When Your Kid Yells "I Hate You": A Family Therapist Explains

Hey, friends. Does your child know exactly which buttons to push to make you lose it? How does it feel when your kid screams, “I hate you!” – even though you give it your all from morning till night? How do we stay calm when what we really want to do is lie down on the floor and scream like a toddler mid-tantrum? That's exactly what we asked family therapist Sebastian Reisinger, founder of the Instagram account @eltern.survival.guide.

Dear Sebastian, let me just ask you straight: How should I react as a parent when my child screams, “I hate you”?

First of all: don't take it personally. That's the most important thing. In the vast majority of cases, your child doesn't hate you. They're angry about a limit you set. And they're having big feelings they can't manage yet. I often tell parents: if you're getting an “I hate you” right now, in many cases you've made the right decision. Right decisions regularly run into big feelings from kids. It comes with the territory.

There's also a second layer. When kids say something like this, it's often about autonomy too. The need to separate, to be their own person. That sounds harsh, but it's important for their development. In practical terms, that means: acknowledge the feeling and still hold your limit. Both at the same time. And yes, you're allowed to say that it hurt you. Talking about your own feelings is okay, and even good. Just not as an accusation and not as a counterattack.

So how should we definitely not react?

Don't take your child at their word. Take them at their feeling. That's my line on this.

You absolutely should take your child seriously, but take the need behind the words seriously, not the wording itself. Ideally, you go looking for the good reason. There's always a good reason for a behavior. Often your child is tired or hungry, often they're missing connection, and often they just want to decide something for themselves in that moment.

What parents should avoid: pulling away themselves. Don't ignore, don't go eye for an eye, don't pay them back. And please don't yell back and say, “Well, I don't like you either.” The message has to be: You can't fire me as your mom or dad. I will always love you. You're angry at me right now, and that's okay.

Kids need this feeling of unconditional love. But that doesn't mean you can't say clearly what works for you and what doesn't. Unconditional love and clear limits don't contradict each other.

You say: “When your child loses their calm, they need yours.” But what if I've lost mine too?

Then you still can't skip to step two before step one. It's very hard to calm a child down when you're not calm yourself. So step one is finding your own calm. And the nice thing is, you can do that right out in the open in front of your child. It's called co-regulation. When I visibly calm myself down in front of my child, they pick it up and find their calm through mine.

But if I'm really furious in the moment, it's absolutely fine to leave the room for a minute and take a breath. As long as the situation allows it, meaning nothing dangerous is going on.

Two little words help me with this: “I notice.” I notice I'm getting angry, so I'm going to step out for a second and breathe. I notice you're angry right now. That “I notice” is a bit like a North Star that kids can orient themselves by. And it puts some time between you and your reaction. That's exactly what we want: not acting on impulse, but on purpose.

Can you give us some concrete tips for how to regulate ourselves when things get challenging at home again?

There are an incredible number of techniques, and it helps to find one that truly fits you. But before any technique comes self-awareness.

Know where your red buttons are. The things that make you hit the roof the second your child pushes them. And by the way, your child isn't pushing them on purpose. It helps enormously to understand what kind of baggage you're carrying around, what comes easily to you and what's hard. It almost always traces back to the family you grew up in, which shapes us a lot. And it helps you understand your child better, too. When I know how my child ticks and why they do what they do, a lot gets easier.

Then come the techniques. A few that work fast:

• Breathe out longer than you breathe in. For example, count to four as you inhale and six or eight as you exhale.
• Count backward in your head, a little countdown.
• Ground yourself in the room: see five things, hear four, feel three. It pulls you out of the thought spiral.
• Tapping techniques, for example crossing your arms and tapping alternately on your left and right upper arms.
• Short mindfulness exercises, if that's something that works for you.

I describe some of these in more detail in my book. Ideally, you pick a technique you can do together with your child in a playful way. Because kids copy everything we do. They do what we do far more than what we say.

What are the typical everyday situations where things blow up in almost every family?

In my experience, things blow up most often when two needs collide. Yours and your child's. Very often it happens when the grown-up world meets the kid world. We have to leave on time, and your child is deep in play. Your child wants a story read to them, and you're up against a deadline. Your child is bored, and you have to get something done right now.

Kids have a really hard time with transitions. And it has less to do with not wanting the next thing. It's that they find it very hard to let go of what they're doing.

On top of that, things that make total sense in our grown-up world, like brushing teeth or putting on warm clothes, are simply uninteresting to kids. Kids feel more than they think logically. Their feelings are bigger. And when they're not in the mood, it's very hard to persuade them with reason.

On a personal note: What surprised you most about being a parent?

How wonderful and how exhausting it can be at the same time. Parenting is incredibly fulfilling and incredibly exhausting, often in the very same moment. I wouldn't have expected that beforehand.

And honestly, also how hard it is not to act on impulse myself. As a parent you have extremely big feelings in every direction. Huge joy, but also anger, and sometimes anger at your own child. Hardly anyone talks about that, and I think a lot of parents would recognize themselves in it. Knowing that is a relief.

Many parents think they're the only ones who can't get it right. What can you tell them from your experience?

All families have their struggles. Truly all of them. It's just that most of it happens behind closed doors, so we don't see it in each other.

What helps is getting support and talking about it. You'll realize very quickly that almost all parents are in the same boat. With different challenges, of course, no two are exactly alike, and every family finds different strategies. But almost everyone shares the basic feeling. So that's my wish: open your doors. Chances are, other families will open theirs too.

If you could give our readers one piece of advice, what would it be?

Get help. It takes a village to raise a child, and there's something to that saying. It's just that a lot of parents today live more isolated than they used to, some are single parents, and that has changed.

So build yourself a network, even if it's small. Talk to your preschool, your school, the people around you. Only where you feel comfortable doing so, of course. There are counseling centers and other places to turn. You don't have to do this alone.

And one more thing: the pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott coined the term “good enough” parents. Being good enough is enough. Kids don't need perfect parents, they need reliable ones. That doesn't mean you stop working on yourself. You grow into this job. But the expectation of doing it flawlessly is the wrong one.

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