How To Respond Calmly When A Child Says I Hate You

Do you want to know how to respond calmly when a child says, I hate you? I'm Nicolene Peck, and I teach all over the world about parenting, good communication, how to build strong family bonds, child development, and calmness, all through the lens of the principle self-government. And in this video, we're talking about good calm responses. In this video, I'm going to share a story from a real person's life, and then we're going to talk about why this type of behavior is so difficult for parents, and what you can do if you find yourself in a similar circumstance. Hearing the words, I hate you, can be really hard. In fact, I don't know if anybody is ever fully prepared to hear a statement like that, whether it's someone we love or someone who we actually feel like we don't even care that much about. It just hurts to hear that, because that type of a statement is complete disregard for another person. It shows maybe that that person doesn't value you, at least in that minute. But we need to remember what those types of statements are, because oftentimes those statements really are signs of pain that a person's having. They're trying to share pain with somebody else because they're experiencing pain. But more often than not, those types of statements are made because of a desire to control emotionally a situation, to push buttons and maintain a type of upper hand or dominance. Well, there was a father who I talked to one time about his child, his daughter actually, who had said that she hated him. In fact, she didn't just say it once, but she said it multiple times. And he was very hurt. He thought he was a failure as a father. And it wasn't until they had a good conversation about that, until he had a plan for what to do when she would say that, in his own mind, in his own head, that he was able to make a change in the relationship and also within his own ability to not take things so personally. When somebody says, I hate you, I mean, how do you not take that personally? That could seem very difficult, but you have to remember that it's just a behavior. It's just a way to try to gain control. And since that's the case, you can look at it like that. You can say, this isn't about me and about them. They're frustrated right now. They're angry right now. They're trying to take control right now. And this is just part of the power struggle. So remember, most of the time, those things are said when someone is power struggling with you. When someone truly doesn't like you and hates you in some way, usually they don't tell you, they just completely avoid you. So when somebody takes enough time to tell you that they hate you, then usually it's because they don't actually want that to be the case. So what should you do about it? If you find yourself in that circumstance? Well, if you have already subscribed to this channel and you have heard the videos on here about the different skills, then it should be no surprise to you that I'm going to talk to you about calmness and about some skills that you can utilize to help with your own processing when somebody says something that's discouraging like that to you. When somebody tells you that they hate you or they disapprove of you, basically that's a no answer. You wish that someone didn't say that to you, but you can't control what somebody says or what somebody thinks. All you can control is what you decide to do with your processing of what that person said or thinks. Now there is a skill, it's an adult skill that we teach in the teaching self-government parenting system and it's called accepting no answers and criticism. And I suppose you could say that that statement could be qualified as either one of those. The steps to accepting a no answer or criticism are to look at the person or the situation, keep a calm face, voice and body, say, okay, that's how they feel or that happened or whatever the no is, or disagree appropriately with the person, which sometimes would not be worth it, especially if the person is not being calm at the time. And then step number four is to drop the subject. So to yourself, I'm not going to worry about that. I'm not going to label the person with those, those words. I'm not going to disconnect from them. I'm going to just figure out how to move on here and how to solve this problem. That is how a person accepts a no answer. So when somebody says, I hate you, then that's a no answer to you. And you say, all right, that's what they said. Is it worth it to try to disagree appropriately with them? If so, try that. And that's another of your four basic skills. But if not, then just drop the subject and move on. I do a lot of things politically, and people don't always agree with me. And I don't expect everyone to always agree with me. There's plenty of opinions out there in the world. Surely not everybody's going to agree all of the time, but people will contact me and they will say mean things to me. They'll tear me down. They'll tell me that I'm stupid. They'll tell me that I don't care about certain people. They'll tell me all kinds of things in reality, just to bully me and to harass me and to try to control me emotionally. But luckily, a long time ago, I decided that whenever I heard statements like that from other people, that I was just going to say, well, that's a no answer. I can't please everybody. And so I'm just going to say, okay, and drop the subject. Now, if there is one thing that a parent wants is to please their child and to feel like their child loves them. And so to hear that can feel very personal. But if I could recommend to you not to take it personally, make sure you just tell yourself they're just a child. They're communicating some sort of fear, feeling anxiety. They know that they want a problem to be solved. They don't know how to do it. If you can look at it in that way and then start teaching them what skills they do need to use in order to get understood, then all the better. The worst thing to do is to respond back with, no, honey, you know, don't say that. Or no, you don't, dah, dah, dah, dah. You know, don't say things like that to them. Don't even respond in that way. Say, wow, that is a really big statement. And it's good to know how you feel. I know that at any time, any of us can have strong feelings about things, but sometimes there's a way that you could communicate some of those feelings in a way where you could actually create change and get things done. And let's talk about how to do that. I always want to point my children toward the way to solve their problem in a good self-governed way and maybe help them see what kind of skill could I use. So then I might prompt them for using their disagree appropriately skill if they want to express their opinion to me. And that's going to be much more beneficial in the long run. I hope this was helpful to you. The next video will walk you through how to teach your child how to have respectful communication. I think that will take this discussion to the next level. I'll see you there.