Following Directions

You give a clear, reasonable direction, for example, put on your shoes, come to the table, stop doing that and nothing happens. Or something happens, but it's not what you asked for. You repeat yourself. You say it louder. You wonder if they heard you, or if they heard you and simply didn't care. It happens at home, you're hearing it from the teacher too, and you're starting to feel like every simple request turns into a negotiation or a standoff.

Does my child have a listening problem, or is this just defiance?Why do they follow some directions fine but completely ignore others?Am I giving too many directions? Not enough? Am I doing something wrong?

Looking Through a Developmental Lens - Possible Explanations

Following directions is not just a matter of willingness.Ormrod's work on cognitive development and information processing helps explain why children who are perfectly capable of hearing a direction may not successfully carry it out. Working memory and the mental space where we hold and act on information in the moment is still developing well into middle childhood. A multi-step direction, for example, “go upstairs, get your backpack, and put your library book inside,” can genuinely exceed what a child's brain can hold all at once, especially at younger ages.By the time they reach the backpack, the library book part is gone.

Ormrod also draws attention to the role of attention itself. Children are not selective listeners by choice, sometimes their attentional systems are still learning to filter, prioritize, and sustain focus. A child deep in play is not ignoring you; their brain is genuinely occupied and enjoying what they are doing. Redirecting attention is a skill that requires practice and scaffolding, not just repetition of the same direction said louder.

Motivation matters here too. Ormrod would note that children are far more likely to follow directions when they understand the reason behind them, feel some degree of autonomy in how they respond, and trust the relationship with the adult asking. A direction that feels arbitrary, or comes from a place of friction, is harder to act on because engagement and cooperation are social and emotional before they are behavioral. If you’re angry, it sometimes becomes a game.Believe me, I’ve been there!

Get close before you give the direction. Eye contact, a hand on the shoulder, help them focus and listen, they're the direction itself. You're signaling to their brain that something important is coming. Calling across the room works for adults; however, it often doesn't work for children. I taught my teacher prep students that they only time you should scream across a room is if a child is in danger, like trying to climb up a bookcase…. oh yes, saw that many times.

Give one direction at a time. If the task has multiple steps, walk through them one at a time and wait for each to be completed. This isn't about lowering expectations.

Tell them what to do, not just what to STOP doing. "Stop running" gives the brain a prohibition but no target. "Walk, please" gives it something to move toward. Ormrod's work on behavioral learning consistently shows that replacement behaviors are easier to adopt than suppressed ones.

Offer a short transition window. "In two minutes, we're going to clean up" is easier to respond to than "clean up right now." It respects that they are in the middle of something their brain considers important, and it gives them time to shift gears. This is a key part of any classroom with multiple children to coordinate.

Name the reason when you can.Explain to them, "We need to leave by 8 so you're not late for school" lands differently than "I said so." Children who understand the why are more likely to cooperate and more likely to internalize the behavior over time.

You'll notice progress when they start to pause before acting, rather than ignoring or reacting. When they can repeat back a two-step direction without losing the second step. When they ask "why?" before refusing, because asking is more cooperative than it sounds. These are signs that their self-regulation is coming online, one small moment at a time. We often don’t realize that what they are in the middle of doing is important.

I used to tell my student teachers, if you find yourself repeating a direction more than twice, the problem is rarely the child. It's usually the delivery, the timing, or the number of things you asked them to hold at once. That was true in my classroom and it's true at your kitchen table too. Children want to get it right. When they don't, there's almost always something worth understanding before something worth correcting.

Ormrod, J. E., & Jones, B. D. (2018). Essentials of educational psychology: Big ideas to guide effective teaching (5th ed.). Pearson.