— Why don’t children listen to their parents?
You know how often you say to your son: “Danila, do this or do that”? Or very often—using my own family as an example and not only—adults say: “I told her 30 times; she doesn’t hear me. I told her 20 times; she doesn’t hear me”—do your homework, clear your dishes, tidy your room, or read a book. And the child doesn’t react at all. They don’t react even to shouting. Or they start doing something only after being yelled at, but completely unconsciously. How should a parent respond in such moments—how should you act when your children don’t hear you?
— Let’s start with the fact that we need to look at both sides here: what is happening with the parent’s perception and what is happening with the child’s perception.
Let’s start with the parent’s perception. When you tell a child, for example, to clean the room, take out the trash, or study, from what inner state is that done? Why are you saying it? Are you saying it because it’s your personal wish, or because it’s a normal action from the standpoint of society, life, truth, the law of the Universe, or because it’s a certain rule you and your child agreed upon, or a rule of this building, this school?
That is, it’s important to understand exactly why you are taking this action, otherwise we slip into abstraction.
There are reasonable situations. For example, you ask the child to wash the floor. He asks, “Why should I wash the floor?” You answer: “I washed today, Dad washed yesterday, Uncle washed the day before yesterday, and today you wash.” In this case the request is appropriate. But imagine another scenario: you tell him to wash the floor, and the child replies: “Why should I wash the floor—I’ve washed it 48 times already. Today—four times, yesterday—20, the day before yesterday—15.”
This article will be read by different people. It’s very important that this doesn’t turn into deception, that we don’t sit in a mode of false delusions and constructs; we need to understand that different inner motives exist.
For example, when we say, “Do your homework,” what is happening? We might be saying it from the position that:
- Doing homework is a school rule—mandatory.
- We believe that doing homework is right and useful.
To some this may seem strange, but the story is simple. I live in the U.S., and at not a single parent meeting have I heard the notion that homework is obligatory. There are situations like: we don’t assign homework, or we assign it and you can look it over once a week. Some teachers advise: “Make sure your child reads 40 minutes each day.” I have four children; the range of approaches is wide. Some teachers don’t give instructions at all—the child is in a state of freedom.
Recently my daughter in 10th grade came up and asked: “Dad, did I solve this right or not?” It was a tricky chemistry problem. I didn’t know the answer myself, checked it through ChatGPT, and it turned out she had made a mistake. She got upset, left, came back and said: “Something’s wrong here; I solved it correctly.” And she turned out to be right: when checking in ChatGPT, I had entered the data incorrectly.
So I act from the position that I don’t know how to “explain it right” to the child and I follow the school’s internal rules. You know, we lived in Minsk. There they often say that parents must sit with the child and do homework. That is more of a social attitude than a school requirement, and I don’t agree with it. It is not my duty to do my child’s homework. But you have to be able to explain, observe, and so on—and teachers should do that. Therefore, if I am going to tell my child at home, “Do your homework,” I first become aware of why I am saying it. That’s where we start when we discuss what to do if children don’t listen: first you need to understand the reason.
If I start demanding the child do homework only because the teachers demand it, and for me the teacher’s opinion is more important than my son, more important than the true rules of life, if for me the main thing is that God forbid the teacher says my child studies poorly—because that could affect my reputation—or that other parents think something bad, then all this becomes more important than truth.
And truth is knowledge, understanding my child, the truth from the standpoint of life: whether homework is needed, in what volume, and why. Maybe my child isn’t doing it because he can complete it in two minutes and considers it a waste of time. Or maybe he isn’t doing it because every time he tries, the teacher scolds him, throws a grade book, or devalues him.
I remember very well that in school I was sure I had problems with Russian language, literature, and Belarusian. I was constantly scolded for my handwriting, grade books were thrown, and I got failing marks for essays. Now, if you look at me, it’s unlikely you’d think I’m incapable of writing an essay. I can write one on any topic and in any length. There are no limitations. But back then the situation was exactly that. And if someone came and asked, “Why did you get a 3/3 on the essay?” my parents could only ask a question—no one helped to sort it out, to understand what an essay is and how to write one. I didn’t meet a single person who would explain it. So here it’s always important to understand the impulse—what motive drives us when we demand something. That is where it all begins.
— Let’s go back to a case where the parent truly has a request for normal, proper actions—true, good rules. When he speaks to the child not from ego, not from fear, but simply asks for understandable things, and the child still doesn’t hear him. A very common situation: the child is as if in his own world. He may agree, promise to do something, but in the end he truly doesn’t hear it. How should an adult react in such a situation?
— So you’re saying the parent asks the child to do reasonable things, and he doesn’t hear? “Doesn’t hear” as in he has hearing problems? Health issues? Or he simply doesn’t want to hear?
If you look at your own life—at colleagues, employees, bosses, relatives, friends—you’ll see exactly the same number of people who don’t hear. They don’t want to hear, they can’t, they don’t have the strength, they don’t have the desire to perceive. An endless number of such cases. How are they different from a child? By the fact that we perceive our own child as property. He must obey. We feel we can influence him. He’s a person we have access to affect.
If someone tells you: “This person’s child died,” you can sympathize, send love, feel sad. But your system will likely not react deeply. And if, God forbid, your child died—your whole world would turn over. Why is that? What is that connection?
And a person’s task is to treat all people the same way—to not divide, to not put your own ahead of others. That’s an enormous, mature task. It doesn’t mean being emotionless. You love your child—transmit love to other children as well. Can you love only your own and not another? Then the question is: is that really love? Or is it just some state?
— Are you saying that if you don’t love another child, then you don’t truly love your own?
— In a sense, yes. From the standpoint of understanding love as a broad, spiritual energy—yes. Because real love spreads to all people. You cannot confine it to one person. If you confine it, it’s already a different form of love. It’s love-as-attachment: to a mother, to a son. But not all-encompassing human love.
If we reason from the position of this love, then of course, when you talk to your child and he “doesn’t hear you,” it may be not so much disobedience as a blockage on the energy level. He may be emotionally closed; he may be blocking the perception of your words. Sometimes a child simply has an innate energetic structure such that he does not perceive certain messages from his parents.
I have seen many times in Vedic astrology descriptions that say, for example: “These children will have a complicated relationship with their mother,” or “until age 40 there will be conflict between them.” There are many factors: the child’s spiritual nature, the parent’s spiritual nature, their past experience, hereditary ties. Therefore your task as a mother—or mine as a father—is to do your best to sort out each specific situation and understand what is actually happening.
Just as I was short until 18 and then suddenly grew. Or I couldn’t memorize poems and then suddenly started remembering them beautifully. As a child I studied well, but I wasn’t an A-student like you, for example. You seemed to me a grind, although that was only my perception. And then, at some point, I began to memorize a vast amount of information. Exactly the same with children: they change, go through their inner processes, live in different states, energies.
And before drawing conclusions about why the child doesn’t hear or doesn’t do something, you need to understand what state he is in now—what is happening in his inner world. And in general, who said he wants to do the action we expect from him?
For example, I have things I have asked my wife all my life not to do. I ask again and again, and she still does them. As she did, so she does. That is her right, her choice. From a social point of view, I don’t like it. But obviously it’s not of great significance to her. If it were, she would stop. But she doesn’t. Is there a chance that one day she will stop? Of course. At some point she herself will want to change it. Her inner state will change, her inner attitude, her value system—and then she will begin to behave differently.
It’s the same with children. When you ask your son to do something, it’s important to look from two sides. On the one hand, there are things where you simply ask—and he doesn’t do them. On the other hand, there are places where you demand, where it seems to you that you know what is right, where you crave for him to act exactly as you think is necessary. And here begins a completely different layer.
— That’s when it seems to us we know better than the child how he should act. We are sure we understand which university he should choose, where to go to work, whether to marry this person. We rely on our experience, on our authority, and it seems to us that we are doing it out of love. But perhaps we are simply realizing our own desires through the child. We want to give him the very best—money, opportunities, education. And the child may not need any of it at all: neither money, nor university—he just wants to plant cucumbers on a homestead.
This contradiction arises very often: the parent sincerely wants “what’s best,” and the child internally rejects it. What should we do in such a case? Never advise anything? Not even out of love show how to take the next step in a better way?
— I don’t think this question should be approached in categories of “never” or “always.” Common sense matters here. You need to understand why you are offering the child this or that option—why exactly this university, this action, this choice.
For example, when you applied to university—was that your choice?
— Admission to a specific university—yes, that was my choice. But the very decision to go to university as a life step was a social model. Back then I simply couldn’t imagine there was another way.
— Yes, we grew up in a family where another option simply wasn’t considered. No one told us we could live differently, no one explained or discussed it. But now, having four children, I understand—there is another way. And you understand that yourself.
If you look at different scenarios, you can always come up with a “better” version. For example, imagine that my daughter gets into Harvard, Stanford, or Berkeley and chooses the “right” major. And then the escalation starts: Harvard alone isn’t enough—let her be the best student. Let her win hundreds of competitions. Let her get accepted to dozens of universities and choose for herself. You can always layer on expectations, raising the bar higher and higher.
Or you can do the opposite—completely let the situation go. There are parents who don’t interfere at all: they don’t discuss, don’t invest, don’t keep track. They simply say, “Whatever will be, will be.” But often that’s not conscious acceptance; it’s detachment. They distance themselves not because they trust, but because they don’t want to spend the energy to delve in, to figure things out, to truly understand what’s happening in the child’s life.
And the main thing in all situations is sound thinking from the standpoint of agreement with the laws of the Universe.
- First—do not manipulate.
- Second—remember that another person’s life belongs only to them. Not to you as the parent, not to society, not to the school. The child chose to come into your family; you did not choose them as property. But we often live as if the child is our thing until they turn eighteen. The law says, “After 18, they are free.” But from a spiritual point of view, they have always been and remain a separate soul, regardless of age. What difference does it make how old they are?
Remember we recently discussed what you would do if your daughter, upon coming of age, decided to get married, move abroad, and not go to university? From my point of view, age doesn’t matter here. What matters is how you speak with her, how you discuss her decisions. How you look at her future, at her inner states, at the world she is living in now. Is she deluded? Living in an illusion? Or is this her true choice? Perhaps not going to university is not weakness for her, but honesty. And if she enrolls “under pressure,” that will be a trauma.
I, for example, grew up in a family where relationships were never truly discussed with me—neither with girlfriends, nor with friends, nor with people in general. No one sat down with me calmly to talk, explain, help me figure things out. Probably that would have required my parents to understand, to want to figure things out—to have knowledge, experience, simple humanity. After all, you have to notice when a child is getting lost in something, and not judge, but help. I really did have difficulties—with communication, with confidence, with my inner state. Not catastrophic, but significant. And my mother would certainly say, “There you go complaining about your childhood again.” But I’m not complaining. I had many good things. It’s just that there were also plenty of problems—those no one talked about.
And this is the essence of a parent’s role: to act not out of your own goals, but out of an understanding of balance—between your life and the child’s life. Not to dissolve into them, but also not to replace their choice with your own. To balance this.
For example, I have four children, and from time to time one of them wants to sign up for some club or extra classes. We live in a society where it’s considered normal that a child should do literally everything: programming, cutting and sewing, design, jumping, biathlon, triathlon, swimming, English, math—and of course, English again. It feels like a child should start these clubs while still in the womb. And I wouldn’t be surprised if soon there are courses on “how to teach your future child English before they are born.” Society is ready to consume this.
In our family, we try to treat this calmly, not to chase everything at once, and to let the children live their childhood. Although, of course, every parent has their own inner choice here.
Why am I telling this? Sometimes the children themselves ask—“we want a club,” “dance classes,” “swimming.” Because some of their friends have it, and they want it too. My wife, for example, says, “Let’s enroll them; I’ll drive them.” And I answer, “Wait. If you also drive them to these clubs, we’ll become dependent. We’ll have no weekends left when we can spontaneously go to the ocean with the whole family, go to the park, watch a movie, take a walk, go to the pool—do something without a schedule.” That’s my personal limit—I deliberately choose not to overload the family. And Polina, for example, on the contrary, is ready to invest more. Although later she herself says, “Driving to three schools is hard.” And I ask, “So how were you planning to drive to eight clubs?” Here is the key point: a parent needs to be aware of the boundary—where they act out of responsibility, and where it’s already personal ambition or manipulation.
It’s the same with money. As a child I remember saving up for some purchases, putting something aside, calculating things. Even though we lived well, I had the habit of “stashing” something. Now I understand that the ability to save is not connected to a healthy attitude toward money. The amount of money in childhood does not determine how you will manage it later. I know one thing: I don’t want my children to get tied to the energy of money too early. Everyone will learn to count money—just as everyone learns to read and write. It’s a basic part of life.
A parent should act the same way toward a child. When you say, “I want my child to go to university,” ask yourself—what’s behind that? Is it truly a desire for good? Or is it fear? Or a social program? Or the realization of your own dream? I’m not saying I don’t want my children to study at a university—not at all. But it’s important to understand: not all parents are given the same experience.
Our parents, for example, did not encounter a situation in which their children said, “We don’t want to go to university.” We studied well, followed a clear trajectory—school, university, job. That was natural. But now many parents have different children and different circumstances. And here it’s important not to act out of fear, but out of awareness.
Because for many—especially for our father—it would have been frightening if both children suddenly said, “We’re not going to university.” I think it would have been very hard for him; it would have been fear. That’s a very important construct and, of course, personal desires.
I recently gave an example. When people say, “How can you leave? You must help your mother. How can you leave your parents? You must be nearby and fulfill certain duties.”
I try to live in a different paradigm. I have four children; they are growing up in Silicon Valley. I recently heard an interesting phrase that this is where the largest number of future billionaires are—studying in high school in the Bay Area. That’s grades 9–12, south of San Francisco. And I thought: “Well, my kids are also studying and will study here. There’s a chance that in five years they’ll earn more than I have earned, am earning, and perhaps will earn in my entire life.”
And you know what? I’ll be genuinely happy if they want to help me. I will gladly accept their help—even money, if they offer. Moreover, I’ll gladly go to work for them, help them, if they need it. And is there a chance that, on the contrary, I will help them all my life? Of course there is. Maybe all of them at once. Or maybe they’ll all work with me—and that will be happiness. If there is mutual respect and wisdom between us, then working together will be a joy. Without wisdom—no. We would just devour each other.
But that doesn’t mean I now tell my children, “Look at how the Chinese do it—learning math, jumping, music, and swimming while still in the womb. So off you go to clubs for 14 hours a day!” No. Sometimes I simply don’t understand the situation.
And this is an important point—what do you do when you don’t understand?
Imagine your son says, “Mom, I met a girl, I love her, and we’ll most likely get married.” And you don’t know how to relate to it. What does it mean to not understand the issue?
— That is, when I don’t understand what it will affect. And I don’t understand what it means to him.
— Yes. When you don’t understand how it will affect his life and what kind of experience it is. But look—the truth will happen anyway. You can resist, disagree, and he will still get married. And then his wife will know that this woman—his mother—didn’t want them to be together. That’s what I’m talking about. When you don’t understand, it’s important to figure out: how to act in this zone of not understanding?
— Probably think about the other person: what’s important to him, where he’s heading, what this choice means to him—support him. You can advise something if he himself has come for that advice.
— Yes, the main thing is to try to figure it out. Because situations vary. Sometimes you see that a person is moving within a false construct—that it doesn’t work.
People often come to me—for consultations, coaching, mentoring. They listen a lot, ask questions, get recommendations. And you know, a huge number of those recommendations they don’t take. How do I respond to that? If it’s a stranger—it’s simple, they remain a stranger to me. But if it’s my daughter and she doesn’t hear me, that’s different. That will be next to me, in my life. And here it’s important to understand what exactly will remain nearby.
Remember, you recently had a situation where you didn’t know whether your son got into university. And you were worried. And I asked you: “What are you actually worried about?”
— About the unknown—both mine and his.
— You see, you say “mine and his,” but in essence it’s all your unknown. He might say, “Mom, I’m not worried, I’m fine, don’t touch me.” That is, you’re not worried about him, but about your inner state. About the fact that it’s hard for you to be in uncertainty.
When a person is sick for a long time, why do those around sometimes say, “Let him go already so he doesn’t suffer”? In fact, they want certainty. It’s unbearable for them to live in waiting. It’s the same mechanism: the fear of the unknown. Because of it, people destroy businesses, spoil relationships, make false decisions—just to “exhale.”
I recently talked about the “false opening of a business”: when a person hesitates for a long time, doesn’t know where to go, and then some opportunity appears—and he grabs it. Even though it’s obvious to everyone that it’s a failure. But he opens the business just to exhale.
And here is the most important thing in this whole conversation. What actually triggers a person in a relationship with another, especially with a child?
— A person wants certainty, guarantees; wants to control life, to protect himself and his child from some negative factors—which again is about certainty and control of life. He wants to be something he cannot be by nature. But that’s basically like firmware. Can you imagine what colossal work it takes not just to change that firmware, but the colossal work just to begin to be aware of it?
— Therefore, good luck to all parents.