I often race around the internet looking for material to help parents improve their skills.  Yesterday, I came across BratBusters. BratBusters? No way. Unfortunately, my eyes did not deceive me. I had indeed found an advertisement for BratBusters, a web site that shared articles and advice for parents on how to raise children.

Most of you know the importance I attach to words. I believe there is a connection between the words you use, the beliefs you hold, and the actions you take. I, along with my business partner, Thomas Haller, have written over 2000 pages about the importance of words. We have written Parent Talk, Teacher Talk, Couple Talk, Dental Talk, Talk Sense to Yourself and other books, articles, and blogs that help people learn the verbal skills necessary to communicate effectively. So, it was with more than a degree of consternation that I discovered a parenting site called BratBusters.

I can’t think of a term to describe a philosophy of dealing with children that I would object to more strongly than BratBusters. First of all, children are not brats. “Brat” is a highly-charged emotional word that is pure putdown. It is an example of evaluative criticism, an inference that tells more about the judger than about the child being judged. It informs us that the judger views children as brats. Or, they are deliberately using that term to make sales—by appealing to parents who view their children as brats.

There are no brats. They do not exist. Not even one.

• There are children who whine, beg and throw tantrums.
• There are children who ignore their parents and treat them as if they were invisible.
• There are children who talk back to their parents.
• There are children who argue until parents change their minds.
• There are children who talk mean and threaten other children.

These children are not brats. They are children who choose inappropriate behavior at times and need to learn new, more appropriate, replacement behaviors.

Now, for the second part of BratBusters. There are no children that need to be “busted.” Years ago, rugged cowboys, called “bronc busters,” jumped on top of wild horses and tried to stay on long enough to break the will of those horses. We have learned some things about training horses since then. Today, we don’t bust broncs, we gentle them. Enlightened, gentle ways are used with horses to help them learn the desired behaviors. That same attitude needs to be applied to raising children.

There are no children that need to be busted. They do not exist. Not even one.

• There are parents who need to teach children new behaviors.
• There are parents who need to learn how to structure consequences and implement them with love and caring.
• There are parents who need to put more parenting skills in their tool box.
• There are parents who need to learn enlightened, loving ways of responding to children’s misbehavior with consistency and an open heart.
• There are parents who can learn to separate the deed from the doer. (I love you and I don’t like that behavior.)

Seeing children as brats that need to be busted demeans their humanity and creates distance between you and the children. Parenting from that mindset wounds their spirit and attracts more of the undesired behavior into your life and into theirs.

The words you use to describe your children influence the way you see them. How you see them determines what you come to believe about them. What you believe about them shapes how you act toward them. How you act toward them influences how they see themselves. How they see themselves shapes what they come to believe about themselves. What they believe about themselves drives their behavior. And then you use words to describe that behavior.

Maybe it’s time to choose more carefully what we call our children.

Chick Moorman