5 year old won’t listen

[Childwillnotlisten]

Just that. Our 5 year old, who has always been an angel, will not listen to a word we say. He’s just finished his first year of reception and boy what a change in him.

We will ask him not to do something, and he will literally ignore us and do it. All day, every day. Sometimes he will say “I can’t hear anyone” when we are talking. He is worse with his dad.

At school he got a glowing report, and is always following class rules we are told.

It’s exhausting. We are sick of threatening play date cancellations and treats, he almost knows now that we rarely follow through and the only thing that ever gets him to stop in his tracks is threatening to call his head teacher! I know we should always follow through but it’s not always that easy when he’s such a wonderful kid.

What have you found that works for you?

Your examples don't warrant cancelling play dates.

If he's climbing on something you've told him not to climb on because it's dangerous remove him from that room.

If he's hurting you remove him from your body. You need to be gentle with mummy. We can't hug If your going to hurt me. Put him away from you.

If he's pissing around with Alexa then remove Alexa.

He sounds mischievous but not really naughty. He's testing you and asserting himself which is totally normal and age appropriate.

I wouldn't remove play dates for your examples.

I would leave a playdate if he wasn't being kind to his friend, was hurting them or being rude to the other parent.

When my oldest was 5 year she refused to hold my hand at the train station so i took both children home. No day trip if you refuse to hold hands and stay safe. The next few journeys I carried reins with me because my youngest was upset that she missed out. I would have absolutely put her on reins if she wasn't listening even though she's ginormous. We don't mess about on public transport in central London.

@Childwillnotlisten Well too bad. They won’t be playing with the same toy forever. Doesn’t DS have anything that’s his? As for tv! You can watch it with youngest when DS isn’t there. Whatever you decide to do, follow it through after warnings.

No advice as such but we have two with a similar age difference and the eldest (4) is doing exactly the same thing. We’re trying to follow through with early bed times/ no screen time to get him to listen.

Yes. Screen goes!

It’s definitely a hard age for pushing boundaries, I’m right there with you with parenting a five year old boy.

Things that have worked well for us are a reward chart. The personalised ones you can get on sites like Etsy and have chalk board slots to write specific behaviour to work on like “good listening” or “tidy up” etc. Both my children (age 5 and 7) seem to really enjoy checking their reward charts at the end of each day/week (however often works) and moving the little wooden slider to green if they’ve done well on something. They also like the opportunity to choose what they’d like to work on. I think it’s given them a bit of a sense of ownership over the reward charts and a bit of sense of personal pride maybe?

If behaviour is particularly bad, and a warning has been given and we’re not listened to, we have taken a favourite toy away and put on a high shelf until the next day. My son really doesn’t like this so generally will listen if he thinks it’s going to happen.

Good luck, it’s not easy at all ❤️❤️❤️