When Kids Bully Adults

A parent may empathize with, even pity, their abusive child, but the abuse has to stop regardless.

“Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.”

– Socrates

I know, right? Every generation seems to complain about younger ones. Even 2,400 years ago adults (or at least Socrates) were moaning about “kids today!”

Although now, with the cultural shift towards safetyism in full swing, maybe we generally complain a little less about “young people”. And the fact is, children are inherently vulnerable, certainly when very young. The young must be protected by the stronger, hopefully mature and decent adults around them.

And sadly, parents and step-parents can, as we all know, emotionally and physically abuse their children or stepchildren. This, of course, is tragic and can have lasting impacts. We should do all we can to protect children from horrific treatment and much of our work may involve helping undo a traumatic and abusive past.

But at the other end of the spectrum, there are less-recognized dangers to overprotecting children.

The weakening effects of over-care

Over-care – ‘helicopter parenting’ or ‘cottonwoolism’ – has been found to make it harder for children to make friends, deal with their own feelings, and regulate their behaviour.¹

The culture of safetyism, treating children as inherently fragile and delicate without internal resources, or terrifying them into feeling that any unpleasant feeling or uncomfortable situation may damage their mental health has, ironically, a weakening effect on mental health.

So what we need is balance.

But it’s certainly true, I think, that when we think of familial abuse we assume that it’s adults abusing children. But I’m here to say it can work the other way.

Why are children sometimes ‘horrible’ to adults?

As practitioners we sometimes see children being abusive to their parents or other adults.

I recall a single mother, Sylvia, lamenting bitterly but also with shame how she “let” her 16-year-old son verbally abuse her in public and dictate to her in private. How she was becoming afraid of him and how he’d even slapped her face hard in front of his friend.

She suggested that it wasn’t his fault because she’d divorced his father and it had no doubt affected her son.

I suggested that, yes, no doubt the divorce had affected him… but not all children whose parents divorce become abusive, and a reason is not an excuse.

We might look at why a mugger, rapist, or serial killer does what they do. But (possible) explanations should never be a green light to let the behaviour continue.

There are meteorological reasons why hailstones might pelt down outside. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take measures to protect yourself from their icy bite.

Excuse-making for the person who bullies us is often done in the guise of being understanding or empathetic, but in truth it just gives our bully carte blanche to treat us even worse. Yes, a parent may empathize with, even pity, their abusive child – but the abuse has to stop regardless.

We can understand until the cows come home, but sometimes that understanding may be worse than useless.

All that being said, though, it’s certainly as well to get a feel for what is causing the child-on-adult abuse.

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Reasons (not excuses!) why children abuse adults

From inherent psychopathy to a history of being overindulged or abused themselves and therefore acting out the same behaviour, there might be all kinds of reasons as to why a child systematically abuses a parent or other adult.

All these are potential reasons, but the child still needs to stop it – for their own good as well as, of course, that of their victim.

Feeling guilty about and even responsible for a child’s destructive behaviour and therefore failing to take steps to ensure it stops can, paradoxically, almost be a form of neglect in itself.

Many adults feel responsible for their own abuse in some way. If they only loved the child more, or hadn’t separated from the other parent, or could give the child exactly what they wanted, or even behave exactly as the child demands they do… But this is to deny agency in the child. And to thrive, we all need to feel we have responsibility for ourselves to some degree at least.

Providing love, support… and childhood agency

As I suggest in this short video, we have to let others take responsibility for themselves, even young people. To greedily take more of our fair share of the ‘blame pie’ is to deny others a chance to grow and thrive.

Sylvia liked that idea; it was a frame she could use because it accorded with her overriding wish not to deny her son anything – even self-responsibility.

Together we worked on her setting better boundaries with her son, protecting herself more, both emotionally and in practical ways, and becoming better able to pass a fair level of responsibility over to him. Over time her son found he could respect himself more because he was learning to respect others, specifically Sylvia.

Anyway, nothing beats actually seeing therapy being done, so let’s quickly look at a video case study.

Bullied by her stepdaughter

I want to show you a couple of very short clips of an adult who was maltreated by an adolescent and, briefly, what helped.

At the risk of sounding overly self-referential, I did a quick video search, instantly scanning over 150 hours of therapy video inside Uncommon Practitioners TV, to see if I could find any video clips of me working with a client with this kind of issue.

Hey presto! Of course! I found Susie’s (not her real name) sessions. I’ve blurred her face because I’m showing this outside of UPTV.

Susie sought support to manage her worries, which stemmed from her 14-year-old stepdaughter, whose behaviour towards Susie was unruly, aggressive, verbally abusive, and physically intimidating.

While being on the receiving end of this mistreatment was horrible for Susie, she was more concerned about the girl’s wellbeing than her own. Susie, I think you’ll agree, appears to be a decent and good person.

Susie also felt quite isolated, especially because she and her partner were not always aligned in their approach to his daughter. So what was Susie after from me?

She was seeking ways to “switch off” persistent worries about her stepdaughter’s welfare so she could sleep more peacefully at night. She also wanted ways to feel more detached and react less when the stepdaughter was being abusive toward her.

Susie’s stepdaughter was continually contrary and rude to her. She would leave the room when Susie entered it and basically talk to everyone else but Susie. She was also “getting in Susie’s face” and being physically intimidating.

Here’s a clip of Susie describing how the situation made her feel.

Because Susie wanted a way to feel more detached when her stepdaughter was being abusive, I used a hypnotic intervention to help her feel she had an invisible protective ‘shield’ or ‘bubble’ around her when her stepdaughter was victimizing her. You can see a few moments of this approach here:

I also made suggestions for her to be better able to sleep at night by switching off worries.

Here’s a short clip of Susie describing how things improved between sessions.

As you can see, Susie’s relationship with her stepdaughter did improve, and it may indeed be because Susie was feeling less affected that the stepdaughter picked up subliminally that she couldn’t push Susie’s buttons in the same way anymore.

Crucially, the stepdaughter became happier too.

Young people sometimes become more abusive during the teenage years when their mood may be more naturally unstable and boundaries are being pushed. Or the child may be distressed in some way, as was undoubtedly the case with Susie’s stepdaughter.

The fact is, some adults are pushed around and maltreated by their own kids or stepkids. Why they do this – how the pattern started – may be relevant and serve as a reason if not an excuse.

But the fact remains, the effects on some of our clients can be severe and we need to help them deal with those effects in order to improve their own wellbeing but also help the children become well adjusted adults.

I hope I contributed something to that process in Susie’s case.

Get Video Answers to Your Therapy Questions

This might sound a bit like living in the future, but right now inside Uncommon Practitioners’ TV, you can use our Video Assistant tool to find examples of Mark working with clients in exactly the way you’re interested in. So, for example, if you wanted to see a questioning technique for a depressed client, plug it into the search bar and this amazing tool will give you up to six video clips with examples of just that. Click on the link, and you’ll jump right to the point in the video where Mark uses that technique. Welcome to the future! Read more about UPTV here.

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About Mark Tyrrell

Psychology is my passion. I've been a psychotherapist trainer since 1998, specializing in brief, solution focused approaches. I now teach practitioners all over the world via our online courses.

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