I ingrained into my children’s heads at a very young age that you do not hate people. You can hate things. You can hate pickles. You can hate brussel sprouts. You can hate racism and sexism and just general ugliness….but you shouldn’t hate people. Why? I will explain it as I explained it to their little brains when they were younger. Hatred requires you to give energy to someone. It means you can’t find anything good about them at all and that you want to actively spend time thinking about your dislike for this thing whenever it happens to come up in conversation. You can hate the way that someone is acting, but you aren’t going to hate people.

Now before you keyboard warriors go off on a rant, I did not tell them that they could not feel anger, frustration, sadness, or any other emotion about someone. In fact, I encouraged it so we could work through it. I did not tell them that they could not hate the fact that someone was mean or hate that they were an addict or hate the situation. I did not validate people’s bad behavior. And please spare me the serial killer speech: if we based everything we taught our kids around the small percentage of people that are anomalies in the situation, we would never teach our children anything good.

But I digress….

As they’ve grown, we’ve continued to work through emotions we feel about people and I still focus attention on not hating. Oddly (or maybe not oddly), my children haven’t ever really done the “I hate you” thing to me as a mother. It’s certainly not for lack of discipline; I just don’t think that word is big in their vocabulary. The phrase they’ve thrown at me when they’re upset is “I don’t like you very much right now.” Sometimes, I feel the same way, in the moment.

It’s funny how we think that we’re never allowed to say that, though.

We think that somehow by admitting our kid is acting like a jerk or is not fun to be around at the moment, we’re being a bad parent. We think that if we admit that we don’t like them very much, at that moment, we are being a bad parent. Here’s the thing: it’s not that we don’t love them. Call me crazy but I don’t think that saying that your kid isn’t much fun to be around right now makes you bad, I think it makes you human. Let’s face it: kids, especially teenagers, say and do some pretty hurtful things and it’s okay for you to feel emotion toward those things and not really want to be around them when they’re acting like that. It’s okay to have boundaries and say, “You know what…I love you but I don’t like being around you right this second while you’re screaming in my face. Regroup and let’s try this again.” This accomplishes two things: 1- It lets them know that no one should have to listen to someone scream in their face. 2- It lets them know that you love them enough to take a break and try again when they’re calmer.

Now, listen, I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I’m not a counselor. I’m a mom. I’m a mom of a lot of kids. I’m a stepparent. I’m a sibling, a daughter, a stepdaughter, a granddaughter and a lot of other things. I only speak from experience and not from some sort of jargon from a book.

I write this to let other parents and step parents know that it’s okay to feel that. It’s okay to feel like you’re being bullied (hell, you might be actually being bullied by your kid) and that you don’t like them right this second (no matter how much you love them). It’s okay to feel like you don’t want to be around someone that screams at you in your face and it’s okay to set boundaries. Let me repeat that: it’s okay to set boundaries, even with your kids. In fact, I’d venture to say “especially” with your kids. Kids should not go through life with the expectation that everyone will let them throw a tantrum to get what they want because it won’t serve them as adults. Kids should not go through life with the expectation that they can say or do hurtful things and it won’t result in people not liking them…because it will.

The next time your school aged kiddo is acting in a way that makes you think, “I don’t really like them,” I want you to do this (just give it a try): in a very calm voice say, “I love you but I don’t like the way you’re *fill in the blank with action* right now. Let’s give each other a few minutes to calm down and try to talk about it, then.” Now your kid might be old enough and have thrown tantrums long enough that it will take longer or they might still try to scream. Just repeat this same phrase each time and be consistent. Then, when you talk to them, explain how that action made you feel (i.e. when you scream at me, it makes me feel very sad because I’m trying to speak to you in a way that respects who you are). Explain to them that while YOU love them and understand that this behavior happens sometimes, not everyone in the world will feel the same way and it’s important to learn to deal with things with a level of respect. Then, here’s the important part, leave it alone. If they have questions, they’ll ask. You didn’t lecture, you explained.

Now….

Walk away, pour yourself a glass of wine (or beer, or water, or soda, or whatever your heart desires), take a deep breath, and remember that parenting is not for the faint of heart. You are doing a great job and your kiddo might be mad at you for a day or a week or a month, but they will eventually get it. It’s better to have your kid mad at you for a little while now in their bedroom, blaring music than it is to have your kid mad at you behind glass at a prison asking why you didn’t stop them from acting afool.

Breathe, do whatever you do to relax, and remember you’ve got this!