New book takes on the culture of kids bullying their parents

NEW YORK -- There's a difference in parenting between a little back talk and children actually bullying adults.

Parent and family therapist Sean Grover writes in a new book, "When Kids Call the Shots," it would have been unthinkable a generation or two ago for children to bully their parents without consequences, yet today everyone knows a parent who is bullied.

By that, he means the terrible twos that turn into the terrible tweens that turn into the terrible teens that become the terrible college years.

Turning that around, he said in a recent interview, means coming up with new strategies but also unpacking your own baggage in the esteem, resentment, shame, fear and anxiety compartments of your past.

It isn't pretty, but letting go of old tactics -- surrendering, punishing, negotiating -- is a positive step.

Grover, in Manhattan, offers readable bites of advice, case studies from his 20 years working with families and personal stories of his own trials as the father of two girls, now 12 and 15.

While parent bullying can occur at younger ages, he focuses on adolescents as he urges parents to end patterns of unhealthy conflict, caving to bullying or bullying back.

His tips cover parents and their children, including better vigilance of possible auditory processing disorders, dyslexia and other undiagnosed issues that may affect learning and behavior and increase anxiety, frustration and anger all around.

The book, from AMACOM, the publishing arm of the American Management Association, was released in early June. A conversation with Sean Grover:

AP: How does this kind of bullying begin?

Grover: It's been around a long time in child development, really, but it just didn't have that name. The prime reason for it is a backlash against the authoritative parenting of the past.

People make these vows that they're never going to be that punishing or that way with their kids. Today, parents go too far in the other direction. They want to be their kids' friends; they're afraid of their children, of losing their child's affection.

It's not unusual for a guidance counselor or a school psychologist to take me aside when I'm doing a workshop and say, "This is a huge problem we don't know how to address." Children are bullying their parents, and they bring that culture into the classroom with their peers or their teacher.

AP: Are these behaviors out of control?

Grover: What has changed are the parenting models -- how people are responding to their children. A lot of parents come to me burned out, or their relationships are really on the rocks.

They begin to relive their own childhood in some way, so it's a mess of internal space that's hard to navigate.

The difference is not that child development has changed, but the evolution of parenting.

AP: So there's more guilt-prone, anxiety-fueled, fix-everything parenting today? Are we failing by allowing ourselves to be bullied?

Grover: Absolutely there's more. I think we may be stumbling. I'm not sure about failing.

You get into a strange situation where the less parents provide things like structure and boundaries, like in the past, the more kids begin to act up.

They're unconsciously waving flags: "Will you do something over here, please?"

It's this crazy dance where kids will push their parents until they set a limit, and once they do, things settle down quickly.