Before We Ask a Child to Learn, We Need to Help Them Engage
You need to leave the house in five minutes.
Your child still doesn’t have their shoes on. You’ve asked once. Then twice. Then several more times.
“Come on, we need to go.”
“Shoes on, please.”
“We’re going to be late.”
And somehow, the more you ask, the harder it seems to become.
Sound familiar?
As caregivers, when a child isn’t doing what we’ve asked, our natural instinct is often to increase the instruction. We repeat ourselves. We explain. We prompt. We offer a reward. Sometimes, without realizing it, we turn up the pressure.
But there may be another question worth asking.
Instead of:
“How do I get my child to do what I’m asking?”
What if we asked:
“What is making it hard for my child to engage with me right now?”
That small shift in thinking can change the entire interaction.
Engagement Creates the Foundation for Learning
Children learn through relationships and interactions with the people and world around them.
When a child is interested, regulated, connected, and actively participating, we have more opportunities to help them communicate, solve problems, try something new, tolerate challenges, and develop new skills.
This is one of the ideas behind Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions, or NDBIs—evidence-based approaches that bring together principles of child development and behavioral learning.
But you don’t need to be a therapist to use these principles.
At their heart is a very practical idea:
Find what is meaningful to your child, join them there, and build learning into the interaction.
I learned the importance of this lesson myself many years ago.
Early in my career, I remember spending time creating what I thought were great lesson plans. I had the activities ready. I knew what I wanted to teach. There was just one problem: sometimes the child wasn’t remotely interested in what I had planned.
My instinct was to try harder to get the child to play my way.
Not surprisingly, that didn’t always go particularly well.
I still remember one child simply picking up the toys, turning their back to me, and continuing to play.
Message received.
Over time, I learned that some of the best opportunities for learning weren’t necessarily in the activities I had carefully planned. They were often right in front of me, in whatever had already captured the child’s interest.
Here’s what that can look like in everyday life.
When Your Child Wants the Bubbles
Imagine you’re playing with bubbles and would like to encourage your child to communicate “more.”
You blow some bubbles and your child immediately reaches for the container.
You could hold onto the bubbles and say:
“Say more.”
“What do you want?”
“Use your words.”
“More. Say more.”
Meanwhile, your child may be doing an incredible amount of communicating already.
They’re looking at you. Reaching. Making sounds. Moving toward the bubbles. Maybe they’re smiling and looking back and forth between you and the bottle.
But because we’re waiting for one particular response—“more”—we can miss everything the child is already telling us.
I’ve watched this happen with both caregivers and clinicians. The adult is so focused on getting the response they’re looking for that they unintentionally stop responding to the communication the child is already giving them.
Eventually, the child gets frustrated—or simply gives up.
The teaching moment is gone. The engagement is gone.
Now imagine something different.
You blow the bubbles. Your child smiles and reaches toward the bottle.
You notice the reach.
“More bubbles!”
And you immediately blow them again.
After several turns, you might pause expectantly, model “more,” or pair the word with a gesture or communication system your child uses.
The important difference?
You recognized that your child was already communicating.
Instead of making a particular word the price of getting the bubbles, you made communication part of an interaction your child already wanted to continue.
And now you don’t have just one opportunity for learning. You have another turn. And another. And another.
When It’s Time to Put the Shoes On
Of course, life isn’t all bubbles.
Sometimes we really do have to get out the door.
Following a child’s lead doesn’t mean shoes become optional whenever a child doesn’t want to put them on.
But connection can change how we approach the expectation.
Maybe your child is deeply involved in building a tower when you announce that it’s time to leave. From their perspective, an adult has suddenly interrupted something important and introduced an unrelated demand.
You might try joining first.
“Whoa, that tower is huge! Should we put one last block on?”
Then:
“Okay, tower is finished. Let’s get our shoes. Do you want the red ones or the blue ones?”
The expectation hasn’t disappeared. The transition has simply become more predictable, connected, and participatory.
For another child, the support might look completely different. They may benefit from a visual schedule, a countdown, a transition object, extra processing time, or help regulating before they can participate.
The goal isn’t to find one trick that makes every child cooperate.
It’s to become curious about what helps your child participate successfully.
When Your Child Doesn’t Want to Play Your Way
Adults often have an idea of what play is supposed to look like.
We hand a child a toy farm and start asking:
“What does the cow say?”
“Where’s the horse?”
“Can you put the pig in the barn?”
Meanwhile, the child is repeatedly opening and closing the barn door.
It can be tempting to redirect them toward the “right” way to play. I know that temptation because I’ve done it.
But what happens if we become curious instead?
Open.
Close.
Open.
Close.
You imitate them.
Maybe you add a playful sound: “Knock, knock!”
Your child looks at you.
You do it again.
They smile.
Suddenly, something that may have looked like an unusual or repetitive way of playing has become shared play.
From there, perhaps an animal goes through the door. Maybe you add “open” and “close.” Maybe your child initiates the game again.
You didn’t have to pull your child away from their interest to create a learning opportunity.
Their interest became the learning opportunity.
Communication Is More Than Words
A child may communicate by looking toward something, moving closer or farther away, reaching, pointing, gesturing, vocalizing, signing, using pictures, using an AAC device, speaking words—or combining several of these.
When we are waiting only for a particular response, it’s easy to miss everything a child is already telling us.
Noticing those attempts and responding to them teaches something incredibly important:
My communication matters. People listen to me. I can affect my world.
And that gives a child a reason to communicate again.
But My Child Can’t Always Get What They Want
Absolutely.
Children do need to learn to tolerate disappointment, accept “no,” navigate transitions, wait, and maintain regulation during challenging moments. Those are important skills too.
Engagement before instruction doesn’t mean removing every expectation or making sure a child is happy every moment of the day.
It means thinking about what we are trying to teach in this particular moment and creating conditions that support that learning.
If our goal right now is communication and shared engagement, repeatedly withholding something a child loves until we get a specific response may actually work against us. We can lose the very engagement we were hoping to build.
And when the goal is tolerating a boundary or navigating something difficult, we can support that learning too. We might use a visual, offer a choice, make the situation more predictable, break something difficult into smaller steps, or simply stay connected while our child experiences disappointment.
Sometimes the message really is:
“I know you don’t want to. We still have to do this. I’ll help you.”
Connection and boundaries can exist at the same time.
A Different Question to Ask
The next time an interaction starts becoming a struggle, try becoming curious before adding another prompt.
What is my child interested in right now?
What are they already communicating to me?
Are they regulated and available for learning?
Can I join them before asking them to join me?
What support might make this easier for them to learn?
Not every difficult moment will disappear. Nor should it.
The goal is to create more moments in which children experience adults as people who notice them, listen to them, respond to their communication, and help them successfully participate in the world around them.
Children Aren’t So Different From Us
When I think about the things that are difficult for me to learn, I realize that adults aren’t all that different.
Learning is easier when we feel comfortable. When we understand what is expected. When we have the right supports. When we feel safe enough to make mistakes. And, yes, when we’re interested in what we’re doing.
Children deserve those same conditions for learning.
After more than 25 years of working with children and families, I continue to come back to something remarkably simple:
Some of the most meaningful learning happens through joyful connection, when children feel safe, supported, and genuinely engaged with the people around them.
That doesn’t mean learning will always be easy.
It means we don’t have to make it harder than it needs to be.
Discovering Together
At McRory Pediatric Services, our interdisciplinary teams incorporate developmental, naturalistic, and relationship-based approaches across our work with children and families.
We believe meaningful intervention isn’t simply about teaching children to respond to adults. It’s about helping children become increasingly connected, confident communicators and active participants in their own lives.
Engagement before instruction.
Communication before compliance.
Sometimes the best way to invite a child into our world is to begin by taking the time to enter theirs.
