Is Your Child Showing Passive Aggressive Tendencies?

You feel as if you’ve done everything right as a parent, yet your child continues to push you to your wits end. You think you are doing it right, they think you are overbearing and unfair in your expectations.

You are on their case continually, yet they never seem to get it together. Their homework isn’t turned it, they’re late to school, they can’t even vacuum the rugs right.  You ask yourself, “What’s wrong with my kid?”

Common behaviors of a passive aggressive person

•    Your child sulks when you tell her she needs to get her chores done and it makes you crazy.
•    She doesn’t show any incentive or interest in helping out with the family chores.
•    When she does actually start a chore, it takes forever fro her to finish, and it’s not done adequately.
•    She lies to avoid confrontation.
•    He conveniently “forgets” to do his homework or take out the garbage.
•    She does her homework, but doesn’t turn it the next day at school.
•    She isn’t receptive to parental suggestions and considers them to be “lectures.”
•    She makes excuses for her behavior and puts blame on others.
•    He thinks he “knows” everything.
•    She refuses to keep her room tidy after years of you telling her it’s important.
•    She text pages you instead of wanting to have face-to-face discussions or have questions answered, even after you’ve told her you would like her to call instead.

Does this sound like your child? Though infuriating, there may be some ways to help her figure out what she is doing before devastating consequences fall on her later in life. You need to understand it to be able to work on it.

First thing you need to do?   Take a good look at yourself and your partner.

What is passive aggressive?

Passive aggressive is “acting out” our grievances in a subtle, manipulative way as to not have it look like we are being anything other than innocent so we don’t lose what’s so valuable to our basic core – our parental dependency.  It’s lying in its purest and natural form.

The term, “passive-aggressive” came about during World War II when military soldiers were showing signs of reluctant compliance and procrastination to follow orders, though they weren’t directly verbally insubordinate.

Passive aggressive is a term used to describe the expression of negative behaviors, feelings, resentment, and aggression in passive, unassertive ways through procrastination, retaliation, and stubbornness. It is common for a person to display this passive aggressive behavior when angry with a specific person, or when they have no say in the relationship with that person.

It’s a personality style that often isn’t understood or realized by the person exhibiting the passive aggressive behavior. They might actually be unaware of the heavy impacts they are causing on others due to their behaviors, and might have guilt and feelings of sadness if and when they realize it.

Often times, people exhibiting passive aggressive behaviors feel misunderstood and “put out” because they fail to see how they are provoking a negative response.

Learning to lie is a loss of personal integrity within a person. The passive aggressive person will not only lie, but make excuses so perfectly that they confuse the parent into thinking their motives were actually something different than they really were. And it’s all to save the relationship with the parent they have so innately from birth.

Lying and manipulative behavior are learned. Passive aggressive is a masked, indirect form of aggression. It is a retaliation as punishment for what has been done to us. Kids will find ways to sabotage parents if they are not given what they want, whether consciously meaning to or not.

It has also been defined as a defense mechanism on an unconscious level.

So is it a learned defensive behavioral tactic or a mental disorder?
Maybe it’s just another label.

Who’s to blame? Whose fault is it really?

While debatable, it’s probably the parent’s fault, and starts in the early years of a child’s life.

Psychiatrists have said many times that this behavior stems from alcoholic and drug addicted parents or even overbearing ones.  It is often typical of overbearing, dominant mothers and passively weak fathers. What if this isn’t the case in your home? Maybe your child is fostering some anger issues that need to be medially evaluated.

When born, children have the innate ability to alert us to their basic needs through crying. It continues through childhood, but when we back off on being attentive to their basic dependency needs, kids have to find other ways to keep the dependency fire kindled with the parent, while still getting their needs met.

The parents need to not put their children’s dependency needs off because they are too lazy, unable, or unwilling to meet their child’s basic needs.

It’s a vicious circle, and needs to be stopped.

What to do about it?

A parent needs to teach their child to honestly, assertively, and directly address their needs instead of learning to lie and manipulate to get what they want. Kids need to understand the increased effectiveness of doing so will lead to much healthier results.
Parents need to stop being so overbearing on their kids so that the kids are not afraid to be honest and open.

Allowing a child to be open and honest and state his emotions freely is going to have no reason to be manipulative, deceitful, or sabotaging.

You and your children both need to learn how to speak effectively with each other to ensure you have a good, solid, communicative, honest relationship that fosters love and proper growth.

It all comes down to respect. Learning empathy, and having a deeper sense of understanding will help your child to overcome obstacles leading to behaviors you wouldn’t want them to necessarily have.

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