Why it can be good when kids are bad

A glimpse into my writing process and a common theme

Welcome to Is My Kid the Asshole?, a newsletter from science journalist and author Melinda Wenner Moyer, which you can read more about here. If you like it, please subscribe and/or share this post with someone else who would too.

For today’s newsletter I’m doing something different: I’m going to expand on a parenting piece I just wrote for The New York Times, and provide the backstory on how it came to be to give you a window into my life and creative process.

As you know, I do a lot of reporting for my newsletters. Every week, I hunt for relevant experts on the questions I want to answer for you, and then I interview these experts and, essentially, pick their brains. The best interviews are the ones that feel more like a conversation — where my sources feel comfortable going off on tangents or waxing poetic on a particular idea. That’s because often, tucked into those tangents, is the nugget of another idea I want to explore, or a new angle that I’ve never considered before.

For last week’s newsletter, I interviewed Rebecca Schrag Hershberg about what parents should do when kids say “I hate you!” I reached out to Hershberg because I have talked to her before, and she is full of empathetic insights on child behavior. Much of my job is following my instincts, and knowing Hershberg, I had a hunch that she would have some interesting things to say on this particular question. And I was right; she sure did.

My first question for Hershberg was, Why do kids say ‘I hate you?’ I’m very interested in the “why” of kid behavior, in addition to the “what you should do about it” part. That’s because when we can understand why kids do challenging things, and why it’s often quite normal for them to do challenging things, we can have more empathy for them — which helps us handle the situation better. Personally, when I understand what’s at the root of my kid’s seemingly terrible behavior, I find that it doesn’t bother me as much. And my goal with this newsletter is to make parents’ lives easier; or at least, to make all the difficult moments a little less difficult.

So anyway, back to my conversation with Hershberg. I asked her: Why do kids say ‘I hate you?’ and she gave me such an insightful answer that included many of the things I highlighted in my newsletter last week. Then she paused and said this:

I have worked with families that are genuinely really unhealthy families, with long histories of trauma [or abuse] …. Those are not the families where kids are saying these things. Because it's not safe to say these things. If your child is saying I hate you, chances are your child feels pretty safe and comfortable with you. And that's actually a good thing.

When she said that, I felt a spark go off inside my head. My reporter antennae zinged (is that a word?). I realized that what she was saying was actually quite profound and much broader than the specific issue of why kids say ‘I hate you.’ One big part of a writer’s job is to recognize unexpected moments of insight, or connections between ideas that you’d never made before, and to realize that there’s something bigger there that you should explore.

After that, we got back on track discussing the specific issue of kids saying I hate you, but throughout the conversation I kept thinking about what she’d said: That kids who misbehave or say horrible things are kids who feel safe. And then, organically, we circled back to it towards the end of the conversation:

Hershberg: I've had parents say, like, what is wrong with my kid? How can my five year old think it's okay to say that kind of thing — bringing morality into it. So it’s [really important] to just normalize it. [But then parents say] ‘Well, I never said that to my parents. If I had said that, my dad would have taken off the belt.’ That sort of response. And it's like, again — it’s that age old question, is it better when kids fear their parents? I think the reality is, it's easier, day-to-day. If your child fears those big reactions from you, then yeah, day-to-day probably does get a little bit easier. But we also know, a lot more than we used to, about the development of anxiety disorders and depression and lack of self-esteem and self confidence, which, you know, plagues our generation.

Me: That's really interesting. I've had people ask me, ‘Wasn't it wasn't it better when kids didn't talk back to their parents?’ and ‘Kids need to be seen and not heard, right?’ And I've answered that in a number of different ways. But I hadn't really thought about how that reflects that the parent-child relationship is not as strong and trusting — it's a reflection of fear. That kids fear their parents. And that is actually not healthy in so many ways.

Hershberg: And then parents will say, ‘Well, I was a little bit afraid my parents and I turned out okay.’ But there’s research. I mean, this is where your book comes in. It’s like, well, that's great, you're an N of one, but we can look at the science and the science says that over time, fearing your parents makes you less confident of yourself and more in need of external validation. We really want our kids to know themselves and trust themselves and believe in themselves, and that all gets sacrificed a little bit if the parents are the be-all-end-all ruler of everything.

Me: Yeah, yeah…. Yeah. Gosh, that's like a whole different topic! I guess there's multiple stories in here. It's so funny, what can come out of just one simple question.

Within hours of ending that call, I pitched this story to my editor at The New York Times, and sure enough, she liked the idea, too. On Monday morning of last week, she assigned me the story. I felt it was a timely holiday piece, given that so many parents right now are dealing with (or anticipating dealing with) judge-y relatives and grandparents who might balk at their kids’ unsavory behavior.

I needed to turn the piece around in 24 hours — mind you this was also when my Internet went out, so that was fun — so I immediately scrambled to find another few experts who could speak to the science behind this idea. After some hunting, I reached out to Emily Loeb, a psychologist at the University of Virginia whose research has shown that a technique that parents often use to control and stoke fear in their kids, known as psychological control, leads to bad outcomes. Since I didn’t have phone or Internet access at home, I interviewed Dr. Loeb on Tuesday morning in my local coffee shop. (For my Instagram devotees, this was the morning when the employees at my local bookstore called me out on the fact that I was reading my own book at the coffee shop — indeed, I was looking up some of the studies I’d cited in my book about authoritarian and authoritative parenting so I could link to them in the piece.)

In emailing with Hershberg after landing the assignment, she also recommended that I reach out to child psychologist Dana E. Crawford, a pediatric and clinical psychologist who is a scholar in residence at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute. I wanted to discuss, in my piece, how race and culture can impact the perception of child behavior, and how they can then shape parenting choices. Dr. Crawford works a lot with Black families, so she seemed a wonderful choice. The conversation we had was enlightening and heartbreaking. Here’s a snippet:

Dr. Crawford: A lot of parents do not interpret their children's behavior as just the behavior in this moment. It's also the implication of that behavior, if it was to be demonstrated in the world. And so I think for some parents, who have the privilege of their child having a behavior in the world that challenges authority, then that's a really exciting behavior to see — it's really nice to be like, ‘Hey, I have a child in the world that isn't going to just take what authority says at face value, they're going to question it.’ For other families, questioning the authority of someone might lead to that child, in a best case scenario, being listened to, but in other scenarios, being ignored, and in other scenarios, being labeled — possibly being given a diagnosis in the field of psychology [such as] disruptive behavior disorder. And then, in the worst, most horrific case scenario, being killed.

Let all that sink in for a moment, and consider, too, what she said next: That because it can be so dangerous for non-white children to challenge authority, their parents might, understandably, feel the best reaction to their child’s defiant behavior is to punish it harshly. “Parents spanking the child might prevent a police beating. Parents spanking the child might prevent them being incarcerated,” Crawford said.

It was such an eye-opening interview — another interview where I felt like there is a lot more to cover, perhaps in a separate story, about how racism, and BIPOC parents’ fear for their children’s safety and well-being, shape their parenting.

But back to the assignment at hand. Once I sat down to write the piece, what I essentially argued (you can read the whole thing here) is that when kids talk back or are defiant or sassy, that typically means that they feel loved and safe — and that’s a good thing. Obedient, compliant kids are often kids who are afraid of their parents, and the research overwhelmingly shows that kids who fear their parents do not fare as well in life. They’re at an increased risk for anxiety and depression, exhibit more disruptive behavior and are more likely than other kids to have low self-esteem. I also touched upon the fact that there are cultural and racial implications to consider when it comes to how we parent and what we expect from our kids.

The piece, which was published on Saturday, has been quite popular (it was the second most emailed story in The New York Times yesterday), and I think that’s because it’s so reassuring. Parents are constantly being judged and attacked these days — so articles that make us feel less terrible tend to do very well. Yes, kids’ challenging behavior can be annoying as hell. But sometimes it means we’re actually doing things right.

In my book, by the way, I discuss lots more on how and why “bad” behavior is normal or even sometimes good. I explain why lying, swearing, self-centeredness, and unkind behavior are not uncommon in childhood — and that these behaviors are often a reflection of the way kids’ brains are developing. Sometimes we as parents misinterpret their actions and assume that kids are doing things to drive us nuts or defy us, when really, it’s just that they don’t have the skills we think they have. By recognizing this, we can respond more appropriately to their behavior, in ways that will actually help them develop the skills they need.

I hope this insight into my process was interesting — let me know if you’d like to see more of this, or if you just want me to stick to straightforward parenting advice!

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