Adults, please DON’T exasperate the child who’s already upset

Children deserve the same justice we adults often demand.

It is ironic whenever an adult is particularly vocal about their own rights but deprives the rights of children under their care.

This happens too often. Is it perhaps a product of our own upbringing?

I’m sure the cause is multi-factorial, but the point I want to make in the following account is just how powerless children are in dimensions of conflict with adults.

Adults are far more likely to take another adult’s side if there is a conflict on public display between them and a child—I’m presuming it’s one of their children, a grandchild, or a child they’re providing care to. And if other adults don’t support the adult in conflict with the child, their silence speaks volumes. I hear too many adults berating children in their care because they can, because they have boomingly raucous voices, because they think that’s a power to be reckoned with. It isn’t. It just makes matters worse. And it breeds trauma.

Here’s an account that I saw recently between a caregiver and a six-year-old boy that significantly troubled me.

Only five minutes earlier I heard bellowing from an adult (probably a parent) nearly 100-metres away that caused the adults near me to cringe—this will have effected people within nearly a 200-metre radius. If only I could have bellowed back, “Who do you think you are, not only to shout at a child like that, but to instil fear in many of the rest of us who cannot get out of your earshot?!”

But it was what happened before my eyes that struck me.

Stress was written on his face and all over her demeanour. “Do what you’re told, James! (not his real name).” Amid tacit though firm resistance, six-year-old James replied, “No, you’re being rude to me, please stop.”

Now, let me pause here. There are two immediate streams of response in adults that read this. First, the boy’s being rude… how dare he. Second, does he have a case? Note that neither of these immediate views, without more reflection, includes a situation where the adult listener might see directly from the child’s viewpoint. Isn’t that interesting!

I continued to watch the boy and his adult caregiver jostle verbally. At no time did the child lose his cool and, for someone who occasionally struggles (who of us don’t?!), he regulated his emotions very well. And this is the clue that there’s an underlying message this child was trying to get across.

On being told repeatedly to do-this and do-that, in a check-your-brain-at-the-gate kind of way that would incense anyone, he maintained a relatively calm voice in his responses, in words to the effect: “Please don’t speak to me like that.” He was responding the way adults should. He was responding in a way that takes courage to stand, but not to counterattack. His response begged a commensurate response by the adult of, “Okay, I will be more polite if you please do as you’re instructed.” Adults should use manners, too.

In resisting, he was being polite, and I thought, “Wow, he’s doing well considering the stress he is under.” I don’t deny the adult was probably just trying to get him to where he was going. I don’t doubt their intent and sincerity. I don’t besmirch her right to discipline, except that here we had a child who was communicating in a remarkably mature way for his age given the situation.

He ought more to have been congratulated for speaking as politely as he was. But instead he was required to suck it up.

Some who read this will be thinking, “Where does a child get off speaking to an adult that way?” Well, perhaps you might need to reflect on your filters, because perhaps you believe children should be brought up tough, like you were. This is a case for discipline, but discipline works all the better when the adult is in control of themselves, not trying to control the situation.

I’m not into permissive parenting or allowing children to run amuck, but I am all for everyone having their voice. We can demand disciplined behaviour AND give everyone their voice. Just as parents and caregivers can act out of a space that is informed more by their own unremitted trauma than healing, the damage is actually BEING done to children when they face the tyranny of injustice at the hands of those they more ought to be able to trust.

If we’re serious about trauma we will go inward to seek the help WE need in those spaces. We will also seek to see how our own responses of damage propagate damage in others’ lives, especially children. We will also see how our poor responses can initiate poor responses in others.

Let’s do all we can to stop the trauma cycle this generation.

Let’s respect the need children have, which all humans have, to be respected.

Those who love justice are merciful with the vulnerable.

Photo by Ksenia Makagonova on Unsplash