Pater Familias … because I'm your FATHER!

Words Meant to Wound

October 15, 2009 · Behavior

What do you do when the child says I hate you?

Cranked-Off Kid Goes Over The Line

Girl Child has a powerful sense of personal sovereignty backed-up by a temper. Extra degrees of difficulty parenting-wise, but such stuff will arm her for life.

So I don’t mind her looking daggers at me when I tell her that’s it, come on inside, nobody cares if her friends are still out playing, our clock says almost bedtime.

Then, in the driveway, she snarls I hate you.

Whoa, she just went over the line. Got to step up and parent.

How, what?

Gut says tell her to get inside and forget about TV, because you can’t say I hate you to your father.

Later, I surf I hate you.

Lots of morbid sensitivity out there, like from this a CafeMom whose kid said it to her:

I would not cry-not now at least-not in front of her.I quickly turned before she could see how devastated I was.

The finale:

Then I softly spoke. I still love you...and I walked away.

A tough mother shoots back that I hate you demands spanking. Anything but (butt?) constitutes a cowardly and pathetic failure to parent.  

Pater can’t get behind either self-pity or corporal. However, I dig this decoding by PhD fathering author Carl Pickhardt

• The young person is feeling frustrated by parental demands, restraints, or lack of understanding. "I hate you!" really means, "I am at the extremity of my anger at you!"
  
• The young person is in a hard emotional place because of unwise decisions made and wants to unload those feelings on someone else. "I hate you!" really means "I feel like taking my bad feelings about myself out on you!"
  
• The young person is feeling injured by what parents did or didn’t do. "I hate you!" really means, "I feel really hurt from how you’ve treated me!"
• The young person is using extreme language for extortionate effect. "I hate you!" really means, "If you don’t want me to hate you, then let me have my way!"

Discerning, plausible. But then the guy spins out:

Respond with something like this: "Telling me you hate me tells me that you must be feeling very upset. Please talk to me about the unhappiness you feel."

That’s it, the shrinkable moment? Thanks, Doc, but to hell with that.

You know, the more I roll it around, the more I don’t hate how our I hate you goes down. The words aren’t the end of the world, and I get the kid’s anger, but she can’t talk like that to the Old Man. And a price has to be put on it, to fix the thing in her mind and help her remember.

So what do you do when the kid says I hate you?

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