When you provide a directive to a child/teen through the use of belittling, blame, judgement, criticism, intimidation, labeling, diagnosing, yelling and anger, as a means of insuring compliance to that directive, you are teaching the child/teen that use of disrespect as a means of control is effective and how that child/teen feels in relation to the disrespect is irrelevant.
It's amazing how parents fail to recognize that seeking compliance through disrespect is actually ineffective since it naturally provokes resistance and opposition, not just in children and teens, but in everyone.Aggression tends to automatically provoke physiological fight, flight or freeze responses in the victim and these are forms of resistance. You can witness resistance in a child/teen through the blatant refusal to conform to the directive by ignoring (flight/freeze) or resistance in the form of verbal aggression (fight).
Hence, parents then feel it incumbent upon them to intensify their efforts to acquire compliance by intensifying verbal intimidation, which breaks parental frame, resulting in power struggles in which the child/teen seeks, and usually acquires, emotional control of the parent by provoking the parent to lose frame and do or say something completely asinine, resulting in parental guilt and child/teen resentment (and, make no mistake, every stupid thing you say or do will be used against you by your child/teen as a means of manipulation in the future)
Continued failure to acquire compliance from children/teens can often result in spontaneous episodes of corporal punishment, based on the parent's feelings of powerlessness, and smacking/spanking generates even more resistance in the child/teen. Ironically, if I were to smack you across your face, you could press charges on me for assault. So in what universe is smacking a child productive and not indicative of assault? In a universe in which respecting children/teens is simply not considered necessary.
This type of aggressive communication by intimidation does not work with adults, so why in the world would you expect it to motivate your child/teen to do what their told? I can guarantee that if I smack you across the face, you will never forget that experience and that experience may result in future symptomatic behaviors.Actually, like verbal aggression, physical aggression engenders even greater resistance against complying with parental directives since it breeds a deeper, more festering resentment, often resulting in chemical behavioral addictions and failed relationships in adulthood. Make no mistake, on some level, verbal and physical abuse is traumatic and has effects on the brain, often resulting in dysfunctional, maladaptive and symptomatic behaviors in the future.
If you express a need to me through belittling, blaming, judging, intimidating, criticizing, labeling, diagnosing and anger, my resistance should be an obvious and expected response. Why would anyone meet another's needs when those needs are expressed through disrespect? Yet, in dealing with children, disrespect is taught as a means of controlling behavior through intimidation, based on the power of the parent.
PARENTAL FRAME: Achieving compliance through self-confidence, strength and complete emotional control. A weak frame can be manipulated by children/teens resulting in power struggles that seek to erode parental control.
There is a underlying subconscious power/control drama played out in all relationship, particularly significant relationship between family members. Hence, children/teens become expert at winning overt power struggles with their parents, simply because a parent that utilizes intimidating communication is clearly demonstrating a lack of self-confidence and emotional control and, hence, a weakened frame.
A fragmented parent who does not acknowledge his/her insecurities, let alone work on those insecurities, will manifest a weak frame and that parent will be pulled into the child's reality, as opposed to the child becoming a part of the parent's reality, and frequent power struggles will erode the parent's perception of their child/teen to where growing parental resentment impedes loving attachments between parent/child.
A parent with strong frame is confident in their decisions and exhibits consistent emotional control when providing directives to children/teens. Hence, there is no guilt or remorse for losing control/frame and the child/teen is provided natural consequences without belittling, judging, criticizing, labeling, diagnosing, yelling or anger. They are more likely to accept consequences when the consequences are provided with respect for them as autonomous agents who have simply made mistakes.
Reactive Reasoning with Children and Teens (their happiness is not your job)
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