“I can’t wait until you die,” said the teenager riding in the car next to me. “I hate you.”
I kept my eyes on the road, gripped the steering wheel a little tighter and breathed. When your teen says I hate you, or similar, it hurts, no doubt about it. But I was no stranger to angry teenagers using hate filled words. After ten years of consecutive teenage raising, I had heard it all. Thankfully, I’ve learned to not respond.
My veteran status has granted me the ability to ignore the personal sting of angry words with the same focus that allows me to ignore the clothes all over the floor of their room.
Whenever my kids have lost their minds, it’s my job to bring calm to their chaos. Staying calm is mission objective critical.
My first response was to say nothing and just let some air into the conversation with my silence. Sometimes just ignoring the sass, especially when the teenager is just trying to get a reaction, is exactly the thing to do to stop it before it gets worse. No need to add wood to a fire you are trying to put out.
Well, I don’t want to ruin the ending, but that didn’t work. My silence did nothing to stop the firehose of frustrated words from coming out of his mouth.
“I can’t wait until I can move out of this house, and I’m about to and then won’t you feel bad.”
Not a surprise, this response. Just as a toddler–or a terrorist–will amp things up, this was the escalation tactic. My teen was trying to up the ante and it was my job to call his bluff.
I ignored the mental image of me helping him pack his bags and offered this calm response:
“It sounds like you are saying things you don’t really mean because you are mad. We can talk about that more after tutoring.”
And that is where the escalation resolved, at least for this episode. You see, we were in this ugly hate-filled place because going to the standing tutoring appointment after the dentist was just way too much of an imposition. He wanted out of tutoring and he was using his words to try to achieve this.
He wanted to escape the thing he didn’t want to do and a big outburst seemed like the way to get that escape. My job: make sure the wrong behavior (the hateful yelling) did not result in the desired result (getting out of tutoring).
Was it a fun interaction in that car? Nope. But it was a necessary one, to diffuse the situation. When your sweet teen says I hate you (and yes, that day will come), remember the following, and you, too, will emerge on the other side:
Don’t take it personally.
It’s not you; it’s them. Seriously. You are the adult. Tell yourself again. You are the adult. You know what they say about wrestling with a pig? You get dirty and the pig likes it. You do not have to wrestle with the pig.
Demonstrate the appropriate behavior.
Now is not the time to say harsh things back so they’ll know how it feels or go into raging parent mode and take away all their privileges.
They are already at a desperate spot with their problem-solving skills and are clearly demonstrating that they don’t know how to handle the big emotions. Let every action you show them be a masterclass on what to do when you are feeling out of control.
Decipher what they are trying to tell you.
Every unwanted behavior is a form of communication. That behavior is trying to tell you something. It might be saying, ‘I need attention,’ or, ‘I want to get out of this,’ or, ‘I am completely overwhelmed, and I need something so badly I am willing to act like a jerk to get it.’
Whatever the behavior is, listen to what it is trying to tell you. Behavior has a function. There is a reason why it is happening and how you respond depends on what the behavior is trying to tell you.
(Maybe we put an ** here and direct people to a post on how to respond based on function)
Don’t negotiate with terrorists.
When a teen says I hate you, It is so tempting to want to respond to anger with anger, or to double down and dole out the punishment…or worse, just to give in. When your teen is yelling and losing it, that is very unpleasant and also completely un-fun. Human’s don’t just sit around and do stuff that isn’t pleasant; they want the unpleasant thing to STOP. That’s why we give in to our kids so often, even when we know it’s not good for them, even when we know it’s not what want as parents. We do it because it is human nature to do whatever it takes—even giving up—to make the unpleasant thing go away.
Don’t make this mistake of letting yourself off the hook because your kid is doing something that makes you uncomfortable. Push through the discomfort to get to better results in the future.
Discover coping skills at a calmer time.
We knew that they don’t really mean it when a teen says I hate you. Often, teens and kids respond poorly because they don’t yet have the skills to respond correctly. Teens need help learning coping skills. Heck, lots of adults still need help learning coping skills. This is something that has to be cultivated and practiced over time and during a moment when things aren’t already completely out of control (link to how to cultivate coping skills).
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