Mom, I Hate You! Children's Provocative Communication What It Means and What to Do About It

What Is Provocative Communication? Your seven-year-old, hands on hips, declares defiantly, "You can't make me!" Your four-year-old tugs insistently on your sleeve, loudly whining "Mooooommmmm!" while you're trying to chat with the important client you just bumped into at the supermarket. Your nine-year-old tries out the four-letter words he's learned at school on his three-year-old sister. Before you conclude that your children have been sent to you as punishment for sins committed in a previous life, take heart. Such behavior, no matter how annoying or embar- rassing, is completely normal. It's called "provocative communication," and it's a natural and (like it or not!) necessary part of growing up. Provocative communication is any statement or nonverbal gesture from a child that appears rude, inappropriate, hurtful, or disrespectful. Some common examples are: "Mom, I hate you!" "I wish I never had a brother/sister!" "I don't love you anymore!" "You don't love me anymore!" "I wish I/you were dead!" "Shut up!" "You can't make me!" "You're stupid!" "You never do anything for me!" "!%#&@!!" In the following pages you'll learn how to decode provocative statements like these to reveal their underlying meanings and the important functions they perform in children's lives. You'll learn a variety of effective responses to provocative communication, keyed to specific situations and behavior patterns; responses that set appropriate limits on such behavior. You'll learn how to teach your children more effective ways to express themselves, ways that will give voice to their true feelings without causing conflict. And you'll learn the parameters of "normal" provocative communication and the threshold at which aggressive behavior enters the danger zone. A Look Back In past generations, children were to be seen and not heard. They were expected to speak only when spoken to. Even mildly disrespectful behavior was considered intolerable and usually punished swiftly and severelywith a slap on the face, a spanking, or at the very least a harsh verbal lashing aimed at eliciting feelings of shame. There was a widespread double-standard in child-rearing practice. Parents could talk any way they wanted to their kids, but children had no such latitude. This do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do form of parenting is called "authoritarian discipline." In such an atmosphere, children grew up without any sense of how to safely express their feelings. They thus tended to be less assertive, as well as less spontaneous and joyful. They also ceased to experience any comfort from the expression of emotion, squelching their strongest feelings just as their parents had squelched their impulses to express them. Meanwhile, disciplinarian fathers and mothers felt they were doing a fine job of teaching their children self-control and good manners. Indeed, boys and girls were extraordinarily well-behaved by present-day standards, but it was at considerable cost to their emotional development and welfare. Many of today's parents retain these disciplinarian attitudes, but there is also a widespread desire to understand what children are really trying to say when they express them- selves provocatively. More parents than ever before are beginning to understand the importance of allowing children to give voice to their emotions, to let them out rather than bottle them up. How, then, to exercise jFleming, Don is the author of 'Mom, I Hate You! Children's Provocative Communication What It Means and What to Do About It', published 2003 under ISBN 9780609808566 and ISBN 0609808567.