The Bullying Parent: Why Aggressive Parenting Doesn’t Work (Part II)
Posted By: James Lehman, MSW
Category: Aggression, Parenting Skills
Comments: 5
Parents who don’t have good parenting skills use aggression. Men who don’t have good relationship skills (like the father mentioned in the last post) use aggression to compensate for a whole range of things—and usually it’s their own inadequacies and fears.
I think that when you use aggression as a parenting style, it solves your short term problem of controlling children. But it leads to serious problems for those children and how they will grow up to deal with the adult world. This kind of parenting style basically gives them two choices: they can be a victim, because that’s the role they’ve been assigned in their family, or they can be aggressive/abusive, because that’s what was modeled for them by their father. Neither role increases the kid’s chance of developing his potential and creating a life that is successful.
We can always say people parent the way they were parented, but that’s not an excuse for not getting skills more suited to this day and age. I do think people can change. Most parents want the same things for their children, but they go about getting it in very different ways. My experience has been that when an aggressive or senselessly rigid parent learns other parenting skills, they’re in a better position to teach their children effective ways to manage the world around them.
One final note. Kids watch their parents all the time, and we are role models whether we’re conscious of it or not. To behave boorishly, antisocially or abusively in front of children does more harm than most parents realize. Talk is cheap. We have to model appropriate behavior if we are to expect it of our children.
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February 20th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
James, thank you. My father was this type of guy, but with a lot of work, I’ve become a different kind of dad. Not perfect, but definitely respectful of my wife and kids.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
This sounds like my son. It’s sad because he grew up in a home where his father (who I divorced when he was 14) bullied him. I’ve tried to talk to my son but he doesn’t hear me. I’m going to send him this article.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Bullying is wrong, period. Especially parents should think twice before they bully their kids.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
I sat behind a guy like this (the man yelling at his wife and kids in Pt. I of this post) at my son’s hockey match last week. I actually moved.
February 27th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Thanks Dr Lehman for the tools I needed to help my 8 year old who has learned, from his father, aggression and power that there is another way to be. What a difference it makes for all of us!