(Stillness in the Storm Editor) There are some things that are common sense. Consider, for instance, that a person, who possesses free will, likely wants that free will respected in life. If you were being asked to do something, would a respectful tone that communicates true respect of your sovereignty is helpful? You probably answered yes. Why then, are dismissive, emotionally manipulative strategies so common?
In short, it’s because when life’s pressures make it hard to negotiate and talk through something carefully, we tend to resort to strong-arm tactics to get the job done—the ends justify the means. And since the emotional cost of these tactics often goes unnoticed, we don’t realize that destroying our social capital with another for short term gains, costs us, and society, in the long run.
When parents disrespect their children’s free will, it creates core wounds that make that child much more likely to be disrespectful and socially destructive later.
Parenting is a heroic effort. Every parent is a hero as far as I’m concerned, especially in the modern age where we have almost no community support.
Parenting is challenging for many reasons, one being that you have to cooperate with a child, someone who is becoming mature, and therefore, lacks respect occasionally.
Asking a child to clean up their room, participate in domestic chores, or simply have respect for everything parents do for the child can be challenging. What’s more, mass media continually presents images of petulant bratty young people who have invoked the “it’s cool to disrespect mommy” archetype. To be sure, the powers that be want to pit your children against you, and they use mass media to do it.
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Given all this, how can a parent ensure their child complies with the rules of the house, the very rules designed to keep order and maintain harmony?
In law, refusal to honor reasonable requests is called contempt. It’s destructive to social harmony at a foundational level, because if we can’t at least be willing to respect each other as human beings, how can we hope to effect lasting harmony?
For example, if you ask someone, whether they are your child or not, to move aside so you can get into a doorway, and they refuse simply because you asked them to move, this is contempt. It’s the refusal to cooperate with the intention to create division, conflict, and disharmony. Clearly, this kind of intention has only one outcome: conflict and destruction. Hence, managing it can be very difficult because the very solution to conflict—cooperation—can’t take place.
In effect, this is a battle of wills situation, which can become toxic very quickly unless someone takes the time to try and restore compassion, tolerance, and rekindle the desire to cooperate. A compromise might be needed to smooth things over until whatever emotional wounds came up can be healed.
Let’s look at modern-day teens.
Teenagers, in the West, are usually pretty contemptible, for good reasons.
Personal autonomy is an inherent human value, need, and codified inalienable right. We come into this world knowing, very early on in life (think of toddlers) that our free will should be respected. And yet, as a culture, we’re trained to disrespect our children’s free will more and more.
Early on, infants don’t have much power to negotiate. In fact, they’re so totally dependent on us as parents, they need to listen to what we say just to avoid danger. But as time goes on, the mind of a child gains skill, they can communicate, they can think and weigh choices, and they can make decisions on their own, albeit without a lot of wisdom.
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Then we put them into school, often without attempting to persuade them to do so. We force them to stay in chairs, not playing, not doing things kids want to do. We effectively abandon them to daycare, school, TV, video games, and cell phones. For good reasons mind you—being a parent in the modern age means having to live two lives at once, an impossibility for many.
This situation isn’t what parents want. It isn’t what children to want. And it creates a situation where parents are forced to increasingly use stronger and stronger means to gain compliance from their children.
When the teenage years come online, the drive to become their own person becomes all-consuming. From here, a parent’s capacity to strongarm their children into compliance almost disappears. And this is arguably when the nagging, emotional badgering, negative behavioral modification style of parenting becomes the most tempting. The kind that you cringe at when you see it in the grocery store, yet recognize is a desperate situation almost no one wants to be in.
The following study validates this common sense understanding.
The study shows that when parents get frustrated and start using dismissive disrespectful tones, ones that imply “you better damn well do what I say, or they’ll be hell to pay,” effectively cause their children mild trauma. The study shows, children experience negative emotions and anxiety. What’s more, the badgering comes from a parent, someone children want to trust implicitly, and yet, feel they can’t after a parent betrays that trust using emotional manipulation techniques.
In closing, I want to restate that I know how difficult being a parent can be, not because I am one, yet, but because I study psychology and know at a scientific level the challenges parents face.
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The fact is, the world we live in today is shaped by people, people who were raised by parents as children. The core wounds everyone accumulates in their formative years dictate who they will become later in life.
If we want to make the world a better place, I think we need to look at the foundations of our civilization—people—and how they came to be who they are.
– Justin
(Neuroscience) Teenagers are less likely to cooperate and put effort into their mother’s requests when they are said in a controlling tone of voice, researchers have found.
Related Cold-parenting Linked to Premature Aging, Increased Disease Risk in Offspring
by Staff Writer, September 27th, 2019
Summary: Mothers who address their teens with a neutral tone of voice elicit more positive and less negative emotions in their children, increasing closeness. Those who speak with a controlling tone evoke negative emotions and have a less close bond with their teenage child.
Source: Cardiff University
Speaking to a son or daughter in a pressurizing tone is also accompanied by a range of negative emotions and less feelings of closeness, a new study has discovered.
The experimental study involving over 1000 adolescents aged 14-15 is the first to examine how subjects respond to the tone of voice when receiving instructions from their mothers, even when the specific words that are used are exactly the same.
Lead author of the study Dr. Netta Weinstein, from Cardiff University, said: “If parents want conversations with their teens to have the most benefit, it’s important to remember to use supportive tones of voice. It’s easy for parents to forget, especially if they are feeling stressed, tired, or pressured themselves.”
The study showed that subjects were much more likely to engage with instructions that conveyed a sense of encouragement and support for self-expression and choice.
The results, whilst of obvious interest to parents, could also be of relevance to schoolteachers whose use of more motivational language could impact the learning and well-being of students in their classrooms.
“Adolescents likely feel more cared about and happier, and as a result, they try harder at school, when parents and teachers speak in supportive rather than pressuring tones of voice,” Dr. Weinstein continued.
The new study, published today in the journal Developmental Psychology, involved 486 males and 514 females, aged 14-15.
In the experiment, each of the subjects was randomly assigned to groups that would hear identical messages delivered by mothers of adolescents in either a controlling, autonomy-supportive, or neutral tone of voice.
Expressions of control impose pressure and attempt to coerce or push listeners to action. In contrast, those that express ‘autonomy support’ convey a sense of encouragement and support for listeners’ sense of choice and opportunity for self-expression.
Each of the mothers delivered 30 sentences that centered around schoolwork, and included instructions such as: “It’s time now to go to school,” “you will read this book tonight,” and “you will do well on this assignment.”
After the delivery of the messages, each student undertook a survey and answered questions about how they would feel if their own mother had spoken to them in that particular way.
The findings showed that the tone of voice used by mothers can impact significantly on teenagers’ emotional, relational, and behavioral intention responses.
The study showed that subjects were much more likely to engage with instructions that conveyed a sense of encouragement and support for self-expression and choice. The image is adapted from the Cardiff University news release.
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Across most outcomes, adolescents who listened to mothers making motivational statements in a controlling tone of voice responded in undesirable ways. In contrast, autonomy-supportive tones elicited positive reactions from listeners as compared to listening to mothers who used a neutral tone of voice to deliver their motivational sentences.
Co-author of the study Professor Silke Paulmann, of the University of Essex, added: “These results nicely illustrate how powerful our voice is and that choosing the right tone to communicate is crucial in all of our conversations.”
The researchers now intend to take their work a step further by investigating how tone of voice can impact physiological responses, such as heart rates or skin conductance responses, and how long lasting these effects may be.
Funding: The study was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and involved researchers from Ghent University and the University of Essex.
Source:
Cardiff University
Media Contacts:
Netta Weinstein – Cardiff University
Image Source:
The image is adapted from the Cardiff University news release.
Original Research: Closed access
“Listen to your mother: Motivating tones of voice predict adolescents’ reactions to mothers”. Netta Weinstein et al.
Developmental Psychology doi:10.1037/dev0000827.
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Abstract
Listen to your mother: Motivating tones of voice predict adolescents’ reactions to mothers
Virtually nothing is known about the role that tone of voice may play in motivating interactions. Herein, we use an experimental approach to explore for the first time how the same directive instructions (“Do well at the play”) have different effects on adolescents depending on the motivational tone of voice used to convey these instructions. A sample of 1,000 adolescents aged 14–15 years was randomly assigned to hearing semantically identical messages that were expressed by mothers of adolescents with controlling, autonomy-supportive, or neutral tones of voice. Results suggest that the way speakers modulated their voice when intoning the same verbal messages affected adolescents’ emotional, relational, and behavioral intention responses. Listening to mothers making motivating statements in an autonomy-supportive, relative to a neutral, tone of voice elicited more positive and less negative emotions, increased closeness, and intentional behavioral engagement among adolescents, while the opposite set of findings emerged when adolescents listened to mothers making motivational statements in a controlling tone of voice. These findings elucidate how mothers’ spoken communications can impact adolescents, with implications for the quality of parent-child relationships, adolescents’ well-being, and engagement.
Stillness in the Storm Editor: Why did we post this?
Psychology is the study of the nature of mind. Philosophy is the use of that mind in life. Both are critically important to gain an understanding of as they are aspects of the self. All you do and experience will pass through these gateways of being. The preceding information provides an overview of this self-knowledge, offering points to consider that people often don’t take the time to contemplate. With the choice to gain self-awareness, one can begin to see how their being works. With the wisdom of self-awareness, one has the tools to master their being and life in general, bringing order to chaos through navigating the challenges with the capacity for right action.
– Justin
Not sure how to make sense of this? Want to learn how to discern like a pro? Read this essential guide to discernment, analysis of claims, and understanding the truth in a world of deception: 4 Key Steps of Discernment – Advanced Truth-Seeking Tools.
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Source:
https://neurosciencenews.com/parent-voice-teens-14987/
LOL… it needed a study to come up with that….Jeez husbands and boyfriends cant stand a bossy mouthy woman..