“I Don’t Care If You Punish Me”: How To Handle Your Child’s False Bravado0 comments

Having pride in oneself is a basic human need. Pride allows you to feel worthy, and believe in yourself and your abilities. It pushes you to set goals for yourself and get excited about your accomplishments. Having a feeling of pride in oneself is vital to one’s emotional well-being.

A child will acquire a sense of pride from knowing their parents love them and are proud of them. They also gain pride when they are accepted and valued by their peers. Kids also base their sense of pride on what their teachers think of them and how they perform in school.

Children’s self-esteem is vulnerable to failure. They are very quick to defend their pride and retain their dignity. Children will try to save face when they feel like they are being humiliated by their parents, peers and teachers. When they make mistakes or misbehave and are confronted about their misbehavior they will do almost anything to save their pride.

That is why if children misbehave it is important to deliver consequences privately and in a way that keeps children’s pride intact. If we have lashed out at our children in anger when they have misbehaved they will be more inclined to say:

“Who cares if you take away my allowance it wasn’t that much anyway”
“I didn’t want to go to Grandma’s and get the cookies she baked for me anyway!”
“I don’t care if you punish me!”

Instead of getting angrier at our children we can help them maintain their false bravado while still letting them feel the consequence of the behavior:

“It sounds like you can handle having your allowance taken away from you and you want to talk about increasing it. When we both calm down we can have that discussion. Right now you will have to forgo money for this week.”

“I am glad that you aren’t to upset about your consequence. I am sure Grandma will bake you some cookies again in the future.”

If you are up to it you can apologize to them about your angry outburst and ask them to come up with a solution on how to improve their behavior:

“I should have reacted in a calmer way and you are still continuing to do what you are doing even in the face of being punished. Can you tell me what is so important about it for you and come up with a way to improve your behavior?”

We do not need to rush to consequence children’s behavior. It is better if we affirm our belief in their goodness and invite them to problem solve. This is a good way to help children retain their pride in the face of their mistake or misbehavior:

“Sometimes people forget to think before they act. Maybe that is what happened to you. I know you will remember next time to ask to use my computer before you use it.”

“Looks like this was an accident. What do you think you can do next time to keep it from happening? Maybe using your words instead of your hands to argue? Let’s think of a few more things.”

“I am sure if you would have known it was wrong you never would have done it. I am sure next time you will remember not to push the baby’s stroller so fast.”

We can and should do much to keep our children’s pride intact and find ways to salvage a child’s damaged pride. Using these techniques outlined in this article will help us maintain our dignity in the face of misbehavior and our child’s dignity when they are confronted about their negative actions. Understanding children’s behavior is the key to respecting children and enabling us to build strong and enduring relationships with them.

Dr. Mel Levine
All children have within them a very basic need to take pride in themselves. They all harbor a burning desire to feel worthy, to believe in their abilities, to be uplifted by what they are accomplishing and becoming. Their pride is vital. They can’t live well when pride is short in supply! Sadly, there are too many kids who grow up denied of pride. They have too little to boast about, too few triumphs in their young lives.

How do kids acquire a sense of pride? First they can find pride in their accomplishments. For that reason, all children should have a product line, a series of very clear attainments to which they can point with gleaming pride. A collection of rocks, a pile of carefully amassed and well-researched sports cards, high accolades in soccer, and (of course) a laudable report card all represent tangible indicators of a child’s effectiveness. In some cases, parents and teachers have to strive to ensure that a child has at least one product line worthy of praise and respect.

They get a sense of pride from peers family and teachers.