Hi Marzbarz, I have the exact same relationship with my son that you describe with your daughter. How has your progressed over time? What do you do to connect and shift it? I have worked on my r/ship with my son for years but in the quiet of the night it leaves me in tears and despair. What if he never learns how to have a positive and joyful bond with a woman? What if he grows up without understanding a deeper emotional connection with his mother? What damage might this do? How can we repair this? Can this be repaired at all?

I have to agree with Brave’s response. Jen your comment was very judgmental, unhelpful, and dare I say…mean? Why can’t both individuals be hurting? Seems like it should be more about the relationship than child versus parent. Why did you feel the need to be so rude in your comment?
This is precisely why we’re trying to address the “mean” behavior early—so it doesn’t continue into adulthood and emerge when lashing out on the “comment” sections of articles, where people are just looking for support.

I just wanted to say you’re not alone! My 3 1/2 year-old daughter has always been a “daddy’s girl” and tells me, her mother, “Leave me alone”, “I don’t like you”, “Go away”, “I don’t want to talk to you” “Stop looking at me “ or “I only want daddy!” pretty much every day. As a pediatric occupational therapist, I know the ins and outs of emotional regulation and attachment issues as related to child development and I can understand what’s happening and attempt not to take it personally with my logical brain…but as a human with emotions, it still hurts! It’s ok to acknowledge those feelings…but articles like these help me not to feel so resentful and rejected sometimes!! of course ridiculous comments like Jens are unhelpful and shortsighted so I’m just going to roll my eyes and say mean children sometimes turn into mean adults. Case in point ‍♀️

Wow, you are a snotty, unfeeling adult. Gods job! You’re especially cold in your response to another human being whose feeling do, indeed, matter. Don’t just grow up, try to grow that calloused heart of yours. If that’s even possible.

Well you certainly aren’t getting the point. We have feelings too? Get a grip on your feelings bc your child is the one hurting here. My god grow up.

My 3 year old daughter has always been a highly sensitive little girl from pretty much day 1 of life. She is a firecracker and brings so much joy to me and my husband and her older brother (5). She much prefers me (her Mother) to my husband (her Father) to what appear to be extremes and it comes across downright mean sometimes. He will try to say something to her and she will scream over him with a very teenage tone “Stop talking to me!” We have tried different “tactics” with her over this time as she has and will yell at anyone she is frustrated by so it is definitely not just him. I’m honestly even having a hard time painting the full picture in such few words because there are so many nuances and details and factors. Some of your previous episodes have particularly helped just give me and my husband perspective rather than trying to fix it or make it go away, but to just try to accept her feelings and not project on her our uncomfortability with those feelings. I am, however, at a loss for what to do in those moments where correction feels necessary in order to communicate what is and is not acceptable speaking tones. In those moments where she gives such a strong attitude to us, it feels awful not correcting but it also feels awful bring attention to it as it’s so frequent in the days sometimes. Recently I have been saying “try again please” and doing my best to model how to speak respectfully. We have also done a little bit of role play and practiced, but is that bringing too much attention to it and therefore making it worse?? I feel like I know what I should do, but at the same time I have entirely no clue what to do at the same time. Thank you for everything you do. Your podcast has completely transformed my motherhood experience for the better.

Short story shorter, that little cat had a hissy fit and scratched me up good. I’m ashamed to say that my first instinct was to see if a kitten could be successfully punted. However, with a moment’s reflection, I realized that the kitten was not evil. It was just doing what an untrained cat would do! It felt threatened, and it responded the only way it know to respond. That is, it was neutral…but needed to be trained how to behave.

And so I came to believe that humans are also born that way. The fundamentalist may, in a huff, tell you that children don’t need to be taught to lie. Well, many children don’t have to be taught to tell the truth either. Or to be nice. But until a child is shown the right way, it is just a form of self-preservation, I suppose.

A “mean” child is often not so much mean…but simply not as nice as we are. They have not been fully trained that such actions have consequences, hurt others, or the such. That’s why the Bible doesn’t say to raise up a child…it says to “train up a child.” And that is the hard work of it all.

My own son was surely as close to an angel as any child on earth. But now, at the age of 17, he occasionally “barks” backs if his mother or I say something. Of course, just as a child has never been a child before, and so may act amiss, so, too, my son has never been 17 before….

At the same time, so people are just hardwired to be difficult. You can put them in time-out, ground them, or, as I was, given a good spanking (deserved every single one of them–and am very, very close to my elderly parents!), but it still too a LONG TIME for the rowdy in my to calm down. I’m not even sure that spankings did it, so much as me just grown up a bit.

But some children just have such a determined mindset that if they don’t get their way, they say some things. And, to be fair, a child knows a thing or two about manipulation. If they can guilt into something (“You’re not being nice to me”), they’ll do it. NOT because they are evil, but because they…want. (And we kind of play similar games as adults, even if not so obvious.)

In any case, I have come to believe that the ONE THING you can do right for a kid…is to love them. So many other courses of action leave us wondering whether we did the right thing. But love is always in order. But do not mistake love for always giving a child their way. Instead, think of love as causing a child to do what they SHOULD do for the betterment of their future.