Reining in the Brat
How to make sure your behavior towards others is mature and not hurtful. We all have a brat inside of us and if we are aware of this, we will be able to better manage the less mature parts of ourselves.
We grow older every year, but do we mature?
Older folks don’t necessarily feel the age their body is and younger folks can feel like lonesome orphans under certain circumstances. In other words, our physical age does not always correlate with our feelings.
As we grow up, we still retain the vestiges of the children we were. Particularly when events happen that remind us of traumatic events we experienced as children, the child part of us can “take over” and our reaction will be immature. For example, a person who experienced being frightened as a child because of a parent’s anger will react in fear like a young child even as an adult when someone else gets angry.
Terrible Twos
In particular, we were all two years old at one time. We all went through the “terrible twos” and we all have a part of us that is stubborn, anxious for control, and fairly unpleasant to be around.
How do we keep this little two year old from negatively impacting the people around us? After all, this is the kid who can get you fired, divorced, or even arrested.
Parenting Ourselves
Although we were parented as children, usually by our parents but also by teachers and other adults in our lives, when we become physically adult, the job of parenting becomes our own responsibility. We have to parent ourselves.
This is actually good news because while the folks who parented us when we were kids probably failed in one or more significant ways, no matter how happy our childhood was, when you parent yourself, you can discover your own needs accurately and you can address those needs.
Children, whether physical or the ones we have inside of us, need two things: love and limits. Most people are stingy with one or the other.
Limits
Folks who are stingy with limits allow their brats to impinge upon the rights of others. These are people in grown-up bodies who feel it is okay to have a temper tantrum or to pout or to give someone the silent treatment or to insult someone directly or indirectly or to hit someone or to steal from someone or any to do any other behavior that is disrespectful of other people.
This is not excusable behavior. If we saw this in a three-year-old at the grocery store, we would blame the parents for spoiling the child.
Liked it
