Ever wonder why, when you say "Don't go up the stairs", "Don't put your feet on the table", "Don't forget your homework", "Don't make a mess", they end up doing exactly that! As Mia Von Scha from Transformational Parenting explains, language is an abstraction from reality. This means that multiple people will have multiple interpretations and perceptions of certain words that they hear. Language doesn't mean anything (it is purely sound that you have heard), until your brain translates that into meaning and pictures.

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Now when we use the word "don't" in a sentence, what mental picture is a child receiving? If we tell them "Don't eat with your hands". The mental picture the child is receiving is to eat with their hands. In order to understand what the words "Don't eat with your hands" mean, children need to visualize what eating with their hands looks like and make a mental picture of themselves doing it, which makes them more likely to do it again!

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Consciously our children understand what we are asking them, but unconsciously they are making mental pictures of the opposite of what we are requesting them to do. If we are asking them not to eat with their hands, consciously they understand that we have asked them to stop eating with their hands, but unconsciously they have seen the mental picture of themselves eating with their hands, therefore will continue to do so after they've stopped thinking about your request. We need to change the mental picture we are giving our kids when we say ask them to be cautious or when we ask them specific requests. Instead we should be asking them to "Eat with your fork please". In this way, their mental picture will be clear and they won't continue to eat with their hands once they slip back into their unconscious frame of mind again.