is the first of ten strategies in the free Calm Focus Toolkit, which also covers visual timetables, movement breaks and how to talk to your child’s teacher.