Video Transcription
What I wish my parents knew about my ‘attitude’
From my perspective, having an attitude is just a breakdown in communication. It was just the classic, “You better get rid of the attitude, or I’ll get rid of it for you.” You’re being rude to me when parents say that you’re having an attitude.
Well, when someone’s going through a tough time, it often can be expressed through anger and emotions. They could be withdrawn, sad, irritable, snappy—most of the negative emotions, I guess, towards other people based on what they’re feeling themselves.
It took a tremendous amount of courage just to be like, “Hey, Mum or hey, Dad, I am really sorry about this, but this is why I’ve been snapping, this is why I’ve just lost it sometimes, or this is why I seem like I just don’t care.”
Oftentimes, the people that you’re fighting with are the people that you care about, the people that you’re closest to.
I think some of the things that parents can do is to show them positive body language, just make sure they’re okay instead of going at it head-on and confronting them. Or worse, getting angry at them for something.
Well, instead of saying, “You’ve got an attitude,” just say, “What’s wrong? How can I help? Let me know what’s happening,” and honestly mean it.
Coming home from school and having Mum say, “How was it? How was school?” every day somewhat sounds, “Oh, it’s rehearsed. Oh, here she goes again.” And then you just end it with saying, “It was good.”
If you guys have an issue that you don’t—you’re not obligated to work it out immediately. You can have a discussion, and if it gets too heated, just say, “Hey, look, we’re getting too heated right now. We need to take a step back, just cool down. We’ll come back to this later. We can talk about this at dinner, or after dinner, or we can talk about this tomorrow. We can both sleep on it.”
The best thing you can do for yourself when you’re confronted with stuff like that is just take a break, remove yourself from the situation, take a breath, and come back to it five or ten minutes later. You’ll find that your emotions won’t be as highly strung, and you’re better able to communicate your feelings and emotions to the other person.
Video by Reach Out
