Three Phrases That Help Children Think for Themselves

Many parents assume their primary job is to provide answers.

Children ask questions.
Parents give answers.

Simple enough.

But what if some of the most important moments in a child's development happen when we resist the urge to answer?

Children are constantly trying to make sense of their world. They are organizing thoughts, processing experiences, exploring emotions, and building confidence in their own ability to think. Unfortunately, adults often interrupt this process without realizing it.

A child begins telling a story. Before they finish, we explain what happened.

A child asks a question. Before they have a chance to think, we provide the answer.

A child expresses a feeling. Before they can explore it, we rush in to make it better.

While our intentions are good, we sometimes rob children of valuable opportunities to develop their own thinking. Three simple phrases can help.

1. Tell Me More

This phrase communicates one powerful message:

"I'm interested in what you have to say."

Children who hear "Tell me more" learn that their thoughts have value. Instead of ending a conversation after a few sentences, they often continue exploring their ideas. They elaborate. They remember additional details. They make connections. Most importantly, they feel heard.

2. Then What Happened?

Children frequently pause during stories and look to adults for direction. Many adults unintentionally take over the conversation at this point. But "Then what happened?" gently hands ownership back to the child. The story remains theirs. The thinking remains theirs. The experience remains theirs. This simple phrase encourages sequencing, memory development, communication skills, and confidence.

3. What Do You Think?

This may be the most powerful phrase of all. When children ask questions, adults often assume they need answers. Sometimes they do. But many times they need something else. They need permission to think.

A child asks:

"Why do you think he was angry?"

"What happens after people die?"

"Do you think I can do it?"

Instead of immediately providing an answer, try asking:

"What do you think?"

This communicates trust. It tells children that their ideas matter. It teaches them to examine possibilities, consider solutions, and become comfortable with uncertainty.

A Lesson from My Granddaughter

McKenzie and her pal Jack

One day my four-year-old granddaughter began telling me an elaborate story that made very little sense to me. As she talked, she occasionally stopped and looked at me, expecting a response. Instead of trying to figure out what she meant or directing the story myself, I simply used three phrases:

"What do you think?"

"Then what happened?"

"Tell me more."

Each phrase encouraged her to continue. The story became longer and more detailed. At one point she appeared frustrated, as if she was trying to work something out in her mind. Rather than solving it for her, I invited her to keep going.

A few minutes later she smiled, looked completely satisfied, and announced:

"And that's all."

Then she hopped down from her chair and invited me to play. I realized she hadn't needed answers from me at all. She simply needed someone willing to listen.

Children Grow When We Say Less

This doesn't mean parents should never answer questions. Children need guidance. They need information. They need instruction. But not every question requires an immediate answer.

Not every feeling needs to be fixed. Not every problem needs to be solved for them. Sometimes the greatest gift we can offer is curiosity.

When we say, "Tell me more," "Then what happened?" or "What do you think?" we invite children to continue exploring their own thoughts.

And in those moments, something remarkable happens.

Children discover that they are capable of thinking, feeling, and understanding far more than we sometimes give them credit for.

Why I Created Cooperative Kids and the Love, Limits & Lessons Program

Our jobs demanded long hours. Highway construction stretched our commute. Yard work never seemed to end. Weekends felt more exhausting than restorative. And inside our home, our three school-aged and preteen children seemed to be fighting more and cooperating less.

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When we compared notes with other parents in casual conversations, we realized we weren’t unusual. We were normal. Busy. Stressed. Doing our best.

But while I couldn’t do much about corporate deadlines or growing grass, I became increasingly focused on one question:   How could I become a better father?

I wanted our children to get along better. I wanted more cooperation. I wanted our home to feel less reactive and more connected. I quickly realized that yelling and punitive discipline weren’t producing the results I hoped for. In fact, they seemed to be making things worse.

And I knew something else with absolute clarity: I did not want to repeat the patterns I had grown up with. My father was abusive. My mother was abused. I had no intention of passing that legacy forward.

But if not that… then what?

With a project-manager mindset and a growing education in psychology, I began searching for better answers. I started reading parenting books. I studied parenting styles and psychological theories. I asked a more refined version of my original question: What are better parenting techniques for raising independent, drug-free, cooperative children?

In 1995, while still working my corporate job, I launched an organization called Cooperative Kids. Drawing on established psychological principles and practical parenting models, I began developing and testing approaches in my own home.

Our family became my practice ground. When something worked, I observed why. When something backfired, I adjusted it. I kept notes. I paid attention to patterns. I refined the language. I measured results.

Over time, something remarkable began happening. Our children expressed their feelings more openly. Agreements replaced arguments. We raised our voices less. Punishment became less necessary. And yes, cooperation increased.

One day, my wife saw our son cleaning up without being told and asked, “How did you get him to do that?!” The answer wasn’t magic. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t control. It was understanding.

Influenced by Adlerian psychology, positive-discipline principles, and decades of developmental research, I came to a simple but transformative conclusion:

Misbehavior is communication.

When children “act out,” they are often attempting to meet a legitimate emotional need in ineffective ways. 

If we could understand the need behind the behavior, and teach more appropriate ways to meet it, cooperation became far more natural.

The notes I recorded in those early years became the foundation for workshops, parenting classes, and eventually the material for my books, courses and other materials.

From 1995 to 2012, I taught my Love, Limits & Lessons course at many Montessori schools in MA and CT. Two of those schools that asked me to return over and over were The Montessori School of the Berkshires and The Longmeadow Montessori in Longmeadow, MA.

My newest book LOVE, LIMITS & LESSONS: THE PARENT TOOLBOX is not theory alone. It is lived, tested, refined practice, built in the real world, with real children, under real stress.

 

Six Laws about Kids That Parents Need to Accept

Much of the frustration we experience with our children’s behavior is caused by a lack of understanding kids.  Expanding our thinking about our children and accepting some basic, rudimentary facts will help us change the way we see their behavior and also change our behavior as a parent.  We will be much more successful as caregivers if we see the world from our child’s point of view.  Here are six irrefutable laws about kids that will change the way we use discipline.

They Live Only In The Moment.  Whatever the young child happens to be doing at the moment is his entire
world.  His full attention and focus is on the activity in front of him and he is usually unable to think about anything else unless another activity offers more incentive than the current activity.

What Adults Can Do: 

• Establish rules prior to the start of each activity
• Use visual timers to create limits for some activities
• Be patient when moving him from one activity to another
• Point out “what’s in it for him” in the next activity

They Don’t Care About Order and Cleanliness.  It drives us crazy when our child won’t pick up her toys when she’s finished playing with them, or when she’s thirteen and seems perfectly fine living in a bedroom that is in total disarray.  Forcing her to clean things up by yelling and punishing doesn’t work and can harm our relationship with her.

What Adults Can Do:

• Relax and make cleanup fun
• Demonstrate excitement when it does occur
• Set up agreements prior to the start of an activity
• If the child doesn’t follow thru, guide them back silently and respectfully

They Get Frustrated Very Easily.  There are a few things that cause children to become frustrated, resulting in

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tantrums and meltdowns; wanting to be just like us and do what we do, becoming easily overcome by the physical effects of fatigue, hunger, and illness, and a lack of firm and consistent boundaries.  When we say, “No cookies before dinner,” and then give in, we are actually teaching them to have meltdowns to get us to give in more often.

What Adults Can Do:

• Be patient and help them address what is causing the frustration
• Detach from their emotion and be there with them in silence
• Let them be frustrated without reprimanding or sending them to timeout
• Avoid caving in to their demands to break a boundary or limit

They Learn By Testing Our Boundaries.  One day,  when my daughter was a preschooler, I drew a chalk line across the driveway to mark the farthest point she could ride her new tricycle to keep her a safe distance from the street.  I explained to her the consequence of breaking this boundary was the loss of her tricycle for the remainder of the day.  With a twinkle in her eye, she crossed the line one day to see what I would do.  Immediately, I silently and gently took her tricycle from her and hung it on a hook in the garage.  It broke my heart to watch her cry, but she didn’t get it back until the following day.

What Adults Can Do:

• Accept children’s testing as normal and not misbehavior
• Set clear and consistent boundaries and keep them in place
• Create consequences that are related to the infraction
• React without emotion and in silence

They Need to Feel Powerful.  Every human strives to feel a sense of power and value within the social unit to

which they belong.  Employees work more collaboratively when they clearly know what their role is on a work team, athletes perform better when they know what position they play on the sports team, and children become more cooperative when they feel a sense of power in the family or the classroom.  A successful leader as a manager, a coach, a parent, or a teacher helps the members of the social unit feel powerful in appropriate ways.

What Adults Can Do:

• Provide appropriate ways for children to feel powerful
• Allow the child to teach the adult something
• Find creative ways to allow the child to be the boss of something
• Let the child take a turn at being the family meeting facilitator

They Don’t Always Like Their Playmate or Sibling.  When a playmate begins to hit another child, it is basically a message to the caregiver that she has had enough of the other child.  Because of their egocentric point of view, small children do not naturally like to share and they also see the other child as a threat to the supply of love and attention they receive from the adult caregivers.

What Adults Can Do:

• Avoid putting a child in timeout for hitting or not getting along
• Use modeling to teach small children how to share, not by force
• Be sure that adult relationships around the child demonstrate kindness
• Allow each child to have alone time away from playmates or siblings

What I Loved About the RCB Parent Education Program

There are really good parent education programs, and then there are some with good intentions but containing misguided information. I have personally attended many myself or obtained the instructor's manual from others. Having authored my own, the Love, Limits & Lessons parenting course and instructor training course, I don't hold back on offering my opinion.

This brings me to one of the first ones I attended, way back in 1995. I was looking for parenting help as a father who didn't have a positive role model when I was growing up. I attended the Redirecting Children's Behavior (RCB) course for instructors in Tampa, FL, created by Kathryn Kvols. It instantly changed the way I parented my children and enhanced my relationship with my three.

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What I loved most about this course was how I had learned to, as Kathryn said, PAUSE BEFORE I PARENTED. The course taught me to stop and think about how my emotion in the moment may impact how I'm about to parent. It made me realize that in that moment, I was able to see my child's behavior in a different light.

Another thing I loved was what timeout should really look like. I liked that I had to know when I needed a timeout before my child did.  There are moments in every parent’s journey when patience feels paper-thin—the morning rush, the endless bedtime routine, or the meltdown in the grocery store aisle.

You love your child deeply, but in those seconds, your calm starts to fray.  That’s often when we instinctively send our children to a timeout.  But here’s something powerful to consider: before teaching your child about timeouts, you might need to take one yourself.

The Lesson They’re Really Learning

Children learn far more from what we do than what we say. When we step back, take a deep

breath, and give ourselves a moment to reset, we show our children what emotional regulation looks like in action. It tells them: “Big feelings are okay. What matters is how we handle them.”

Timeouts—for parents and children alike—aren’t about punishment. They’re about creating space for calm and connection to return.

What a Parent Timeout Looks Like

Your version of a timeout doesn’t have to be elaborate or long. It might be stepping onto the porch for a breath of fresh air. Sitting quietly in your favorite chair, face in your hands, collecting your thoughts. Closing your eyes and silently reminding yourself, “This is hard, but I can handle it.” These moments of pause aren’t about giving up—they’re about grounding yourself before you guide your child.

PLACE A VISUAL TIMER IN YOUR CHILD'S SELF-QUIETING SPACE.

Helping Your Child Do the Same

When you model calm, your child learns calm. Try reframing “timeout” in your home as a “calm-down break.” You might say, “We both need a minute to cool off. Let’s take our time, and then we’ll talk.” By doing this, you’re teaching your child that: Emotions are temporary. Breaks are healthy. Love and connection remain steady, even when tempers flare. Over time, this builds emotional intelligence and resilience—skills that serve children for a lifetime.

A New Way to See Timeout

Imagine your child looking through the window and seeing you take a quiet moment—not in defeat, but in self-care. That image is more powerful than a thousand lessons.  Parenting isn’t about perfection. It's important to demonstrate to our children that we are also learning how to navigate life's challenges with grace.

Final Thought

Before guiding your child through their next timeout, pause and ask yourself, “Do I need one, too?” Sometimes the most powerful parenting starts not with control, but with calm.

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