In which I learn a new term and offer an unpopular opinion

And what is this term? Rage baiting. I read it for the first time yesterday and have suddenly seen it in numerous places. The concept is pretty obvious. An entity does something to elicit feelings of rage in someone. The more simplistic definition is something done on purpose to enrage another. These are not quite equivalent definitions as you will see.

The place I came across the term yesterday was a parenting video with the parent claiming their children were rage baiting them. It rubbed me the wrong way then, and continues to do so as I have mulled it over since. 

Here's the unpopular opinion: We adults are responsible for our actions. A child can't actually make you do something, such a become enraged. This is also the abuser's line, as in, "You made me do it." It's a cop out. 

Calling a child (and I include young teens in that, too) a rage baiter tells me a couple of things about the adult using that term. It says they are unaware of their own emotional state and have a lack of  emotional regulatory ability. It also tells me they are expecting adult emotional responses from an immature brain. And I might also suspect that they are using traditional, consequence-based parenting strategies that are doing nothing positive and instead are exacerbating the whole situation. 

When it comes right down to it, by the time you have a parent accusing a child of rage baiting, you have probably already entered into insanity parenting. That's my own term for parents who do firmly hold to a consequence-based approach that they cannot see that it is part of the problem. Doing it more, better, harder, longer is not going to create positive changes. If it were, it would have worked long ago. (I've been there and done that. I know what I'm talking about.) 

Any time we start blaming a child for our own anger it is a huge red flag. It says you are not longer on your child's team. It says you have unrealistic expectations. It says you're emotionally out of touch with what you are really experiencing. And it probably says you care more for how you think parenting works than how your child needs you to parent. Because it is hard to say you're wrong, because it is hard to do things differently from the culture around you, because it can be difficult to let go of your fantasies about how family life should look, it can be very difficult to change. Until the parent changes, the child doesn't have a chance. 

Told you this would be unpopular. 

But there is hope. I've lived it. Hurt or struggling children do not do things to their parents because they are in some sort of power trip. They behave how they are because it is the only way of expressing the fear, frustration, and shame they are experiencing. Behavior is communication. Don't mistake the message to have anything to do with you, the parent. Find the hurt, address it, and the behaviors will disappear because they are no longer needed. Its that simple and that difficult. 

But the very short version? Beware when a person with more power blames the person with less power for making them feel something negative. It is a big red flashing sign that something is wrong with the power paradigm.