Don’T Confuse Disobedience With Insecurity

A good friend told me the following story. She called it a joke, although I’m not sure everyone would agree.

This couple owned a large dog named Bruce. Bruce was affectionate and gentle toward his mistress, but would always bite the man of the house on the leg as soon as he stepped in the door from work. In desperation, they took Bruce to a pet psychiatrist to find out why he held such animosity toward his master.

The psychiatrist asked the woman what she did when Bruce bit her husband.

She replied, “I get him a large piece of raw steak.”

“Oh,” the psychiatrist said. “Why do you do that?”

“Why,” she exclaimed, “To teach him to chew on steak instead of my husband’s leg, of course.”

That’s what you call a “dog-trains-woman” story. The reason it’s so hilarious (you can stop laughing now) is the absurdity of the woman’s strategy. No one, you think, could be so naive as to do such a thing.

Or could they?

A couple of years ago, I was counseling with a woman concerning a problem she was having with her 8-year-old daughter. The woman had recently separated from her husband, and the daughter had subsequently turned uncooperative. Or, as her mother put it, “sensitive.” Mom thought the separation was the crux of the daughter’s problem.

“She never minds me,” Mom said. “And if I yell at her, she starts to cry. I am completely confused and at wit’s end.”

“What have you been doing about this behavior?” I inquired.

“Well,” she began, “since the separation, I haven’t had the time to spend with Amanda that I used to have and I really think this has a lot to do with the situation. After one of our ‘scenes,’ I usually end up doing something for her, like taking her shopping.”

“Oh, really,” I said, “tell me more.”

“Well, we both end up talking and confessing to one another how bad we feel about what’s just happened. Somehow, the talk gets around to the time we used to spend together, and she asks if I’ll do so-and-so for her. I make her promise to do better if I do whatever it is she wants and she promises, but a couple of days is as long as she’s held up her end of the bargain.”

“Very clever.”

“What’s very clever?”

“That she waits a couple of days. If she pulled that stunt too often, you might catch on.”

“To what?”

Here’s an example of a parent who hands her child the perfect excuse for misbehaving and then acts dumb when she misbehaves. Then, as if that weren’t enough to guarantee a perpetuation of the bedlam, mom gives Amanda a steak every time Amanda bites her leg. Or pulls it, that is.

I’d conservatively estimate that close to 80 percent of what parents call “insecure,” “overly sensitive,” “fearful,” “immature,” and yes, even “hyperactive” is nothing more than plain, old-fashioned, yep, you guessed it, disobedience.

Parents usually react sympathetically to “insecurity” or “sensitivity” or “fearfulness” or what-have-you. So, the child in question ends up getting a new dress instead of a dose of consequences for her bad behavior.

The fault is not the child’s. Unfortunately, however, it is the child who must ultimately bear the burden.