Misbehavior Is Growth: An Observant Parent’s Guide to Three Year Olds

By Amber Domoradzki

What is going on with three year olds is so much more than meets the eye.

This book series, Misbehavior is Growth, documents the age-related stages that children go through. These are times when children fall apart, becoming demanding, clingy, whiny, or aggressive. But on other side of this “stage” is an astonishing new skill set. Their brain was going through an “upgrade.” This book offers the popular summaries, as for three year olds, as seen at The Observant Mom. In addition, it offers, for each milestone, detailed analysis, conflict resolution ideas, and ways to nurture the growth.

So much grows mentally in children aged three. Their ability to get around new places. Their ability to categorize, use, and compare large amounts of data. What is most important, though, as argued, is core personality integration. Three year olds develop a conscious idea of who they are as a person, making this one of the most sensitive times of their entire development. And in all this, their wild imaginations, the famous monsters they see in their closet, may play a bigger role than we truly know.

This research overwhelmingly proves what so many have tried to say: children are more like flowers that unfold than clay to mold. There is a biologically determined apparatus that does the lion’s share of mental growth. We couldn’t stop it if we tried!

The idea behind Misbehavior is Growth is that these age-related behaviors are an instinctual call from children to adults so that adults come to them at developmentally critical times. Thus, don’t “ignore” the stages. Lean into them as the investment opportunity they are! It’s not misbehavior: it’s growth!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amber Domoradzki
• Release date: Jan 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005602550

Book preview

Nonresistant Parenting

It’s long been my goal to convince parents to stop fighting their children’s behavior. I want this work to stand on its own like an unmovable rock that says, This is natural behavior. It is normal. We cannot change it. We have to work around it. Deep down I want the work itself to just act as this. And, certainly, it has—to some degree. I’ve received notes from all over the world about how people think to themselves, Misbehavior is Growth! as they deal with a child, who, say, went to investigate something that was not part of their original plan. One mom wrote to me that she at first dreaded these milestones but learned to embrace them as the growth opportunities that they are. This warms me over like no other.

Battles Loom

But I still felt like I lacked the words or perhaps the paradigm to explain to people how to stop fighting their children’s behavior. when they are otherwise are stuck in a battle with their child.

Here is an example. I’ve worded this myself to avoid directly quoting (shaming) anyone, but the sentiment is similar to what I see from parents:

I’m feeling defeated. I no longer enjoy my child. All day, I am giving in, negotiating, being assaulted, demanded of. It never ends. I’m exhausted. I cannot take it anymore. I am ashamed of myself. I am not the parent I want to be.

Or perhaps,

My child isn’t LISTENING! I am going nuts!

Or,

My daughter keeps attacking me. I need to work. What can I do!?

And I see this, and I want so bad to say, Surrender to it! Stop fighting the behavior! It is Ok to give in. But I am torn because I don’t want to tell the parent they are bad. And while I am stumbling to find the right words, someone comes in with this,

You are in a battle of wills with the child, and you must win decisively each time! Read The Strong-Willed Child by James Dobson. Otherwise the child will continue to test your authority.

And I just die inside. This advice that you are in a battle with your child and you need to win is so terribly opposite of anything I stand for as a parent or researcher.

The Power of Now

The very first thing we need to do is deal with children’s irritating behavior and our emotional response to it. I believe I have found (at least one) paradigm to explain to people, specifically, this idea of not fighting children’s behavior. I thought of it after reading Eckhart Tolle‘s book The Power of Now.

Tolle’s book is about the present moment. You can’t change the past and the future is not guaranteed. What you have is now. Right now. What reason is there that right now can’t be good? One of the questions he asks you to ask routinely is Do I have any unease right now? If so, is there reason to feel this unease? Is the problem weighing on you happening right now? Not tomorrow. Not ten minutes from now. Now. If there is no need to worry, then just say no to that unease. Joy is a matter of removing unnecessary unease. This concept, in which the removal of bad things (the toxic ones) is enough to attain good things, was powerful for me.

He describes how all life has a Being to it. It’s already there. The joy we have in ourselves is there and cannot be added to. If we could step back and look around us, life already has enormous beauty. We don’t need to try to control it. Tolle describes how a flower is not in distress. It trusts that the sun will be there. Applying this to parenting, if I may: is a mother duck in distress over if her ducklings will hatch? No, there is trust there. You surrender to life, and its natural cycles. Tolle writes,

All negativity is resistance. In this context, the two words are almost synonymous. Negativity ranges from irritation or impatience to fierce anger, from a depressed mood or sullen resentment to suicidal despair. (188)

And, so, I thought of this idea of nonresistant parenting. It means we surrender completely to the nature of childhood developmental behavior. It doesn’t mean children hurt whoever they want, and we do nothing. It is in our mental-emotional attitude. When we see children predictably fall apart, we know new growth is on its way. We surrender to the reality of the moment without wishing it was different.

Note: I quite agree with conscious parenting, too. I discuss Dr. Shefali Tsabary’s work in the chapter, Top Five Tools to Maintain Emotional Responsibility. I don’t mean to deny that important emotional work as you ask what you are feeling when you have blind reactivity. Conscious parenting can patch up past trauma, root out your own unnecessary fears, etc. Nonresistant parenting, I think, tends to help more with the never-ending demands as you parent, when you are more irritated than enflamed, when in a state of resistance not blind reactivity.

Nonresistant Parenting

In the past, whenever I’ve tried to describe my style of parenting, I’ve always come up short on what it exactly is. I don’t really like Positive Parenting. This word positive can be seriously abused. Positive parenting is still authoritarianism. People are still trying to transform a child. It’s just done positively. I am also uncomfortable with Gentle Parenting. I support being non-punitive and emotionally validating, but given the work I do, documenting children’s misbehavior, I’ll be the first to tell you that parenting is not always gentle. Children can hit, growl, attack, etc. While I advocate that we deal with it non-punitively, I wouldn’t call the situation or our reaction to it gentle. I worry it gives the wrong impression or hints that you are bad if you can’t be gentle in these situations, when the situation otherwise really does call for swift, no-nonsense action. I support Attachment Parenting in that it focuses on the relationship between parent and child, but even their literature is filled with being the alpha parent.

I am much more radical than any of this in how much I lean into, flow with, and even mine child behavior. I kept coming back to Nonpunitive Parenting. It’s the closest that could describe what I do. It is the absence of punishment. But I didn’t like it because it’s not a proactive thing. It’s a negative; it’s what I don’t do. And yet it really was the best way I could describe it.

Since finding this idea from Tolle that joy is in fact the removal of negative (toxic) influence, I am much more settled about describing proper parenting in terms of what I don’t do. A lot of good parenting is in what we don’t do. Except in reading Tolle, I can take it one step further: from nonpunitive to nonresistant parenting. And that was the issue the whole time. It’s an entire attitude of how to approach parenting, not just the removal of punishment. It’s how we speak, act, and how we are when with our children. Pushing it from nonpunitive to nonresistant takes it to that level.

Swift, Thorough Surrender

I believe this work has acted to help parents surrender to their child’s behavior. Countless have told me that my work has brought them patience. I document when the demanding (irritable) portion of the milestone starts—and when it ends. When their child hits a milestone, a parent can think, Oh my. This is really hard. My child wants me ALL day. But I know that it is a stage. The hardest part will be over in a few days.

Personally, I found even I had to make a huge mental adjustment for some of the milestones. I document them, and yet it often took me about a half of a day to finally relent that my child’s demanding behavior was my new reality. I otherwise would get irritated and upset for that half day. And this irritation is exactly what Tolle calls resistance. This is the irritation anyone feels when they won’t surrender to the reality of whatever their child is demanding.

After reading Tolle’s book, I was willing to surrender more quickly and on a more moment-by-moment basis. The best way I can describe it is what happened when a small, light bug landed on my arm once. At first, I was annoyed by it. And then I asked the question, Do I have any unnecessary unease? Within milliseconds, I let go of the irritation of the bug being on my arm. And then the bug felt good! It was a soft, fluttering sensation. I welcomed the sensation more readily. Maybe this is what it is meant to be like with children’s developmental behavior?

Since reading Tolle’s book, every single day I wake up with a sense of, Oh, hello, today. You’re beautiful. I expect the day to be a joy. Why wouldn’t it be a joy? The default is joy, ease, comfort, strength. Anything that takes me from this is temporary. I have the power, the mental ability, to just say no to all sorts of things: needless worry, social anxiety, the dread of having so many chores to do. No, I don’t say no to everything—that would be bad. But if the problem isn’t in my now, it’s not a problem. It’s insanely powerful.

With my children, the surrender is much quicker now. If they come up to me and are super demanding or whiny, it can indeed be bothersome. But I let that feeling leave me as soon as I can. Yeah, they may have been whining for a drink. But that was three seconds ago. This is now. I can very often even find the joy in whatever it is, and I can do it much quicker than before. Maybe getting a drink is a lesson on how to pour liquid into a cup, a chance to play a silly game, or whatever it is.

Maybe this whole process of misbehavior and growth is meant to be a joy? Maybe children’s demands are meant to be received as feel good baby cuddles, not annoying demands for attention? Maybe the problem is how we have set up modern life, not in children’s behavior? I’ve only ever dreamed of convincing people that this behavior is not just manageable but, on the whole, a joy. But the paradigm of nonresistant parenting makes such a thought possible.

Growth is Prewired

The idea of nonresistant parenting rests on a similar, if not the same, concept as Tolle’s idea of The Power of Now: what is amazing in our children, just like what is amazing in us, is already there. That’s the thing about this work. It’s not just a documentation of when children get out of hand, although that’s part of it. There is also amazing growth. As I study child development, I can say with full sincerity that the potential inside children, ultimately the deepest nature of who we are as humans, is so much more awe-inspiring than any ideal that we could ever instill in them.

This should relieve us of many burdens and worry. We can rest in the knowledge that our children are destined for greatness. This is even if they are temporarily blocking us from going up the stairs or not doing what is immediately asked. They have a forward moving growth that is simply there. We couldn’t stop it if we tried. We should sit back in awe of it, try to understand it, and surf it as best as possible. We do not create anything in our children. We but guide it wisely.

So nonresistant parenting has two components 1) a full surrender to the process and 2) a trust that the growth is already there.

Don’t Mold the Breed. Actualize the Potential

Truly, this work proves what so many have tried to say: human development is more like a flower that unfolds than clay to mold. Despite very good thought on this from authors, researchers, and veteran caregivers, the view that children are like clay to be molded prevails. I hope this work—which gives clear observational proof that a biologically determined apparatus that drives human mental growth in fact exists—delivers a final, utterly devastating blow to the idea that children are like clay to mold.

I don’t doubt with the right tools, scientists could find where it is wired in us to govern the start and stop of these developmental milestones. Although I have no way of knowing, it might be right next to where the start of puberty is governed, as well as menses and old age. This apparatus that drives human growth operates in a way we have never understood properly before. That aggressive and bad behavior is that very apparatus asking for its needs to be met. Our thoughts on morality have been in the way of understanding it. For the better view on child development to prevail, the educational battle needs to be pushed one level deeper. This work on child development deeply challenges our very notions of human nature itself.

Challenging Blank Slate Theory

The long-standing view of human nature is that we are born blank. The old view is not just that a person is born without knowledge, thus needs to learn, but that our emotional mechanism is blank, too.

Operating on this, it means our emotions, including our happiness, values, and subconscious reactions to the world, can be programmed.

For instance, if our philosophy on life says to value hard work, efficiency, and truthfulness, we can set our emotions (or our children’s emotions) to react to these things positively. We can control what makes us or our children happy. Emotions thus become a lightning quick barometer happily telling us we are on the right path in life.

Mary Poppins (from the original movie) sums this view up eloquently when she sarcastically sings about what Mr. Banks wants for his children,

When gazing at a graph that shows the profits up. Their little cup of joy should overflow! (A British Bank)

To which Mr. Banks, obliviously, replies, Precisely!

Or, perhaps, if we give overwhelming punishment to a child who does something bad, they will be programmed later to imagine the damage that they might cause should they do that again. In this philosophy, which utterly permeates most society, one can use a child’s own sense of shame to all but coerce them into a certain behavior.

Emotions thus become a way to get people to behave. People are now led around by the yoke of their own emotions (most often: their own sense of shame). They become happy when they should—and also filled with shame when they, also, you know, should.

This control of the inner emotional mechanism rests on the premise that all controlling paradigms rest on: fear. After all, your natural emotions might guide you to just want to lay around all day, do drugs, and steal things. We can’t have that. We need to have control over the process. The only real question, for decades, is who does the programming of this emotional mechanism—society or the individual—and what the programming should be set to. The twentieth century was dominated by people who believed in this blank slate theory, which is why it was a century of ideologies and -isms.

Towards parenting, someone like B.F. Skinner arguably had the most influence. He famously proposed the idea of using positive and negative reinforcements to compel children and adults alike into ideal behavior. Authors directly quote him when they suggest something like ignoring a child when the child is crying. They advocate this not because it might help calm you down or give the child space. They advocate it explicitly so the child is not rewarded for bad behavior. In other words, they are directly trying to program the child’s moral and emotional core. Do you like being ignored when you are painfully crying out for something? It is only blank slate theory, the idea that a child can be programmed, that could ever give rise to such an idea. Millions of people engage in parenting approaches like this, and although they may have never heard of blank slate theory, they are operating on its logical conclusions.

If a child is born blank, it means they are moldable. They are otherwise a shapeless piece of clay. Children have long been seen as little barbarians who must be civilized before it’s too late. This is our longstanding idea on human nature itself. Adults inflate with decisive grit to fulfill this important role of theirs. The result is, in some form or another, an authoritarian approach with children. We’re molding the breed.

Why Traditional Education Won’t Just Go Away

A thinker like Ayn Rand, who formalized a philosophy that she called Objectivism, i.e. objective truth, also advocated that a person is born tabula rasa—blank. She did not have the conclusions Skinner had, who said that society should push a person to be more giving, social, etc. Instead, she advocated you set your own values, and she steered those values towards being a rational person who shapes reality to fit your human needs, as is in objective alignment with your survival as a human. But she still adopted the view that a person is born blank. Leonard Peikoff, her student, writes almost shockingly about what the idea of a child being born as a blank canvas leads to in education:

The idea of education is to take a tabula rasa (someone born blank) and transform him, through a systematic process across years, into a being with the skills and aptitudes necessary to fit him for adult life. (2)

Take someone born blank and transform him. It could not be written more plainly. In this book, Teaching Johnny to Think, he blatantly says children should be seen and not heard (21). He also says that any child who isn’t capable of sitting in a class, listening to a lecture, should be sent away for therapy. It seems benevolent and wise, but in reality it’s painfully humiliating. When students are struggling, fix the approach, not the kid.

This view of a blank child engenders this approach of traditional education. In this, a child’s blank brain has knowledge poured down it, based on an adult’s sense of what is the proper content and hierarchy. No attention is given to actively monitoring the child to see how the approach is working. Those monitors, when applied correctly, would be emotional in nature. Is what we are doing with children a joy for them or is it frustrating? This is what should guide us as we parent and educate. We assume the responsibility.

In the old view, it’s built right into the philosophy that the child is blank anyway, and none of these emotional responses even matter. The emotions are seen, at best, as whim and, at worst, as manipulation. We do not let children’s emotions guide us. We steer, control, and program those emotions.

Yes: Emotional Drivers—and How!

This idea of a person being born blank is being systematically challenged by authors across all fields of science. You can’t pick up a book today without someone challenging it. In my opinion, it is the issue of our time. Dr. MacNamara writes in Rest, Play, Grow:

To further complicate matters [about thoughts on parenting], rationality and maturity have been equated with a lack of emotional expression, though few neuroscientists would support this idea today. Neuroscientists agree that the human brain has preset, hardwired emotions at birth. This view of emotion exists in stark contrast to the blank slate theory, according to which human behaviour is learned and innate and emotional drivers do not exist. Emotions have a purpose and work to do; they are meant to pack a punch and to move us in a way that aids survival and growth. (ch. 6)

This work on child development more than proves that we have emotional drivers meant to pack a punch. It is not just that we humans are born with an emotion here or there, meant to help us run from fire. There is a ravenous apparatus working in the background on behalf of the child. It itself works to develop the child’s mind, and it comes alive very frequently. It’s an entire machine, and it does the lion’s share of mental growth. The language children use to get their deepest developmental needs met is highly emotional, in fact often outright aggravating, in nature. We need to be listening to children, not controlling them. Our job as parents and educators is not to shape the child in any way. Our job is to understand this awesome machine. Every time we seek to suppress children’s misbehavior, we are also suppressing their growth.

I wrote an entire book challenging Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. I target her philosophy, but really I target any philosophical system that says humans are born tabula rasa, with a blank canvas in need of shaping. The book is Towards Liberalism: A Challenge to Objectivist Ethics.

I believe that the philosophical and moral implications that our current thinking rests on, including the role of the mind, must change for effective transformation to happen in parenting and education. In my extensive activism, I have found it is not people’s poor thinking, emotions, or irrational fears that cause them to become stubborn in their thinking. It is their entrenched moral paradigms. Their ideas on ideal human behavior make them blind to natural, positive human behavior. I see it constantly in child development research and among parents themselves. I discuss it after I outline the milestones in Section Two. I now call this inability to accept human nature as is because of a preconceived ideal Moral Bias.

This work undeniably challenges thoughts on human nature itself. Those times when children misbehave are not proof that humans are born little barbarians in need of civilizing. They are the exact place where intellectual potential lies.

Observant Parenting

There is what we humans tend to think of when we think of ourselves as humans, which focuses on the rational parts of the mind: us walking around, thinking, and communicating. And then there is an entire emotional underworld, which is where most of human life actually lives. You live there, I live there, as do our children. Our thoughts on the role of the mind itself get in the way. It affects parenting in a big way.

The Role of the Mind

Us humans have a reasoning mind, and that’s a wonderful thing. We use it to build things and create things. We can build houses, go to the moon, and make plans for Saturday night. We can mold and shape the outer world. The main problem comes when we think we can mold and shape the inner world. It means we think we can alter ourselves or others—that we can alter human nature itself.

Ayn Rand is again illustrative of the old view of the mind. From Rand, The mind leads, the emotions follow (The Romantic Manifesto 30). In this philosophy, thinking controls your emotions. Not just that you are conscious of your emotions and make reasonable decisions. The mind tells the emotions what to do: what makes you happy or sad. She writes:

Man has no choice to feel that something is good for him or evil, but what he will consider good or evil, what will give him joy or pain, what he will love or hate, desire or fear, depends on his standard of value. (The Virtue of Selfishness 31, emphasis original)

What will give you joy or pain, what you will love or hate, desire or fear, is dependent on your standard of value. You can control it. This is highly indicative of most modern, Western thought. Who needs the authentic, prewired, uncontrollable emotions that bubble up in a person—or a child? What good are these unreliable things?

This role of the mind is a very dominating one. The mind tells your emotions what to do for you. When life events hit a person, instead of recognizing that our feelings are not just valid but important feedback, we are admonished to ask, Are we being rational? According to our modern sensibilities, trusting the authentic wisdom from one’s emotions is seen as hedonism, the much-maligned intuition, or perhaps even witchcraft. It is certainly not scientific—not the way that we have defined science anyway. Our emotions may lead to total mayhem. We need to bring them into disciplined control. To do better or live better, learn to think better; learn to behave better. It is only with the idea that a person is born blank that such an idea about the mind itself comes about. If our inner core wasn’t blank—if it was more like an unmovable rock—we couldn’t dominate it.

This view of the mind dominated the twentieth century, and it’s still alive today. We’re in love with rational communication. We’re convinced we can talk out all of our problems (we can’t). When people struggle, we call on them to get up and do something. When people are in conflict, we always call on people to get louder and talk more (learn to set your boundaries!). We rarely call on people to rest and reflect, look at the bigger picture, or observe more and respect more.

I have been in countless situations where what I am doing or experiencing should warrant some basic observation from another party such that I, a child, or another person, should be treated with respect, without having to speak up so loudly. For instance, I was at a historic site once, and as I read the quotes which reminded me of my own personal struggles, my eyes welled with tears. My emotional state should have been obvious. I should have been afforded some space to just have the moment. Instead, someone was with me just kept talking and talking, completely oblivious to my emotional state. Had I, the person overwhelmed with emotions, had to respond to set my boundary, the whole moment would be lost. So, too, children should not have to protest so much to get their needs satisfied.

We need to be able to see and respect these emotions. Trauma therapists and neuroscientists tell us that we humans are biologically designed to be superior at picking up on facial expressions and emotions well. But our highly rational world tells us to distrust all this. We’re told we aren’t trained experts, or we are relying on willy nilly feelings. We’ve managed to lose a very important part of ourselves, in the name of rationality—that thing that supposedly defines us as humans!

Rational Communication is Overrated

The old view of the mind, the rational one, that enough thinking and communication can control human