Are Your Children Bullying You?

This is getting a bit hard to believe, but a recent article in Psychology Today reports that more and more children are bullying their parents: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/when-kids-call-the-shots/201701/how-pushover-parents-raise-bullies. According to this author, more and more children are controlling their parents, making demands and even using bullying tactics. The author goes on to caution on the long-term implications which include the children bullying others at school and emotional and social challenges well into adulthood.

In my book “Don’t be A Wimp Raise a Strong Leader,” I talk about the need to parent with courage and institute strategies that will help your child become successful. Allowing your child to hit, demean and make excessive demands is not in keeping with good parenting.

So let me ask you how you would react to the following:

You are at a grocery store with your 9-year-old daughter who asks you to buy a certain cereal. You look on the label and see it is full of sugar and other products so quickly dismiss the request and use the powerful “NO” to the request. You state that even if your daughter wanted to use her allowance to buy the cereal, it wouldn’t be allowed due to the harmful ingredients in the package.

Your 9-year-old daughter starts to yell, demean you, hits you and demands you buy the box of cereal.

What would you do? What would be your reaction at the time of the incident and later when you arrived home? Your daughter is 9; would you expect a 9-year-old to behave this way?

To parent with courage, you need to have established a process and system of structure that would have dealt with this issue on the spot. Tell me how you would respond. Grandparents, your thoughts are also appreciated.

If you give me permission, I’ll include them in next week’s blog with my suggested solution.