Think Ahead

Ruchie simply cannot take her daughter’s insolent attitude one more minute! Fourteen-year-old Raizel is equally upset: Why does her mother have to scream at her every morning?

The two of them have their daily routine. Ruchie wakes Raizel up. Raizel turns over and goes back to sleep. Ruchie wakes Raizel up again a little more forcefully. Raizel says “I’m up.” Then she turns over and goes back to sleep. Exasperated Ruchie comes back yet again and starts to rant. “Why do I have to come in here ten times to get you up? You know you have to be in school soon! You’re old enough to get yourself up! I’m sick and tired of this.” Raizel will rub her eyes looking slightly dazed and confused. “What?” she’ll ask innocently. Ruchie will slam the door on the way out.

Every muscle in Ruchie’s body is now tense with aggravation. It’s not even 8 a.m. and she’s having a miserable day. Slowly ever so slowly Raizel emerges from her room and sashays down the hall to the washroom. Fifteen minutes later the door is still locked so Ruchie screams up “What are you doing in there? We have to leave the house in three minutes!” Raizel opens the door. She’s totally composed. Icily she addresses her mother: “Why do you have a screaming fit every morning?”

Why Indeed

Ironically Ruchie is screaming at her daughter because she loves her. She wants her to go to school on time because that’s what healthy people do. Indeed many parents get exceedingly upset when their kids aren’t behaving in a healthy way. They are prone to express rage when their kids lie steal behave badly in school speak rudely hurt siblings and so on. The intensity of the parental response corresponds to the parent’s feeling of how wrong or otherwise destructive the child’s behavior is in their eyes. When a child forgets to say “please” most parents just remind him or her to say it; there’s no great emotional outburst on the parent’s part. But when a child acts outrageously parents often respond in kind. Everything inside the parent screams “You must get the child to stop this terrible behavior right now! It’s bad for him or her!” Feelings of concern for the child’s development underlie many a display of parental rage.