young man, and get there right away.” Brandon “got” down the hall, all
right, but his movement was imperceptible to the human eye.
The teacher said, “Hurry up, Brandon.”
“Hey, I’m going,” Brandon replied. “I’m doing what you told me. How
come you’re always on my case?” Brandon was attempting to wrest back
some control of the situation. He was fighting. I’ll go, he said inside. But
I won’t go your way — I’ll go my way.
A sure sign of passive-resistant behavior in children is prolonged
parental frustration. Certainly, parents may be frustrated without having
passive-resistant children, but all passive-resistant children have
frustrated parents.
In the sections that follow, we will discuss some techniques that Love
and Logic parents use to decrease parental frustration and children’s
noncompliance. We’ll discover various options that Becca’s mom or
Brandon’s teacher could have used.
We’d Rather They Think Than Fight
Fighting words invite disobedience. When we use them, we draw a line in
the sand and dare our kids to cross it. They will fight the limits we
impose when we use fighting words. Fighting words include three types
of commands:
- Telling our kids what to do — “You get to work on that lawn right
now.” - Telling our kids what we will not allow — “You’re not going to
talk to me that way!” - Telling our kids what we won’t do for them — “I’m not letting
you out of this house until you clean the living room.”
When we issue such commands we are calling our kids to battle, and in
many cases these are battles we cannot win. Why not bypass these hassles
and make our words ones that cannot be fought? Why not steer away