Stop it! Give me that now! I hate you! Leave me alone!

It’s easy to imagine/remember a time when you witnessed a child berating their parent in such a way. In many cases, it has happened to us personally. I have watched children spit at their parents, push them, yell at them and act as though they don’t exist. Luckily, my child is too young to do any of these things just yet. Children are bound to push limits, but being disrespectful to their folks on the regular can become a big problem.

Seeing children act as though their parent isn’t a person really gets me down- especially when that parent is my friend. If their significant other or a friend of theirs was behaving toward them in such a fashion, I would not hesitate to speak up. And they would most likely not hesitate to point out the disrespectful attitude if it were coming from another adult. But when a child is being disrespectful to their parent, somehow standing up for the parent is incorrect, overstepping and inappropriate. I would never let an adult spit at one of my friends without stepping in. Ever. So why can’t I help out when it’s a kid doing the spitting?

The problem arises when parents forget that a) they are people and b) that being hungry/tired/upset doesn’t excuse all of their child’s behaviors. When parents start down the road of responding rationally to demands from their kids or overlooking the fact that their kids are eating off of their plate without asking, they open the door to many different kinds of disrespectful behavior. They are normalizing those demanding behaviors and tacitly agreeing that they don’t have stuff or feelings of their own.

Making your own ‘demands’ about how you want to be treated is an integral part of any relationship- especially the one between a parent and a child. Don’t respond to the whining if you don’t want it to become an everyday occurrence. Don’t ignore them getting up from the table in the middle of dinner unless you want it to happen again tomorrow. Don’t let your kids literally walk on you unless you would like to continue to be treated as a doormat. 

If you wouldn’t allow a stranger to yell at you, don’t let your kid do so either. How will they know not to yell, hit, spit, push or demand unless we teach them that those disrespectful behaviors are not the things to do? If we allow them to treat us like shit, they’ll try to treat other people like shit too. 

So since it’s taboo for me to stand up for you, I ask parents everywhere to stand up for themselves.

PARENT POWER!