Classic Statements that Parents Make that Are Code for “I can’t control my kids!”
Parents who can’t or won’t control their children almost always hide behind age-old statements in an effort to get off the hook.
Over the years, I’ve heard these half-baked statements, and I’m sure you have too, that parents make when they’re in denial that they have no control over their kids.
Remember, it’s never the young child’s fault. People call out-of-control or rude kids “brats” and other nasty names, but the way that children behave is directly the result of how their parents are raising them. So cut the young ones some slack.
“Kids will be kids.”
This is as old as the hills. Funny thing, though, when parents use this line, they’re very selective about it.
If they truly believe that kids will be kids and therefore, let’s let them get away with doing whatever they please, then why not let them eat whatever they want? Ice cream for dinner and never any vegetables, for instance?
And let them get filthy from playing in a mud puddle and let them put glue in their hair while you’re at it. After all, kids will be kids!
“You obviously don’t have kids.”
This remark comes from parents who believe that every parent on earth thinks just as they do, and anybody who disagrees is childless. This is binary thinking and totally lacks logic.
The message with this defense is that in order to recognize that a child is out of control or behaving badly or inappropriately, the observer absolutely must have children of her or his own.
The funny thing is, is that often, this defense is directed towards people who do, indeed, have children—simply because most adults have kids!
“She’s just a free spirit.”
Letting your child be a free spirit is great (think running in the park flying a kite), but being permitted to dash all about a restaurant like a pinball and shriek and holler, disrupting diners’ eating experience, doesn’t qualify as free spirited.
That’s like calling your child a “free spirit” when they decide to splatter paint on your new $500 sofa.
“You know how little boys are.”
How are they? Are they supposed to trample the neighbor’s flower bed? Are they supposed to chase each other in and out of store aisles, nearly colliding with customers?
“It’s good to let kids express themselves.”
True, so that’s why wise parents will buy their children implements for expressing themselves such as art supplies, musical instruments, a diary and sign them up for various classes like clay working, water color painting, jewelry making, woodworking, dramatic arts, etc.
But running haywire through a health club while people are working out? This is an out-of-control child whose parents have their head in the sand.
Otherwise, why not give this same excuse to adults who are wild and loud? What if your adult neighbors are hollering and whooping it up at 10 pm on their porch, the heavy metal music cranked up?
What if when you asked them to tone things down a bit, they responded, “We’re just expressing ourselves!”?
“I suppose YOUR kids are perfect?”
The behavioral nature of the critic’s children is not relevant to the matter at hand: someone’s five-year-old shrieking and bouncing all over the lobby at the DMV because the child’s mother has her thinking it’s a playground.
Allowing the little girl to behave this way is wrong, whether the critic’s own five-year-old trampled the neighbor’s garden yesterday or not.
“Sometimes parents will minimize their children’s behavior by saying things like, ‘He was just playing when he hit her,’ or, ‘She watches a lot of television and that is where she learned to swear,’” says Stacy Kaiser, a southern California-based licensed psychotherapist and relationship expert with a special interest in the topic of bullying.
Kaiser explains, “Oftentimes, parents will just throw up their hands and imply that they have no control over their children and they simply do not know what to do.
“This is a way of denying responsibility and acting as if their child is outside of their control.”
