Parent Thread

chaos_sl said:

I think you are vastly oversimplifying child psychology. There isn't always something you can do to prevent an outburst/behavioral issue with a kid, and you certainly can't always track it down to some single incident. Even in those cases, just them wanting something isn't a "need". They are too young to understand needs vs wants until what, 6-7? Maybe older? To them, everything is a need, everything is in the present. My experience has been there is never some one size fits all solution or explanation. Sometimes one incident can set off others, sometimes they are unrelated, sometimes something as simple as them being tired can rule their behavior for the entire day. You have to, as you said, have patience and treat each situation individually.

Childhood is a lot of frustration. Even when I explain to my 4 year old why she can't have something or do something, she sometimes still doesn't understand or care. That is when a lot of issues come up also, and that isn't something that can be fixed with enough patience. Sometimes you just have to say "No" and you don't have the opportunity to provide them with an explanation, at least not one that they will accept.

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Acceptance of an explanation isn't necessarily as important as making sure it's available (and offered more often than not). I'm not suggesting you should be a Zen Master, and hug it out with every outburst. Outbursts happen because they're children and don't have an adult's emotional intelligence or emotional capacity. Perhaps a better way to explain my view is to say that adults have had decades to mature and develop coping mechanisms for their disappointments and frustrations - children have not. I think part of your responsibilities as a parent is to help your child develop those strategies, not encourage them to repress their feelings and certainly to not hit them when they're already clearly overwhelmed.

This is where the "afford them AT LEAST the same patience you would an emotionally/developmentally stunted adult" part comes in. I am much more patient with a slow checkout at the grocery store when the clerk has downs syndrome than when they're a 25 year old kid who is staring at the clock and begrudgingly shuffling my shit over the scanner.

I apologize for not being more thorough in my explanation. My kid is no different than any of yours. If I tell him he can't have something he gets pissy/has an outburst, and as he gets older it's rarely as easy as redirecting or offering an explanation to soothe his frustration. What I practice in those situations is identifying the emotion he's feeling, "I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated," and then I ask him if he needs a hug. In this way I'm helping him identify why he feels compelled to have an outburst and, since I'm the reason he's feeling overwhelmed (because I said "no" to something), I make sure my nonverbal communication expresses my unconditional love and acceptance of him.

I understand you don't always have the time to be so accommodating, especially if you have more than one child. I also understand how a seasoned parent can look at what I write and think how adorable it is that I have these pie-in-the-sky views of parenting and that my naive ass is in for a wake up call. The reason I'm even bothering to post this at all is because I think it's important that we see our children as people, a view that is very seldom seen and rarely adopted in our (America's) culture of convenience. "Spare the rod, spoil the child" is appropriate if you let your kids do whatever they want with no consequences, but that's not what I'm promoting.

What I'm saying is that it's paramount to make sure that your attitude and perception of their outbursts is to *always* be that they're emotionally overwhelmed and need help developing coping mechanisms, not that they're spiting you, being difficult on purpose, or whatever other reason we tell ourselves to explain a child's undesired behavior.