‘Please Listen, Parents’ — A Message To Parents Who Come Down On Kids Who Don’t Take Care Of Their Responsibilities
Have a little compassion — your kids may be struggling with more than you know.
vadimguzhva / Canva Brandon Bybee recently stood in front of his phone and relayed a message he had for parents who are currently struggling or have struggled with getting their kids to take care of their responsibilities.
By now, Bybee’s talking about kids that have grown into young adults, around “18 to 20-something years old,” but he asks parents to hear him out for a minute in order to spread some compassion and empathy.
He asks that parents take it easy on kids who don’t take care of their responsibilities.
“Your kid struggles to keep up with their responsibilities, like maybe cleaning their room, maybe they struggle taking care of themselves,” he starts his video. “Or maybe you ask them to do things around the house, like maybe the dishes, take out trash or whatnot.”
These aren’t particularly daunting tasks — or, at least, you wouldn’t think them to be — and that’s exactly Bybee’s point. Although you expect your kids to be able to complete these tasks and then some, it may not always turn out that way.
Bybee understands that, when these things happen, parents will end up punishing their kids.
“You do [messed] up [things] to that kid, like saying do hurtful [things] to him. You try and punish him, maybe scream at him, you know,” he explains. “When that's how you handle it, that's a really poor way to handle it.”
“The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) encourages parents to use discipline strategies, not physical or verbal punishments to stop unwanted behaviors in children and teens,” reports the AAP in an article discussing the differences between discipline and punishment. “Punishment might work fast to stop bad behavior. But it is not effective over time, according to the AAP.”
Bybee explains that there are two reasons your kid may not be able to complete these tasks.
“One, they have some type of disability and they struggle to keep up with certain things,” he claims. He equates the human brain to a piston engine, and while a neurotypical brain might be operating correctly with the pistons firing back and forth, the pistons in a neurodivergent brain won’t be operating at all.
Tasks get muddled together and may become overwhelming, causing neurodivergent people to have trouble keeping up with their tasks and completing them. Parents may not understand this, they may think that the tasks being assigned to them should be easy to complete and punish them when they aren’t.
“Two, a lot of them had probably had [messed] up [things] happen to them throughout their life and they're just so exhausted,” he explains. “They're so exhausted that they don't, like, they don't feel the motivation or energy to do it. Maybe they're too busy daydreaming about how they want their life to go or whatever it may be.”
He explains that more parents should take the time and care to understand their children’s brains and how they function, lest they fall victim to taking their own lives.
“It's time to start taking into consideration what they're going through and how they feel and what feels like to other states of mind instead of being self-centered.”
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.