Is Disrespect a Tantrum in Disguise?

A 7-year-old has been behaving rudely toward his parents by giving them “attitude” and resisting when they give him directions. He says rebellious things, reacts strongly to minor disappointments, and even gets physically aggressive. The mom writes: “I feel at a loss for how to correct this perceived defiance…We’re at a new low for us. It’s starting to feel like he’s too old to be acting out this way.” Janet offers her perspective and suggestions in this episode. 

 

Transcript of “Is Disrespect a Tantrum in Disguise?”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Many of us were familiar with the idea of young children, toddlers especially, having tantrums. They’re really unreachable during these times. And I’ve offered a lot of advice about how to respond, which is mostly to trust that it’s okay for this to happen, that most children have these at some point. And yes, there are things that we can look at in our environment and in our relationship with our children to try to prevent them from becoming overwhelmed in this way, but much of it is out of our control completely. Therefore, we want to wait it out and just be there without judgment. When our child is finished, reconnect. Not try to, at that time, go over what happened and why did they do this, because they really don’t know most of the time. So if you haven’t already checked out some of my resources on this topic, just look up “tantrums and Janet Lansbury,” and you’ll find a lot of information and suggestions for responding.

What’s less talked about, though, is how do we handle children’s behaviors as they get older? Sometimes this is their older-child version of a tantrum, and by older I mean beyond toddler years. Their system’s getting overwhelmed and, to a great extent, this is beyond their control. A parent reached out to me and brought up this topic. I’d like to share her notes and talk about the behaviors that she’s concerned about and what she can do to help her child.

Hi, Janet-

Your books and podcast have guided me through the hardest parts of parenting. Our oldest is now seven, middle is four, and youngest is one. I’m struggling to find podcasts or articles that apply to my seven-year-old’s most recent behaviors. He is tender, empathetic, compassionate, so adoring and caring toward his little sisters. Over the last few months, he occasionally exhibits sass or “attitude.”

For example, he will mock us when we need to speak sternly. If I say, “If you can’t turn off the TV, I will need to turn it off for you,” he will say, “Fine, make me.” Other iterations include “Fine, I don’t care” when he clearly does care. Rarely he will swat at me or lean his body into mine to try to make me lose my balance when he’s upset with me. As much as I try to be unruffled by all of it, he knows he has pushed a button.

Today he did not want to leave a friend’s house where he’d been playing. When I arrived to pick him up, he told me he didn’t want to go and kicked my shin, to which I got down to his level and calmly said, “Stop now, that’s not okay.” But it happened multiple times before I could say thanks and bye and get us out the door. In the car I told him that was not okay and he needed to change the way he was talking to me. He told me he would calm down if I would “just shut up.”

Later at a restaurant, he asked for help with his Legos, but dinner had arrived and I told him he needed to put the Legos down until after dinner and he swung his hand, pretending to slap my face, but intentionally missing. I roughly pulled him out of the restaurant to speak to him in the most private spot I could find, but I was livid and at a loss for what to say.

I don’t know how to perceive his behavior as anything but disrespectful. And in that moment, I realized I would rather yell at him and have him fear me than to have him disrespect me. I’m not proud of that thought as I type it out, but I also feel at a loss for how to correct this perceived defiance. The pretend slap and saying shut up were a new low for us. It’s starting to feel like he’s too old to be acting out this way. It’s something my parents would never have tolerated from my brothers and I growing up, and I think my knee-jerk reaction—to think I can yell him into better behavior—is what was modeled for me.

You helped me understand tantrums as a bid for connection. I would be so grateful for any shift in perspective you might be able to help me find here. Thank you for the invaluable work you do.

I wrote back to her: “Do you have any sense of what’s going on with your boy when he behaves these ways? Any idea?”

And she wrote:

Thanks so much for reading my question. I’m not sure exactly what is going on. My best guess is long-winded. My apologies in advance.

The day I wrote about in particular, I suspect he felt like he was being made to do things he didn’t want to do. Went to best friend’s house, but left sooner than he wanted to, though we told him in advance he only had two hours there. Attended cousin’s birthday party. He enjoys playing with her regularly, but he’s older by two grades and he was feeling self-conscious about being the only boy and one of the older kids. He wound up having fun and saying he was glad he went. He seemed to feel neutral about cousin’s birthday dinner with grandparents. It was a long day. He doesn’t get to see his best friend as often as he would like (different schools, different schedules), so we fit it in because we didn’t want to miss the opportunity. He didn’t seem to have envy about his cousin receiving gifts, but I imagine that could have added to it.

The Legos before dinner. Legos are always tricky for us. They were a party favor, which is why I said okay to doing them before dinner. I tried to warn him in advance that he might not have time to finish it. Right before dinner arrived, he had asked for help. After dinner arrived, he asked for help again. I realized one of the steps was wrong and said we could fix it after dinner. He can be a perfectionist at times and doesn’t like being corrected by me, though he seems to handle it well with teachers at school. I suspect the combination of not being allowed to do what he wanted to do and being told he made a mistake was what set him off.

In general, the backtalk seems to happen whenever we’re telling him to do something he doesn’t want to do, like turn off the TV. I’m not sure why it happens sometimes when other times he’s happy to go along. The leaning on me/pushing seems to happen whenever he had his heart set on something and I say no, like a souvenir from a trip or not being able to do an impromptu playdate after school. Again, sometimes he handles the disappointment just fine.

When our second was born, he was three and had multiple hour-long tantrums a day. It was early COVID, so countless things changed for him in a short time. Your teaching is what helped me to calmly sit with him through it and recognize that he needed me to stay connected to him. With the birth of our third child, he never seemed to react negatively. Maybe the backtalk is the tantrum?

Sorry for the long email. Thanks so much for your time.

It never ceases to amaze me that parents, you can all figure out what’s going on with your child. At the very end of her second note to me, she nailed it: Maybe the backtalk is the tantrum? The wonderful message here is that we know, we all know what’s going on with our child better than somebody else does, but to get there sometimes we have to be in a mental and emotional space where we can allow ourselves to be open to exploring it in our minds.

And that means getting out of the space where we’re feeling maybe guilty, feeling wrong, feeling worried about the future, maybe feeling angry because it feels like our child is doing all these things and it’s a personal attack, so we’re worried that there’s something wrong with them maybe, or that there’s just something wrong between them and us, that they don’t like us, that they’re disrespecting us this way. But when we actually process some of that out in our mind and look a little bit deeper, we get clarity.

And yeah, I think this parent is spot-on that this is this particular seven-year-old’s version of what he went through when the second one was born. And now there’s a third child, and as much as he adores these sisters, now it’s like the piece of the pie for him has gotten smaller. A lot of focus has to go into those babies in their first year. And then at age one, this is a time when often it feels more real to the child that, Okay, this isn’t just a baby that I can kind of take for granted over there. This is another person that’s taking my parent’s attention. So sometimes the child doesn’t have these kinds of reactions when the baby’s first born, but they have it at age one or so when the child starts to move or starts to walk.

And then at the same time, this is the beginning of a school year. So all these transitions that this parent said he’s going through, they’re still fresh, it’s still going on. I’m imagining he’s in a new class at school, maybe it’s first grade, that could be challenging.

It makes sense that his feelings of overwhelm get touched off by some seemingly very minor disappointments that sometimes don’t bother him, but other times they do. Really, that’s like all of us, right? The same thing can happen to us on a day where we’re feeling strong and centered and comfortable in our skin and we have kind of a perspective on the whole thing. The same little disappointing thing can happen and we take it in stride, but then on other days it just feels like the straw that broke the camel’s back and it sets us off and it could be so minor.

So the big hump for us to get over as parents is our perceptions of our child’s behavior. Considering the why, as this parent’s doing, so that we’re able to maybe not go all the way to empathizing, but understanding, being more accepting. And worrying less ourselves that this is some really terrible sign of things to come or that our child doesn’t like us or they’re a disrespectful person. It can help us also to see the other side, like this parent does. She says he’s tender, empathetic, compassionate, so adoring and caring. Those aren’t qualities of a disrespectful child, quite the opposite.

But sometimes as parents, we can get so caught up in the concerning parts and the worrying parts that we’re not seeing as clearly, and then we’re reacting to and addressing specific behaviors instead of addressing what’s behind them. And when we’re responding to the behaviors in front of us and not seeing beyond them, then we’re not going to get to the answer and we’re not going to be able to solve the problem for ourselves, which is we want our child to stop doing this, right? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with wanting that. Try to take a step back so you get perspective to see the whole picture here and then to realize, as this parent does, that her child’s feelings are appropriate, but the way that they’re showing up through behavior is not appropriate.

And then I think this parent also nails it when she says, “The day I wrote about in particular, I suspect he felt like he was being made to do things he didn’t want to do.” And then she shared all these specific things that had happened that didn’t go his way. So that’s a theme here for him. And beneath that is, Everything in my life isn’t going my way right now. It’s not just about these specific incidences; those touch off the feeling beneath it that ugh, I’ve got another transition to make. Sure, I love my new sister, she’s adorable, she’s sweet. But this is not okay with me completely. It hurts, it’s hard, and it feels like I have less of what I need.

So it’s the feeling behind the specifics that, again, if we’re open and we’re able to explore—like this parent did as she was writing her note—we’ll see it. And that’s what we can trust. Not the voice in us that’s saying, Oh! Disrespectful, big problem here. What have I done? When we can understand that, Okay, this is the tantrum, and he had this when the second one was born, when we can see the bigger picture like that, we can help him with the specific behaviors by, as much as possible, acknowledging the feelings behind the behaviors. Which is not the same as accepting the behaviors.

This parent is telling her child “That’s not okay,” and that’s appropriate. What she hasn’t said in these notes is that she’s saying, “What’s going on with you? You’re having a hard one, huh? Are you feeling unsettled? Are you feeling tired? What could we do to make this work better?” That’s a message we can give our child while at the same time letting them know that it’s absolutely not okay what they’re doing, that we want them to share the feelings a different way. It can be hard to remember that because, again, we’re so caught up in the behavior. It feels like it’s in our face and it just seems so wrong, we want to stop it right now. But that doesn’t stop it, that’s the problem. And then because we’re saying, no, no, no, and our child feels that they’re pushing buttons and we’re mad at them, then they feel less and less safe to be where they are right now, with the feelings that are going on for them. And then there’s going to be more of this tantrum-like behavior.

So tantrums in older kids can look like these kinds of flashes of anger, snapping, talking back, angry words, rude words, rudeness, seemingly overreacting to small things. And it’s almost like the more a child trusts us, the further they might go with this. I know it doesn’t feel good, but that’s in a way a good sign that he went all the way to Shut up, mom. Because that means he doesn’t feel scared by his parent, he feels safe. And we could say too safe, that’s not okay. For sure! Full stop, that’s not okay. And our child, especially at this age, 100% knows it’s not okay, but just like the toddler with the tantrum, this is how it’s showing up for them. They don’t want to be in this situation, they don’t want to be pushing us away and feeling more distance from us. But they are, as this parent said, getting our attention, they’re getting our connection. It’s not the kind that they want, but they’re getting it. So the impulse gets encouraged. Other ways that older kids have tantrums: screaming, yelling, aggression.

So we want them to pass through this part. We want this to be a phase that ends really soon. And the thing is, it can and it will, if we can actually focus on not repeatedly telling kids that they shouldn’t and we won’t let them and it’s not okay and being stern like that, but more on the feelings part. That doesn’t mean we don’t say those things, but it means that we say the other part as well. “I can’t let you do this. What’s going on with you? You know that’s not okay. What’s happening between us? Is there something you want to tell me?” Not expecting that we’re going to get an answer right there, especially if this thing just happened that our child did. But showing our child that we’re open to them and we want to know, that’s often enough for them to feel safer. It’s the way that we’re not blaming them for the tantrum, the way that we wouldn’t blame a one- or two-year-old for a tantrum. Or maybe we would, but I recommend not doing that.

I want to talk about some of the ways to handle these specifics as they come. What do I do when my child’s doing these things? So this parent says, “If I say, ‘If you can’t turn off the TV, I will need to turn it off for you,’ he will say, ‘Fine, make me.'” So without realizing it, sometimes the way that we say things, our child feels we’re already challenging them. We’re already kind of a little bit mad at them. A more connected, less challenging way to say that—because we don’t want to touch them off, right?—would be, “Oh gosh, I need you to turn the TV off right now. You know it’s time. Could you please do that? Could you please turn the TV off?” A response that’s not already anticipating a problem, that has that challenging tone. If you don’t do this, I’m going to do that. Not that she was saying it that way, but it has that feel to a child. And if a child is already on edge because they’re going through something, like this child is, that’s very likely to set them off to say, Fine, make me, or Fine, I don’t care. He’s giving a defensive response back because in a way we’ve kind of hurt his feelings there. We’ve set a limit assuming the worst in him. Obviously not meaning to, but that could be the result.

It’s actually good to anticipate. When our child is showing us that they’re having these kinds of behaviors and they’re having tantrums, if we want to look at it that way, it’s good to anticipate, Oh, they may not be able to do this hard thing, like turning off something that for all of us is somewhat addictive. It’s hard to turn it off, right? I mean, you should see me trying to go to bed, watching shows at night and now you can just watch the next episode and the next one. It’s really hard to turn that off, so if I was a young child, only seven, or a teenager, I can’t even imagine how hard that must be. So understanding him a little more at the outset there. And then, because we know that he’s going through a hard time, realizing this is going to be maybe even harder and I may have to turn it off for him. But I can do that from a place of being on his side.

Then in her note, she was talking about leaving the friend’s house. So this is another time that, because it’s a transition and because he’s doing something he wants to do and is being asked to transition out of it, and my child is going through something now, those are all warning signs for me that I would know that I needed to make a graceful (if possible!), confident-momentum exit with him. Trying to be ready for that will help us a lot.

And then she said, “When I arrived to pick him up, he told me he didn’t want to go and kicked my shin.” Yeah, I mean that’s alarming, right? That he already feels kind of at odds with me here, that he’s got some feelings stored up there, some anger at me, maybe some feelings of betrayal and hurt. So this parent did something lovely. She said, “I got down to his level and calmly said, ‘Stop now. That’s not okay.’ But it happened multiple times before I could say thanks and bye and get us out the door.” So if my child kicked my shin, I wouldn’t be getting down to their level to talk to them calmly at that point. I mean, I would try to stay calm, but I would be like, “Whoa, alright, come on. We’ve got to get out of here. You don’t want to leave, but we have to leave.”

This is a warning sign to us, for him to kick my shin, that he’s going off and he’s not going to be able to do a nice exit here. I’m going to go into confident-momentum mode and help him out, right there, before it escalates. That’s for us as well as for our child. Our child is showing us they can’t handle this transition and we can’t let our child hurt us. It’s not a situation where we can talk our child calmly out of it. They’re in it. And the sooner we realize that and just keep them safe, keep ourselves safe, the better.

She said it’s “not okay and he needed to change the way he was talking to me. He told me he would calm down if I would ‘just shut up.'” So he’s still in it. Yeah, he’s still in the tantrum. We don’t want to try to reason with a child in that state. The most I would say there, just like I would maybe say to a child having a tantrum, if they could hear me, I might say, “You didn’t want that. You didn’t want me to say no.” So here I might say, “I hear how much you didn’t want to leave. It was hard for you to let go of that playdate today.” So I’m not saying it in this nurturing, soft voice. I am not happy about this, but I’m still willing to connect with you as you are and see you.

And then later at the restaurant, he asked for help with his Legos, but dinner had arrived and she told him to put the Legos down. So yeah, a lot of this is that awareness that your child is going through something and, as this parent nailed it, he’s having a tantrum. He’s going through a sensitive period. And that’s where, instead of letting boundaries go, because Oh, our child is feeling sensitive, what children need is the opposite. They need us to set boundaries extra early. So setting boundaries early, leaving that playdate, being preventative of him kicking you more by getting out of there. Not going down to his level and trying to talk him out of it when he’s already in that state, it’s not going to work. Being ready to turn the TV off rather than setting up this kind of challenging dynamic.

And then I would not let him, especially at the end of that day, bring the Legos to dinner. That’s not necessary. And it’s better to have the blowup and have him yell about it in the car than to have to deal with it in a public place like this. We want to set ourselves up for success, and that means being preventative, anticipating that my child can’t handle this. I mean, this parent wanted to be so kind about it because it was a party favor. And naturally when it blew up and it didn’t work, now any parent is going to be frustrated, angry about that, mad at our child. But what I’m suggesting is to instead let him be mad at you earlier, when you say, no, we’re not going to bring this to the restaurant.

And she says he leans his body into hers. That would be a no for me. If he’s coming up close to me and I’ve just said no to him about something, he can’t do this, or I know he’s going through this thing and I can pick up that energy in him, I’m going to move away. I’m not going to set myself up for this, I’m not going to let this happen. So personal boundaries, taking care of ourselves at the outset of the behavior, it’s the most important thing. Because we’re not going to be able to have a calm, helpful response unless we can do that. And that’s why I’m saying all of this stuff, not because we’re a better parent or blah, blah, blah. It’s about us taking care of ourselves, setting ourselves up for success and for this phase to pass really fast.

This parent says, “It’s starting to feel like he’s too old to be acting out this way. It’s something my parents would never have tolerated from my brothers and I growing up.” Yes, and that’s the kind of upbringing that most of us know. And there were some positives to that, but there was also usually unnecessary distance created and maybe a bit of fear and things that we take on ourselves, like shame and things like that. But the key word here is tolerated. So no, I would not tolerate any of it. I agree with the other generation that didn’t tolerate. Don’t tolerate. You’re not going to get down and talk to them nicely. That’s tolerating it. Giving them access to our whole body after they’ve kicked us, no way I’m going to do that. Don’t tolerate letting him do Legos in the restaurant. I wouldn’t tolerate him keeping the TV on longer. But the way that I recommend trying to stop it is calm. Not stern, not angry, not already anticipating in our tone that they’re in trouble and they’re going to push back. So no, don’t tolerate it.

She said, “I think my knee-jerk reaction—to think I can yell him into better behavior—is what was modeled for me.” So that part does work because it scares kids, but there are just a lot of negatives to that that we don’t need. And I don’t believe it works as well because now we have an uncomfortable child who’s been yelled at, and being uncomfortable is not a setup for a child to behave and be at their best.

And she said, “You helped me understand tantrums as a bid for connection.” So yes, they’re not a conscious bid for connection at all, but they’re a bid for a certain kind of connection. I won’t tolerate this from you, but I’m with you in trying to help you stop doing it. It’s that duality that we can all have. It’s like the best of both worlds, because we’re helping them feel safe and comfortable and at the same time we’re telling them we’re not going to tolerate it. And if it’s just yelling at me and saying certain words, I know that seems disrespectful, but we can show our child that that’s not the way to reach us by not reacting to that in a big way. Reacting with, Hmm, I don’t let you talk to me that way. You’re not going to get a big flare out of me, this isn’t going to be a successful way to connect with me.

And she said this other thing that to me is a clue, about the Legos: ” I suspect the combination of not being allowed to do what he wanted to do and being told he made a mistake was what set him off.” Yeah, maybe he seems perfectionistic at times, but what he’s really showing is that he’s vulnerable right now. Instead of treating that with kid gloves and oh, I’ll let him do it, set him up with the boundaries so that he doesn’t get into these situations where he’s causing such a stir in us.

I hope some of that helps. Again, it all goes back to our perception of this. And this mom already has all the perspective she needs, when she trusts that part. The bid for connection, yes. But what kind of connection is he bidding for here, unconsciously? And the tantrum, this is his seven-year-old version of a tantrum, totally. And doesn’t that help us to see it differently? He’s still at a prime age to get overwhelmed when all of these things are happening in his life. And the biggest ones that I believe are impacting him are the baby, as much as he loves her, and the new school year. Therefore, all these other transitions are really, really hard.

So the bid is to share himself, his feelings, his vulnerability, and have that received safely, have it accepted. It’s a bid for us to see beyond his mean outsides to the hurt inside. We don’t need to jump so far as to try to empathize every time. Of course, we’re not going to empathize with a lot of it. Great if we do, obviously, but we just need for our child to know, because we’re showing them, that it’s okay for them to feel what they feel, though certain behavior is not to be tolerated. And to know that they’re okay and, maybe most of all, that we’re okay together. We’re still with them, through the tantrums and through the beautiful, tender, compassionate, adoring behavior he has towards his little sisters. That’s the person that he is underneath this, he just needs our help.

Thanks so much to this parent for reaching out to me and trusting me, and I hope you don’t feel I stepped on any toes here. I think you’ve got this. I just want to help you see how your perspective, the more you trust it, can see you through this time and help him pass through it and bring you closer while you do. You might also talk to him on the side, when his behavior’s just fine and you’re alone with him, talk about all the transitions, talk about what’s going on with him, ask about it. Show him that you sense that this is why he’s having trouble in certain situations and it’s hard for him to do certain things that otherwise are easy.

We can do this.

I hope this is helpful, makes sense and maybe sheds a little light on this subject. If you like what you heard, please check out my other podcasts and both of my books are available on audio at audible.com.