You’ve said it once. Then twice. By the third time, your voice has that edge to it, and you’re wondering when your sweet child turned into someone who apparently can’t hear a word you say.
I’ve been there. Multiple times, actually, across different generations. And I spent far too many years assuming this was a respect problem. A listening problem. Maybe even a “kids these days” problem.
Turns out, I had it completely wrong. The science behind why children seem to tune us out is fascinating, and understanding it changed how I communicate with my grandchildren entirely.
Their brain is busy building a world
Here’s something that took me decades to truly appreciate: children aren’t small adults with smaller attention spans. Their brains are wired fundamentally differently than ours.
When a child is engaged in play, reading, or even just staring at something interesting, they enter what researchers call a state of “flow.” Their prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for switching attention and processing external demands, is still under construction. It won’t be fully developed until their mid-twenties.
So when you call out “Dinner’s ready!” and get nothing but silence, your child isn’t choosing to ignore you. Their brain is genuinely absorbed in processing their current activity.
As noted by Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, executive function skills like attention shifting develop gradually and need support, not punishment.
Think of it like trying to get someone’s attention while they’re deeply asleep. The information is hitting their ears, but it’s not registering in the way you need it to.
The “three-time rule” is actually predictable
Here’s where it gets interesting. That magic number of three isn’t random. Children are remarkably good at pattern recognition, even when we wish they weren’t.
If you typically repeat yourself three times before taking action, your child’s brain has logged this. They’ve learned, through experience, that the first two calls are essentially background noise. The real signal comes with the third call, usually accompanied by a change in tone, volume, or the sound of footsteps heading their way.
We accidentally train this response. I certainly did with my own kids, and I watched my daughter do the same with hers before we had a laugh about it together.
Children are efficiency experts. Why interrupt an engaging activity for call number one when history has shown that nothing happens until call number three? Their behavior is logical, even if it drives us up the wall.
What’s happening in their ears versus their brain
There’s a difference between hearing and processing. Your child’s ears work perfectly fine. The issue is what happens after sound enters the ear canal.
Auditory processing in children requires more cognitive resources than it does in adults. When they’re engaged in something, their brain is allocating most of its processing power to that activity. Your voice becomes like background music in a coffee shop. Present, but not prioritized.
Dr. Laura Markham, a clinical psychologist specializing in child development, has pointed out that children need transition time to shift their attention. Expecting an immediate response is expecting their brain to do something it’s not yet equipped to do quickly.
This was humbling for me to learn. All those times I felt disrespected, my grandchildren were simply being neurologically normal.
Why yelling actually makes it worse
When we escalate to yelling, we think we’re finally getting through. And technically, we are. But not in the way we want.
Raised voices trigger a stress response. The child’s brain shifts from “ignore mode” to “threat detection mode.” They respond, yes, but now they’re also flooding with cortisol. Over time, this teaches them to only respond to heightened emotional signals.
I’ve mentioned this before, but my own father was a yeller. I became one too, for a while. Breaking that cycle meant understanding that volume doesn’t equal effectiveness. It just equals stress, for everyone involved.
The child learns to filter out calm requests entirely because their brain has been conditioned to wait for the emotional escalation. We create the very pattern we’re frustrated by.
Getting closer changes everything
The single most effective strategy I’ve found is almost embarrassingly simple: move your feet before you move your mouth.
Instead of calling across the house, walk to where your child is. Get down to their eye level if they’re small. Wait for a natural pause in their activity. Then speak.
This does several things at once. It signals to their brain that something requires attention. It removes the distance that makes your voice easy to tune out. And it respects the fact that they were engaged in something, even if that something looks like mindlessly pushing a toy car back and forth.
Physical proximity is a game-changer. My grandson, who could ignore me from three rooms away, responds almost immediately when I’m standing beside him and gently touch his shoulder first.
The power of the pause and connect approach
Before you say what you need to say, try connecting first. A brief comment about what they’re doing. A moment of genuine interest.
“That tower is getting really tall” followed by a pause, then “Dinner’s ready in two minutes” lands completely differently than a disembodied voice shouting from the kitchen.
Why does this work? Because you’ve engaged their social brain first. You’ve made yourself relevant to their current mental state. Now you’re not an interruption. You’re a participant who happens to have information to share.
This takes more time, I know. But it takes less time than repeating yourself three times, getting frustrated, yelling, dealing with a upset child, and then sitting down to a tense meal. I’ve done the math on this one.
Give warnings, not commands
Children’s brains need time to transition. Springing demands on them without warning is like someone yanking you out of a good book mid-sentence.
Try giving a heads-up. “In five minutes, we’re going to clean up for dinner.” Then a two-minute warning. Then a final “Okay, it’s time.”
This respects their cognitive need for transition time. It also removes the element of surprise that makes them dig in their heels. They’ve had time to mentally prepare for the shift.
Research from the Zero to Three organization confirms that transitions are genuinely hard for young children, and predictable routines with warnings help enormously.
I started doing this with my grandchildren, and the difference was noticeable within days. Not perfect, mind you. But noticeably better.
Make sure they’ve actually registered you
Here’s a small trick that works wonders: ask them to repeat back what you said.
Not in a quizzing, gotcha sort of way. Just a simple “Can you tell me what we’re doing in five minutes?” This confirms that the information actually made it through. It also engages their brain in processing the request, which makes follow-through more likely.
If they can’t tell you, they didn’t hear you. No matter what it looked like from the outside. That’s valuable information. It means you need to try again with a different approach, not just repeat the same words louder.
Adjusting expectations saves everyone grief
I wasted a lot of energy being frustrated about something that was developmentally normal. Once I adjusted my expectations, the frustration faded.
Children aren’t ignoring us to be rude. They’re not testing our authority. They’re being children, with children’s brains, doing exactly what those brains are designed to do at this stage.
Does this mean we never expect them to respond? Of course not. But it means we meet them where they are developmentally while gently building the skills they’ll need later.
Patience isn’t about being a pushover. It’s about being realistic. And realism, I’ve found, makes parenting a whole lot less exhausting.
The long game matters more
Every interaction is teaching something. When we respond to “ignoring” with anger, we teach that communication is stressful. When we respond with connection and patience, we teach that we’re safe to engage with.
My relationship with my grandchildren is built on thousands of small moments. The ones where I chose to walk over instead of yell across. The ones where I waited for eye contact before speaking. The ones where I remembered that their brain is still under construction.
These moments add up. They become the foundation of how your child learns to communicate, with you and eventually with everyone else in their life.
So the next time you’re on repetition number three and feeling your blood pressure rise, take a breath. Walk over. Connect first. And remember that the little person in front of you isn’t being disrespectful. They’re just being exactly where they should be, developmentally speaking.
What would change in your home if you stopped seeing “ignoring” as defiance and started seeing it as an invitation to connect differently?
