4 Ways You Are Creating a Tyrant at Home
Although it is hard for us to believe, it is becoming more and more common to run into child tyrants. There are more and more parents, despairing over their children’s behavior, and in need of professional help. By child tyrant, we mean those who impose their laws, who rule their parents at their will, and whose temper tantrums are exhausting to anyone who witnesses them.
A child tyrant believes he has the right to manage his family according to his own desires and to make a scene, displaying intense anger, if his expectations are not met. He is incapable of tolerating daily frustrations and even less so of putting himself in his parents’ shoes, which is why he acts so badly towards them, harming them with the single goal of getting them to give into his demands.
Parents feel obligated to give in to the demands of their child to avoid the explosion of anger that will happen if the child does not feel his needs and whims are being met right away. In really extreme cases, the child ends up physically assaulting his parents.
According to studies, it seems that genetics may have a certain influence and could predispose some children to be more aggressive than others. It has also been proven that child tyrants are more common in middle- and upper-class families and that this is more common in boys than in girls, although this gender gap is gradually becoming smaller.
It seems that education is a key factor in making a child act like a tyrant toward his parents. It has been seen in particular that more permissive and overprotective parents have a greater likelihood of educating a child to show patterns of behavior similar to those described above.
The educational keys to creating a tyrant
If education has a strong influence on how the child will behave, it is necessary for parents to learn the best way to educate their children. They absolutely have to try to avoid certain patterns, which tend to be followed with the best of intentions, but which may end up being counterproductive in the medium or long term.
1. Consenting to the child’s every wish
If the child is given everything that he asks for, he will slowly start to believe that he has a right to be given everything that he asks for immediately, no matter what it is.
Therefore, if they grow up with this idea and there comes a day that someone denies them something they want, the child tyrant will feel so much rage that he will do anything he has to so that his expectations are satisfied, just like things had always been until then. The child, through his anger, will end up controlling the will and authority of his parents, who feel intimidated.
2. Not allowing the child to get frustrated
Frustration is a normal and healthy emotion; it is part of life. Not everything that we want to turn out a certain way will end up turning out that way. Sometimes life turns its back on us and we have to learn to tolerate it.
Not knowing how to tolerate frustration leads to many emotional problems both in children and in adults, because whether we like it or not, life is not made for us and we are going to run into obstacles quite a few times.
If we do not teach our children to accept frustration or we do all the work for them whenever a problem arises, we will be creating a child tyrant, incapable of internalizing the idea that the world does not revolve around him.
3. Solving problems for our child
It is for important for children to start solving their problems by themselves or with modest help from a very young age. When we talk about problems, we are referring to the small adversities suited to their age.
For example, if the child tells us to put his shoes on him, when he is already old enough to do it himself and even knows how to do it, we must not give in to the temptation to help him or to do it ourselves. Maybe it is uncomfortable for him to put his own shoes on and it is easier for the child to run to mommy and daddy, but that is not the right way to do things.
The child has to learn that life is not always comfortable and easy and that we have to learn to do things for ourselves.
If he does not learn this, every time he runs into an obstacle in life, he will not employ the necessary resources to solve it, because we won’t have ever given him a chance to develop these resources.
4. Teaching him that problems can be solved with hostility
We cannot expect our child not to react in a hostile way if we ourselves are the first ones to get angry when adversity rears its ugly head, if we shout or speak aggressively.
We have to be aware that children imitate everything that adults do, particularly the things their parents or guardians do, so we have to be careful about how we behave.
Even if sometimes we end up getting tired, feeling like we are going to explode, and that we can’t handle it anymore, we really can do it and aggression will not help us solve anything at all. Therefore, act calmly in the face of adversity, both for your own sake and that of your children.