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Adults Have Reasons. Children Have Attitudes.
- Shirlyn
- 11 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Most adults can think of a time they didn't feel like talking.
Or eating.
Or leaving the house.
Or being rushed.
Or doing what someone else wanted them to do.
We rarely see these moments as character flaws.
Yet children are often judged for the very same human experiences. Perhaps understanding child behaviour begins with recognising how similar children and adults often are.
A child doesn't greet a relative.
They're rude.
A child takes too long to get ready.
They're difficult.
A child refuses a meal.
They're fussy.
A child protests a transition.
They're disobedient.
A child raises their voice.
They're disrespectful.
The behaviour may look different, but the underlying human experiences are often surprisingly similar.
Many adults don't feel like making small talk with every person they meet.
Yet children are expected to greet relatives on cue.
Many adults prefer not to eat when they aren't hungry.
Yet children are often expected to eat because the clock says it's mealtime.
An adult who says, "I'm not hungry," is usually left alone.
A child who says the same thing may be persuaded, negotiated with, pressured, or warned that they'll be hungry later.
The concern often comes from a good place.
But the contrast is interesting.
We readily accept an adult's explanation.
We are often less willing to accept a child's.
Many adults appreciate being given a moment to finish what they're doing before switching tasks.
Yet children are often expected to stop immediately and move on.
Many adults dislike being rushed.
Yet children are frequently hurried through their day.
This doesn't mean children should be allowed to do whatever they want.
Children still need guidance.
They still need boundaries.
They still need opportunities to develop the skills required to live alongside other people.
But there is a difference between guiding a child and forgetting that they are human.
Psychologists have long observed that people tend to explain their own behaviour through circumstances while attributing other people's behaviour to character.
This tendency, often referred to as the fundamental attribution error, may be one reason adults extend themselves a level of understanding they do not always extend to children.
Many of us were raised in cultures where obedience was closely tied to respect.
Greeting elders.
Finishing our meals
Listening without argument
Following instructions.
These were often seen as signs of good character.
And to be fair, these expectations did not come from nowhere.
They were shaped by generations that valued family, responsibility, community, and social harmony.
Many adults today are not enforcing these expectations out of malice.
They are passing on what they themselves were taught.
The challenge is that when obedience becomes the primary goal, understanding can quietly fall away.
A child may comply without being understood.
And over time, we may become more skilled at correcting behaviour than becoming curious about what sits beneath it.
Sometimes a child is not refusing connection.
They are simply expressing it differently than we expected.
A child who does not greet an adult on cue may still be delighted to see them.
A child may spend the entire car ride talking about someone, then hide behind a parent when that person appears.
They may wave from a distance, call out when they think nobody is listening, or light up the moment they feel comfortable enough to engage.
Connection is not always expressed in the ways adults expect.
When we focus only on the behaviour we expected to see, we can miss the relationship that was already there.
Perhaps this is why children can feel so challenging.
Not because they are fundamentally different from us.
But because they expose standards we do not consistently apply to ourselves.
We tell children not to should,
then raise our own voices.
We tell them to be patient,
then become impatient.
We tell them to greet people politely,
then avoid conversations we do not feel like having.
We tell them to manage disappointment,
then complain when things do not go our way.
Children have a remarkable ability to reflect our habits, assumptions, and contraditions back to us.
Sometimes what frustrates us most in children is not the behaviour itself.
It is recognising something uncomfortably familiar.
When adults struggle, we look for context.
When children struggle, we look for compliance.
The adult is tired.
The child is whining.
The adult is overwhelmed.
The child is overreacting.
The adult is stressed.
The child has an attitude.
The adult raises their voice because they've had a long day.
The child raises their voice because they are disrespectful.
If an addult arrives late, we often ask what happened.
Traffic.
A difficult morning.
An unexpected delay.
If a child struggles to leave the playground, finish a task, or move at the pace we want, our first instinct is often not curiosity.
It is correction.
We want the behaviour to stop.
Sometimes before we've understood what caused it.
Perhaps that is because obedience solves problems for adults.
A child who greets a relative reassures the adults around them.
A child who apologises on command brings a conflict to a close.
A child who sits down for dinner creates less tension at the table.
A child who stops protesting allows the day to move forward.
None of these things are inherently bad.
But they are not necessarily evidence of development.
Obedience and development are not the same thing.
A child can comply without understanding.
A child can follow instructions without developing judgement.
A child can say sorry without developing empathy.
A child can greet an adult without feeling connected.
The question is not whether obedience matters.
The question is what we believe obedience is achieving.
We expect children to understand our reasons long before we try to understand theirs.
Perhaps that is the question worth asking.
What happens when obedience becomes more important than understanding?
Because behaviour is easy to see.
Understanding takes curiosity.
Behaviour is immediate.
Understanding takes time.
Behaviour can be corrected.
Understanding requires relationship.
And when we stop being curious about children, behaviour becomes the only thing left to judge.
Children have reasons too.
The difference is that adults expect theirs to be heard.
Perhaps children deserve the same.
Reference
Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173–220). Academic Press.
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