When Children Talk Back

If you ARE NOT like most fearful parents and ARE confident in who you are regardless of your family’s different social and cultural roles, gender preferences, religious beliefs, and political affiliations, you will definitely encourage your young ones to talk back to you. This is not about respect or disrespect – you are past that egoistic demand. Talking back to you allows your children to pick your brain and engage you in all sorts of intellectual intercourses. You will enjoy discussions, arguments, debates, negotiations, and all sorts of verbal exchanges with your children at various stages in their lives.

Here are the benefits for you as parents:

1. You get to know what your children are thinking and feeling about any given topic or issue. There’s no question that you will have fun and love each other all the more if you talk about common interests, but the best topics will be those that push your buttons – and their buttons. Where do they get their data – valid sources, hearsays, social media, meditation, friends, or you? How much of what you taught them have remained in their thinking and feeling? What areas need to be addressed immediately, or ignored?

2. You hear how they express their inner thoughts and feelings. Do they whine or shout? Are they calm and composed? Do their facial expressions and body language match their words? Can they hear themselves talk? Do they mirror you or other significant adults in their lives? What is their choice of words? Do they construct sentences coherently?

3. You experience their analytical skills, logic and reasoning abilities. Why do they like or dislike something? Do they proceed from specifics to generalizations, or vice versa? Do they have enough evidences to support their claims? Are they willing to be wrong? Once, when I was in my teens, I had an argument with my lawyer father and he used a big word on me – non sequitur. From then on, I made sure my line of reasoning had to pass his scrutiny.

4. You can correct anything by example and experience. The way you exchange energies with them through agreements and disagreements will be your tool for teaching by example. Are you also willing to be wrong? Will you correct through humor and parables, or through lectures? Will you use words or body language?

5. You can learn from them and be corrected of your stagnant beliefs. What language do they use? How has your understanding of certain issues changed through the years? What is their generation trying to tell you? Are you open to receive their wisdom?

6. You experience youthful and newer energy. Talking to younger people is always refreshing and invigorating, both physically and mentally.

7. Above all, you get to hear yourself – are you defensive, attentive, abrasive, supportive, sarcastic, kind, superior, level-headed, condescending, respectful?

Benefits for them:

1. They can practice verbal as well as non-verbal expressions of their thoughts and feelings to someone they probably fear or respect the most - you. You are their rehearsal ground for some future circumstance when they will have to face other authority figures. I remember how our daughter Chantal, aged 10, pointed out to her Science teacher that a duckbilled platypus was a mammal. In high school, she also stood up against another teacher who called the whole class “lazy” – “We are not lazy, Ma’am. We are just resting after cleaning the whole classroom.” She stood her ground and demanded an apology from the teacher. In college, she and her sister Nicole were under the same professor whose interpretation of a textbook seemed dubious. They stood by their own interpretation which, upon the professor’s consultation with the author, turned out to be correct.

2. They practice on / with you in safety, security, and love. Because they know where they stand with you, they can go full throttle in anything they want to practice on. At the proverbial end of the day, it’s all about “I love you.” When Nicole became severely depressed and suicidal, she eventually told me her darkest thoughts that were behind her fears. Even though she knew I was not in favor of her pills and she argued her case against my esoteric healing practices, she continued to talk to me.

3. They practice their analytical, logical, and reasoning skills. They can backtrack, re-phrase, re-arrange their ‘case’ and research some more when necessary. They can even gather other family members for team support. It was when our daughter Belle and son Daniel pooled resources for a face-off with me that I learned about my tendency to be all or nothing in my conclusions. They were able to cite past incidents to support their claim.

4. They learn how to persuade, influence, negotiate, plead, and argue with an adult whose energies are different from theirs. In this context, they will become curious and inclusive of infinite varieties of ideas, convictions, and perspectives. In the same context, they will choose which ones will work for them.

So go ahead and have a talk!