Coaching practices for How Do I Deal with a Child That Refuses to Do a Chore or Task

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How Do I Deal with a Child That Refuses to Do a Chore or Task, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• Every conversation with my kid about their behavior turns into me laying down the law and them digging in, and I want a way to actually talk it through together
• I lay down a rule and my kids ignore it because it’s "my" rule they had no say in
• Every time I put my foot down and insist, my kid blows up worse
• My kid blows up over the same things again and again, and I keep calling it defiance or attitude
• When my kid acts out I lose it

Practices that may help

1. Use Plan B: the three-step collaborative conversation
   Empathize with the child’s concern, share yours, and invite them to solve it together.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
2. Use family meetings to solve problems together
   When children help solve the problem, they own the solution — and solutions they own, they actually follow.
   Positive Discipline (Jane Nelsen)
3. Recognize when Plan A (unilateral imposition) makes things worse
   Adult-imposed solutions can win the battle and lose the war — notice when enforcement is escalating rather than solving.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
4. Identify the lagging skill behind the behavior
   Name the cognitive skill the child is missing, not the behavior you want to stop.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
5. Refuse to energize negative behavior
   Give consequences briefly and blandly — no energy, no lecture, no drama.
   The Nurtured Heart Approach (Howard Glasser)
6. Say yes to bids for connection before enforcing limits
   A child’s capacity to accept limits depends on how connected they feel to the person setting them.
   Authoritative Parenting (Diana Baumrind)
7. Evaluate solutions for durability: realistic, mutually satisfying, safe
   A collaborative solution that fails one of three tests — realistic, mutually satisfying, safe — will not hold.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
8. Use empathy to de-escalate, not to capitulate
   Name the child’s emotional state without agreeing with every demand — empathy and limits can coexist.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
9. Focus on solutions, not blame
   Ask "What can we do to fix this?" rather than "Why did you do that?" — one opens, the other closes.
   Positive Discipline (Jane Nelsen)
10. Take time for training — teach the skill, not just the rule
    Children misbehave partly because they don’t know how to do the right thing — teach the skill when everyone is calm.
    Positive Discipline (Jane Nelsen)

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