Passive Tantrums

Giving too much information encourages children to feign inability

A parent recently posted a “crazy” tip for dealing with a whining 3-year-old in the car by responding to her repeated pleas, “I want a snack!”, with “Oh, did you bring a snack?”.

This seemed like a good response, but some commenters said a three year old was too young for this, that this was developmentally inappropriate as a 3-year-old is, “just a baby”.

But, I love how this mom reframed her child as a protagonist, and identifies her power to solve her own problems. I also think parents should go farther, and ask more of their children, not less.

Here’s an example:

I’m visiting Charlie and Bobbi, parents of two boys, a 14-month-old and a 3-year-old named Casey. Bobbi had peeled and cut up an apple and put it on a plate on the kitchen island.

I say, “Casey, can you bring me the plate with the apple slices?”

Casey looks around like he’s thinking, “Is he talking to me?” So I reiterate, “I want you to bring the plate of apples so you don’t get your hands on them.”

Casey looks at me, then at his parents, they nod to him, and I asked him again. Casey goes to the plate, reaches up and grabs an apple slice and brings it to me.

“Dude, you got your hand all over it. I want you to bring me the plate so I can get a clean one.” He looked at me curiously then at his parents and starts to walk back to the apples. Then he stops, leans against the wall shyly, and says, “I can’t”.

“What do you mean you can’t? Just bring me the plate.”

“No….I can’t do it.”

“Off course you can do it. Just bring me the plate of apples.”

“No, I can’t do it.”

I pause and look at him for a moment, then, “Look, you can bring me the plate and I'll take one slice, or I can get up and get it, but then I’m going to eat all the apple slices.”

Casey’s eyes get big and he says, “No! One”.

“If you bring the plate to me I’ll just take one. But if I need to get up to get them, I’m going to eat them all.”

He looks at me and then to his parents who shrugged their shoulders, and then back at me, “No, one.”

“Look, I’m going to count to five, and if you don’t bring me the plate so I can pick one, then I’m getting up and I’m going to eat them all. …..1..2..3..” Casey turns, goes to the counter, reaches up to the plate just over this head, picks up the plate, carries it to me, and holds it out in front of me. I take a slice and say thank you, and he carries the plate over to his mom. As she takes a slice he looks back at me and says with a grin, “One”.

So if parents think a three year old isn’t capable of handling, “Oh, did you bring a snack?” that’s because their expectations of what children are capable of have gradually been lowered, and children have adjusted to this lower expectation.

As I’ve watched our expectations decline, I’m also seeing a huge increase in passive tantrums. A passive tantrum is feigning inability to avoid difficulty, or assert power. It’s a very natural response to a parenting environment where the emphasis is on giving lots and lots of explanations and reasoning. All this talk assumes the child doesn’t or can’t understand, and communicates a too low assumption of their ability.

And what better way to assert power than to use the tools that worked for the first year or two of life, when he was less able to control his emotions, and he didn’t understand. But now he’s more capable, so we’re unsure about his whining and tears. Maybe he’s overwhelmed, maybe he can control himself but knows it’s in his interest not to. Maybe he doesn’t like the boundary, or the slight feeling of hunger, and he’s looking to you to tell him whether he can or can’t survive these feelings and the boundary.

I talked to Bobbi and Charlie about Casey’s conflicting desires at this age. He has a desire for autonomy, and a urge to do new things he wasn’t previously capable of. But he’s also wanting to assert this power to see if he can train you to continue to do things for him. These two feelings are going on at the same time. Bobbi and Charlie tell me how one of the first things Casey said was, “I do it.” But Casey is also having huge tantrums when he doesn’t want to do something, doesn’t get what he wants.

Casey’s only three, but this is the perfect age to get him involved in contributing to the activities in the home. Asking him to do simple things he wasn’t capable of a year ago.

Addressing Casey’s passive tantrum, “I can’t do it”, is essential to his development because it speaks to what he’s really asking right now. While his response is cute and seemingly harmless, ignoring it puts off answering the important question his tantrums are asking. When I create a consequence (“I’ll eat all the apple slices”) to his choice to feign inability, I’m bringing him into the world of cause and effect. I’m also affirming his autonomy to shape the outcome, while asserting my own autonomy and desire (the desire not to get up). I become a willful being like him, and it motivates him to take an action he doesn’t want to take to get the outcome he does. And in this way he finds power in this new world of others as his own protagonist.