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[quote=Anonymous]I don't know whether I would be considered strict or not.  I feel like some people consider me strict because I have high expectations and give a lot of feedback. Other people probably consider me lenient because I don't really punish my kids.  My two kids are really different.  In my experience people who see my oldest kid, who is very mellow compliant kid, think I must be whatever they think is best, and people who see my youngest kid, draw different conclusions depending on how he's behaving that day.

But my response to what you describe would be to take my kid's hand, remove him a few steps from where he is, get down on his eye level and tell him exactly what I expect, and then go back and practice.  I actually think it's a little bit like what parents do with time out, except I skip the time out.

So, if my kid is twirling around the room and not listening to my direction to get a shirt from his drawer, I would walk over to him, lead him back to the bed so I can sit down at his eye level and say "Now we're getting dressed.   When I ask you to get a shirt, I need you to say "OK" and go get one from your drawer.  Now please go get a shirt." and then I keep them with me until I get "OK" and generally they'll go get one.

If I'm talking to my kid in their kitchen, and they roll their eyes and wander off, then I'll walk them into the dining room, get on their eye level and say.  When I am speaking to you, I want your feet to stay still, and I want you to look at me* with a polite face.  Rolling your eyes isn't polite.  Let's go back in the kitchen and try again.

I've had a couple people come to my house assume that I did some terrible punitive thing, when I asked a kid to walk into another room and they come back compliant, but in reality I think the change of location is enough to distract them from whatever they were thinking about instead of  and get them paying attention to what I am expecting.  I figure my kids want to do well.  They want to please me.   So, if they aren't they probably either weren't paying attention, or forgot my expectations.  So, I get their attention by moving them, and restate my expectations.  It generally works.

* I don't happen to have kids with ASD or other conditions that impact eye contact.  I'm also a teacher who has worked with many kids on the spectrum and I would not give the direction to look at me.  I would model other things to do with one's gaze that I consider polite.  For example, it is not polite to read a book while I am talking to you.  It's fine to close the book and keep looking down towards the cover as a way to keep from being overwhelmed by the eye contact.  [/quote]

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