Read When I Say No, I Feel Guilty for Free Online

loafer, but that it is not by her wishes that you have a displeasing task. Mom implies that she’s only following some complex set of rules which she didn’t make up and which you don’t fully understand yet (You, incidentally, will later also use these rules, but never fully understand them, since each of us, like Mom, improvises our own details of the rules as we go along, selectively uses the rules when it suits us and conveniently ignores them whenthat serves our purpose.) Faced with this formidable verbal tangle, you find it easier to retreat to the yard for a long session of grumbling and passively dragging your rake. Not only does Mom’s manipulative control of your emotions and behavior train you further in the arbitrary use of ideas like right and wrong, or fairness, but with the same words, Mom is conditioning you to think according to vague general rules that “should” be followed.
    The flaw in this conditioning process is that these abstract rules are so general they can be interpreted in any way desired, in the same circumstances. These rules are external to your own judgment of what you like and dislike. They tell how people “should” feel and behave toward each other, regardless of the relationship between them. They are often dogmatically and provincially interpreted to the point of training you for a totally arbitrary sexual lifestyle that has nothing to do with survival or reproduction. Why should boys do yards and not their sisters, for example?
    Mom does have the more promising option, however, of dealing assertively with manipulative statements from her children, More hopefully she uses verbal assertion in her response, and in doing so, she neither punishes nor countermanipulates her child. In coping with your criticism of her job assignments, for example, she can assertively and empathically respond with: “I can see that you feel it’s unfair that you do the yard while your sister is playing. That must upset you, but I still want you to rake the yard now.” By her assertive response in the unpleasant job of coping with your manipulation, Mom is telling you a lot of emotionally supportive and reassuring things. She tells you that even though you are going to do something you don’t like, you are entitled to feel the way you do and she’s not insensitive to you; despite the way you see your ordered, fair world crumbling, things are still going the way Mom wants them, and most reassuring of all, disaster is not lurking around the next turn becauseMom is smart enough not to be “conned” by an insignificant little kid like you or your sister.
    The mothers I see in my teaching all express similar uncomfortable feelings about the job of coping with young children. They have two main sources of worry. First, they are confused about the different methods used over the years for rearing children. Spock tells them one thing, Gesell told them something different, Patterson something else. Second, all the mothers erroneously assume that if they decide to assertively take charge, they will only have two options: either being tyrannical bastards or indulgent jellyfishes with their kids. They see no meaningful middle ground between these two extremes. Faced with such a distasteful choice, they fall back upon the efficient, emotional manipulation taught them by their parents instead of assuming the frank, honest responsibility of taking authority: “I want you to …”
    Taking this authority and using it to make themselves and their children feel better about the stresses of growing up is simple behaviorally, but not easy emotionally. One mother, for example, asked me, with a tinge of hostility, “How do you break a promise to a child?” The feeling tone that accompanied this question suggested that this mother, like many others, felt it was imperative that she always be on top of things and present at least the illusion of a super-competent mom to her daughter—someone who never breaks a promise,