Help! My Child Has Trouble Following Instructions
Why does my child have so much trouble following instructions? It’s something many of us parents have asked ourselves, our children’s teachers and the checkout operator at the local supermarket. Or maybe not there, since that would be kind of awkward.
So we thought it was time to look into the reasons why this might be happening and what we as parents can do about it.
Why Do Some Kids Struggle With Following Instructions?
Kids receive instructions in a few ways: by listening, by reading and by seeing. A child can be great at understanding and following an instruction we verbalise, but cannot read and then follow the same instruction.
As parents though, we tend to notice the verbal instruction difficulties first and are told about the written difficulties by our child’s teacher. This results in many of us are also left wondering if our kids are just not listening to us. Or are they simply ignoring what we say? Well, there could be a complete mixture of reasons as to why a child has difficulty following instructions including:
- choosing not to listen as they are busy doing something else
- they don’t want to listen
- there is too much background noise
- they listen but struggle to remember what you said
- they have a hearing deficit
- poor auditory processing
- short working memory
- difficulty reading and understanding written text
- unable to see the instruction demonstrations
However, it can also be the person who is giving instructions that are the problem. Long and complicated instruction sequences, not facing the child we are talking to and framing the instructions unclearly can also cause challenges with following instructions.
How You Can Help Your Child with Following Instructions
Depending on the instruction method that your child has trouble with, your response will vary. For difficulty with following written instructions, as a parent, you can work with your child by reading aloud and discussing these. The Squoodles family did this recently with our Bath Bomb Kit. We took the ingredients, materials and instructions from the box, then read the instructions with our boys. We discussed what each one meant and found this helped improve their comprehension of the activity. This could be done with any of our DIY Crafty Kids Kits.
For helping with verbal instructions, you can:
- get your child’s attention first
- look at your child when giving the instructions and ask them to look at you
- start with one instruction at a time before moving onto multiple instructions
- ensure the instructions are age-appropriate
- give time to process your instructions before repeating
- be direct when giving instructions, not vague
- ensure there is little to no background noise
- don’t ask them to do something – tell them to
- play instructional games such as Simon Says and Follow the Leader
Like with other tasks, practice makes perfect, so keep working with your child on listening to, watching and reading instructions – they will get there! For other awesome parenting and family fun articles, check out our other blog articles while you’re here.
