Why Children Say NO Even When They Feel Like Saying Yes

Hint: it’s not because they secretly want to drive us crazy.

Children are meant to cooperate with their parents. It’s because they are genetically programmed to do so — it’s a survival thing — and because they love us and we mean the world to them. We are the world to them.

Judging by all the NOs we get from them, however, the temper bursts, the meltdowns, and what appears to be an unceasing opposition that the little ones manifest, we often have the feeling that they just want to drive us crazy.

But here’s the crazy thing — “kids do well if they can.” You can tell by the quote marks that it wasn’t me who said it, but Ross Greene. He’s one of America’s most famous clinical child psychologists, so you might want to take his word for it.

If you come to accept that when children say NO, it actually has more to do with them than with you, you’re heading for a more fulfilling relationship with them.

Kids do well if they can

I hinted at the reason above, and Greene does excellent work explaining it in his “Raising Human Beings” book. Listening to their parents helps children survive. They instinctively know it. They also happen to love us. And they want to show it to us.

If you’d feel tiny and desperately depend on a giant who sits around you all day, wouldn’t you do everything you can to keep that giant pleased?

The only situations when you wouldn’t please the giant and decide that, instead, you’re going to yell NO at him, then roll on the floor, and eventually knock your head onto something hard would be if you couldn’t do what the giant wants you to.

There you go — children say NO because they really can not do it.

Their NO has nothing to do with you or with not wanting to please you. And it has everything to do with them. Their NO is helping you to get to know them. It also pushes all your buttons and forces you to get to know yourself better — but that’s for another story.

In a nutshell, children say NO because they can’t say differently. And by doing so, they are actually inviting you to know them, helping you understand them, understand your relationship with them, connect with them, and be capable of loving them more.

Once you become aware of their limitations and natural, age-appropriate capabilities, you’re more likely to avoid the stormy days. In any case, you’ll navigate smoother through them.

Like all human beings, children want love and do well to get that love

That is if they can. They might not be able to do well because:

They are too small for it — a two-year-old doesn’t have the brain development to be able to refrain himself from rolling on the floor, furious that he can’t get what he wants.

They don’t understand our words — children need to be told what to do in as few and as simple words as possible, but we often forget that.

They are too tired — and again, it’s a brain thing, that when children are too tired, they enter into a whirlwind of hyperactivity where they can hardly control themselves and usually do lots of things we don’t want them to.

Then, as they grow a little older, children may refuse to do what we ask because those things are not priorities to them. It’s our priority to get them to bed early so they won’t fall asleep late and be a ticking bomb the following day when we prepare them for daycare. Their priority is to play and have fun, so it’s hard to see why they need to put all the fun behind and follow our lead.

They may also feel the need to get new, more age-appropriate limits. It only makes sense that they will need us to relax some of the old boundaries and even introduce new ones for different aspects of their lives as they grow older.

And last but not least, they might feel disconnected from us and, because they don’t know how to recreate that connection, they invite us to do it. They do all the things that drive us crazy to get our full attention and help them reconnect. If only we’d read that message correctly and initiate activities that bond us better instead of sending them to be alone in their room and think of what they did wrong…

A child’s No is usually about him, not you

There are probably many other reasons why children say no, but they all have this thing in common — it’s about them, not us.

However, the problem is that we, the adults, when we hear a no, we enter into fight mode. We take it personally. And we end up having disproportionated reactions to the child. We amplify our negative thoughts into thinking that the “spoiled brat” is doing it on purpose, to harm us.

Would it make any sense for your child to tell you no because he wants to manipulate you, punish you, revenge on you, show you he’s the boss, make you get late to the office, and lose your job? I wouldn’t think so.

Hopefully, after you’ve made it so far, you’ll remind yourself too. The next time your child tells you no, try to break through the barrier you see raising between the two of you. What is the little guy trying to say to you? And how can you go about it like the adult that you are?

Before you leave… Take a peek at my other parenting articles: