Noisiness

The following is a selection from the book Raising Children Who Think For Themselves by Dr. Eisa Medhus. From the chapter titled "Specific Child Rearing Challenges - How to Handle Them to Encourage Self-Direction", the following introduction is offered.

"The best way to make children good is to make them happy." - Oscar Wilde

Here are some inner-directed suggestions that will help with some of the most trying child-rearing difficulties we may stumble upon. All of these approaches are designed to preserve your children's ability to rely on internal dialogue instead of external influences to assess and correct their behavior. Using this section as a ready reference will help you raise a self-directed child, even if it means carrying the book, tattered and tear-stained, to the market, in the car, or at home. There are some challenges that, I hope you will never have to face, but others will be as inevitable as a pimple on prom night.

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To get to self-direction, there are a few universal caveats for every one of the situations that follow. First, our children need to understand and agree with both the need for the furl and the consequence for breaking it. Only when they come to agree with our rules, through their own internal dialogue, will they become self-directed. Second, look to your own parenting strategy as the possible source of some of the problem. Are you over-controlling or over-protective? Either trait can elicit an externally directed response, as your children react to an unhealthy situation. Third, remember for all these parenting challenges how important it is for you as parents, to model the right behavior. If you're expecting your children to act one way and you act another, the double standard will throw a monkey wrench into their whole internal dialogue machinery.

And lastly, don't forget to laugh.

Why they do it

Children are expressive and uninhibited beings by nature, including how they express themselves vocally.

Logical consequences

If your children are too noisy indoors, toss them outside. Tell them they can come back in when they're willing to use their "indoor voices."

If they turn up their stereo too high, make them turn it off. Tell them you're afraid they'll damage their ears, and, since your job is to ensure their safety and health, the stereo's taboo until they've decided to listen at an acceptable decibel range. If this approach doesn't work, take their stereos away from them for awhile.

If your children are noisy in a public place, take them home.

Solutions toward self-direction

Allow for an acceptable amount of "happy noise" in your house. If you have kids, don't expect things to be so quiet that you can hear a pin drop, 'cause it ain't gonna happen in this lifetime, folks. Don't yell or scream when they're noisy. Smells like a fishy double standard to them.

Don't nag or punish your children for their noisiness, because this approach only motivates them to turn it into a big (and usually noisy) externally directed power struggle.

Use observations when they're being nice and quiet: "You guys are playing so quietly together. That makes our whole house so calm and happy!"

Give information and impartial descriptions: "We allow only indoor voices in the house." "Your noisiness is starting to hurt my ears. You will have to go outside."

Use questioning: "How do you feel when someone's being noisy while you're concentrating on something?" "What do you need to do now to make things quieter?"