Communicate Your Expectations or Shut Up About Them Not Being Met

How to Avoid Raising Chain Creators Series

I hear parents complain about their children's behavior all the time, and sometimes I genuinely want to ask one question: Did you actually tell the child what you expected them to do? Because apparently we've decided children arrive on this planet with an employee handbook. They don't. Your four-year-old has been alive for four years. Your six-year-old has six years of experience being a human being. That's it. They're learning how conversations work, how emotions work, how relationships work, how consequences work, how public spaces work, how disagreements work, and about a thousand other things we adults take for granted because we've been doing this shit for decades.

Yet somehow, parents expect children to know rules nobody bothered to explain, and then get angry when they break them. How the hell is that supposed to work? If you want your child to behave a certain way in a restaurant, explain your expectations before you walk into the restaurant. If you're going shopping, tell them what the plan is before you enter the store. If you're visiting someone's house, explain what you expect while you're there. If you're getting into the car, communicate what needs to happen while you're driving. That's parenting. You're teaching a human being how to navigate situations they've barely experienced.

When my children were little, I had a very simple rule while I was driving: I needed them to be relatively quiet because I needed to concentrate. I didn't expect them to figure that out. I told them. If they needed something while I was driving, they could tell me. I would thank them for letting me know and ask them to wait until I could safely handle whatever they needed. There was no mystery. They knew what I expected, and more importantly, they knew why.

One time, when three of my children were approximately eight, six, and three, they started arguing in the car and wouldn't stop. We made it home safely, and instead of simply punishing them for fighting, I decided they needed to understand why I had made that rule in the first place. I sat them down and told them I was going to show them what could happen when a parent becomes distracted by children fighting in the back seat.

I showed them a video depicting a mother trying to deal with her children while driving. She became distracted, lost control of the vehicle, went off the road, and the vehicle rolled. Everyone survived, but they were injured. Afterward, I asked my children how they felt, and their response mattered. They didn't know that could happen. Of course they didn't. Why would they? They were children.

So I reassured them that I would always do everything I could to drive safely, and I explained that I needed their help. Being quiet and handling disagreements appropriately while I was driving helped me keep everyone safe. I hugged them, we had lunch, and then we sat down and talked about something else they needed to learn: the difference between arguing and having a debate. Because telling a child what they shouldn't do isn't enough. If you don't want screaming, teach communication. If you don't want hitting, teach children what to do with anger. If you don't want constant arguments, teach disagreement. If you want honesty, create an environment where telling the truth is handled respectfully. If you want respect, demonstrate what respect looks like.

My children never fought in the car again. Even more interesting, they eventually helped teach my youngest why being quiet while Mom was driving mattered. They hadn't simply memorized a rule. They understood it. There is a massive difference between “Don't do that because I said so” and “Here's what I need from you, here's why it matters, and here's what you can do instead.” One approach demands obedience to authority. The other teaches understanding, responsibility, communication, and eventually self-regulation.

And before somebody starts screaming about children needing discipline, yes, children need discipline. Discipline and respectful communication aren't enemies. Children need structure. They need boundaries. They need consequences. They need adults willing to say no. They also need adults capable of explaining expectations instead of expecting children to read their damn minds. Respect doesn't mean your five-year-old gets an equal vote on whether bedtime exists. It means you recognize that the five-year-old is still a human being.

This becomes especially interesting when we talk about the Golden Rule because parents LOVE teaching children to treat others the way they want to be treated. Wonderful. Now explain why some adults apparently believe that rule doesn't apply to children. Would you want someone screaming at you because you misunderstood an expectation they never communicated? Would you want your boss punishing you for violating a policy nobody told you existed? Would you want your partner saying, “You should have known what I wanted”? Would you accept someone interrupting you, dismissing your feelings, refusing to explain themselves, and then demanding that you respect them? Probably not. Yet adults sometimes do precisely those things to children and call it parenting.

Children learn relationships by participating in relationships. Their earliest relationships teach them what communication feels like, what conflict looks like, what authority sounds like, how mistakes are handled, how boundaries work, and what they should expect from people who claim to love them. That's where this connects to The Chain Creation Theory™. If repeated adult patterns can be traced backward through earlier experiences, then parenting deserves serious attention because childhood is where an enormous number of those first experiences happen.

We're creating links through patterns. Every interaction doesn't become some catastrophic childhood trauma, and that's never been my argument. Repeated experiences, however, teach. If a child repeatedly learns that disagreement gets them screamed at, that's information. If they repeatedly learn that saying no gets them punished, that's information. If they repeatedly learn that adults don't have to respect boundaries because adults have authority, that's information. If they repeatedly learn that expectations remain unspoken until they violate them, that's information. Children eventually carry that information forward, and some of those lessons can become links in the chains they carry into adulthood.

That's precisely why I'm calling this series How to Avoid Raising Chain Creators. We're never going to raise perfect children because there are no perfect parents. I certainly wasn't one. But we can become more conscious about the links we're helping create, and one of the easiest places to start is communication. Tell children what you expect. Explain expectations in language appropriate for their age. Tell them why something matters. Give them an opportunity to ask questions. Teach them what to do when they're angry, confused, overwhelmed, disappointed, or simply disagree with you.

When they make mistakes, remember that you're dealing with someone who is still learning how to be a person. We keep saying we want children to grow into adults who communicate well, establish healthy boundaries, respect other people, regulate their behavior, think critically, and maintain healthy relationships. Great. Then we have to teach those things while they're children. You can't demand the finished product while refusing to participate in the construction.

Children understand far more than we sometimes give them credit for. Talk to them, explain things, listen to them, and respect them. For the love of everything good, stop expecting children to magically know rules you've been keeping inside your own damn head. Communicate your expectations, or shut up about your expectations not being met.

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