Sustainable Parenting | Raising Confident Kids with Positive Parenting Strategies

119. What Most Parents Get Wrong About Rude (or Angry) behavior

• Flora McCormick, LCPC, Parenting Coach

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Ever feel like nothing works when your child lashes out—no matter how calm you try to be or how many consequences you give?

Friend, you’re not alone. And you’re not doing it wrong. This weekly podcast episode is for every parent who’s felt worn down by rude words, angry outbursts, or aggressive behavior—and is craving a better way. A way that actually works and feels good in your heart.

In this short episode, we’re digging into three common mistakes that loving parents often make (through no fault of their own) when trying to manage tough behavior in kids aged 5–12. We’ll shift the lens from “my child is being mean” to “my child is missing a skill or struggling with a need”—and that shift changes everything for parent-child connection.

You’ll hear how one simple principle—all feelings are allowed, but not all actions are—became a total game-changer for one mom I worked with. We’ll explore gentle discipline strategies that hold firm boundaries without shame or yelling, and instead respond with tools that build your child’s emotional regulation and confidence.

You’ll also learn about a favorite tool called “Bugs and Wishes,” which helps kids say what’s bothering them without name-calling, aggression, or defiance. And we’ll talk about how to stop power struggles with kids and break free from the exhausting “cuckoo cycle” of commands and consequences, stepping into calm, confident parenting that lasts.

These are Positive Parenting Strategies and calm parenting tips that help you raise confident kids, improve parent-child connection, and bring more cooperation into your home. 

This is Sustainable Parenting—where you can practice kind and firm parenting, embrace parenting without yelling, and finally feel more joy and ease in everyday life.

If you’re ready for practical parenting tips & tools that actually work—and want to know how to get kids to listen while keeping your cool—press play and let’s walk this path together.

✨Want more?

✨ Schedule a FREE 20 min clarity call with Sustainable Parenting, so we can answer any questions you may have. Together, we'll make a plan for your best next steps to have more calm & confidence in parenting - while having kids that listen!:)

✨ Download the FREE pdf. on getting kids to listen, for strategies that take you out of the "gentle mom - monster mom" cycle, with effective positive parenting strategies.

✨ Sign up for an upcoming LIVE ONLINE workshop with Flora, or purchase a past replay: https://sustainableparenting.com/workshop where you get 30 min. of learning and 30 min. of LIVE Q & A time, with replays sent afterwards.

✨ Buy a 3 session Coaching Bundle (saving you $100) - for THREE 30-min sessions 1:1 with ME, where we get right to the heart of your challenges, and give you small, powerful shifts that make a huge difference fast.

Speaker 1:

Do you have a child between 5 and 12 who does things that are really rude or angry expressions that you're frustrated with and you find yourself thinking why does this not change? I feel like I have explained why this is not okay. I have set consequences when he keeps doing it, I have tried to calm him down when he is just raging in irrational ways, and nothing I seem to do makes this whole thing better. Friend, if this is familiar for you, today is the episode that will help give you strategies to correct what most people get wrong about rude and angry behavior in our kids. Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast. Let me tell you, friend, this place is different. We fill that gap between gentle parenting and harsh discipline that's really missing to parent with kindness and firmness at the same time and give you the exact steps to be able to parent in ways that are more realistic and effective and, for that reason, finally feel sustainable. Welcome, and Brent, I can't wait to share with you today the secrets about the red light, green light method, bugs and wishes and the iceberg of angry behavior. Let's get started. So, friend, there are three main things that people often get wrong about angry, aggressive behavior, and we're going to clear that up today so that you can have better results of behavior actually changing and back to more enjoyment of your child, because for sure this takes away our enjoyment and can even get us in a mental space of saying I don't like my kid.

Speaker 1:

I think of a client, who I'll name Jessica, who I just met with yesterday and is such a loving, grounded, soulful mama. She's one of those women. As you listen to her you just feel her groundedness and yet she has been feeling often very chaotic and out of control and anxious when her child is so rude and angry because she has not found a way that changes that behavior and it's very upsetting to her nervous system. It's this conflict she shares between wanting to allow the anger, because in her childhood anger was not allowed, but also wanting to enjoy her child and also there's some amount of like protecting the relationship between dad and the two boys, because there's conflict there around the lack of more respectful behavior and it's dysregulating everyone. So how do we both allow anger and also preserve a space that's harmonious and respectful to everyone? You know, in positive discipline.

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One of the tenants that I follow that I love is it's grounded in the concept that we must be parenting in ways that are respectful to both the child and ourselves. There's a saying that boundaries healthy boundaries are the distance at which I can love both you and me at the same time. So that's what this is about, right? This is why it's an important, positive parenting strategy to be able to hold healthy boundaries when our kids are angry.

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And here's what I want you to think about. I want you to think of the tenant that comes from how to talk so kids will listen and listen, so kids will talk. That all feelings are allowed, but certain actions must be limited. That's what I was just going into with Jessica yesterday in our session. Is that's the clarity this conflict she was having? There doesn't need to be conflict. You can do both and both at the same time. Doesn't have to be a, but it's a. I can allow you to feel your feelings and I can hold boundaries that you won't express them rudely to me. What does that look like that in how to talk so kids will listen, listen, so kids will talk.

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The book says all feelings are allowed. Certain actions must be limited, and as I talked this through with Jessica yesterday, I saw her take a deep breath and just she said with her words then, with a sigh of relief oh, that's what I've been missing. I kind of felt like it was one or the other, either being, you know, reflective, in a gentle parenting way, of my child's feeling and allowing them to feel anger, or I was shutting them down if I were to hold boundaries. I said, no, we can do both. We can allow and support feelings and hold boundaries. And something I want to mention here, if you want to follow up more on this idea, is to check out episode 84, which was titled tell your kids where they can hit, scratch or scream, which was this wonderful development that we went into with another client of mine I'll name Carrie, who it would. That was the game changer to be able to say to her child you are allowed to scream and and scratch. If you need to do that, go in your bedroom, you can scratch your stuffies, you can scream into your pillow, and so more elaboration on that and what that looks like is an episode 84. Side note, I recently did a workshop on this topic and if you'd like to purchase the replay of the full curriculum, you can do so. It was a 30 minute education and 30 minute question answer time from real parents. Live with me. You can do so at sustainableparentingcom slash workshop. That's also a place where you can find the next upcoming workshops, where you could be live with me learning and asking questions.

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But for today, friend, I want to talk about what we're mostly getting wrong with rude, aggressive behavior. The first thing that I see many parents get wrong is seeing it as intentional meanness. I will have parents that come to me and because this has become a pattern of behavior and because they're starting to get in a mindset of almost just not liking their kid because of how it triggers their own buttons, they can start believing titles like he's just mean, he just likes to bully or he's a bully. I have heard parents call their child those names, not even realizing that they're name calling, and this is an important shift in a mindset. I know you may say I know I don't think he's a bully, but it's just something that comes out. No, the words we use are indications of the beliefs we're holding and the beliefs we're holding impact the ways we behave.

Speaker 1:

So if we see that our child is their behavior is about them being mean or a bully, we are not going to be responding as effectively. Instead, I want us to be wise parents that know that the actions of rude and aggressive behavior are really instead, typically about lagging skills or unsolved problems Lagging skills of how to more maturely express their emotion and manage their emotions, or unsolved problems of things where we're not having routines cleared up, we're not being clear about what's expected of them. So of course, we're seeing this like anger and rudeness because they're not in the know and we haven't solved the problem of having more clarity of what's expected. So we need to shift from thinking that they're just rude or mean or a bully. And it's like if I could draw for you a picture of an iceberg, we'd see that that behavior is just on the tip and underneath the surface is either a lagging skill or an unmet need or an unsolved problem. And this is one of the things that I love to clear up for folks in our work in parent coaching, and so we can get into those nuances. If you're looking for someone to help you personally, you know, unpack that and figure out what your child's unmet need or lagging skills are. Absolutely, remember, you can always go to the bottom of the show description and click the link there for us to have a free clarity call. But let's move on.

Speaker 1:

The second and third things. I want you to know that most parents get wrong about rude, aggressive behavior. Are this Number two forgetting to teach a replacement. We forget to teach a replacement behavior, which means if we're just focused on the red light, we are missing the chance to do the green light. What does this look like? Often we're telling kids when they're rude and aggressive, you can't do that. That is not appropriate. That is not acceptable. You can't talk to me that way. But are we giving a replacement Like?

Speaker 1:

One of my favorite replacements is the bugs and wishes template, especially for kids under about eight. They love this. The chance that if you're mad, you can say to someone it bugs me when you do this. The chance that if you're mad, you can say to someone it bugs me when you do this. And I wish that you would do that. Bugs and wishes. But like? Do they land on the planet knowing that's how to express themselves? No, they just say he's mean, he's annoying, he's stupid. That's what comes out that, not because they're a mean kid, but because we haven't taught the replacement.

Speaker 1:

So I call that the green light. The red light is when we're telling them what not to do. But oh my goodness, we get so much farther if we make sure we are always pairing that with the green light, the instead. Here's what I want to see you do instead, and you can get more on that in episode 97, gentle discipline. How to be firm, not punitive, to redirect behavior. So two main things that people are often getting wrong about rude and aggressive behavior First, seeing it as intentional meanness when really it's a lagging skill or an unsolved problem or unmet need. Number two, forgetting to teach the green light replacement behavior. And three, focusing on punishment, hoping that that will really change things.

Speaker 1:

This is what I call the cuckoo cycle. Parents often with rude behavior get in just commands and consequences. They're explaining what they want them to do differently, with gentle parenting in mind, wanting to make sure they're parenting without yelling. They're doing a lot of explaining of what's not allowed and then when that doesn't work, they end up flipping over to the opposite and get to a place of yelling. And when we want to do parenting without yelling, it's important to shift from the cuckoo cycle of just commands and consequences being threatened to what I call the CEO steps. So much more effective, so much more connected and fun and playful.

Speaker 1:

As a mom this morning that I just had a clarity call with said, it's like I find that I'm just throwing out these consequences as my first way to respond when they don't listen, and then it's like I'm doing that all the time and there's no joy in my time with my kid and so I don't know what else to do. I'm trying to hold better boundaries, suffer with a purpose as you talk about Flora, but I think I'm missing something, and I said you are my friend. What's missing is you're still stuck in the cuckoo cycle commands, consequences that's why I call it cuckoo commands, consequences, the beginning letters, and instead we want to elaborate your tool belt with CEO, and I do that in my three month program that is just starting the new cohort in August, so be sure to reach out to us if you'd like to be on that wait list, and there's a link in the show notes as well. So we don't want to just focus on punishments. We want to have more tools in the tool belt, things that are involving connection, things that are involving ways to encourage cooperation with playfulness, and there are many other episodes where we have dug into those topics as well.

Speaker 1:

So, friend, those three things are the ones that I often see people getting wrong the most.

Speaker 1:

And one final thing I'll say as a bonus is that we've got to address the problem in the right moment, and many parents tell me what they get wrong is trying to change behavior in the angry, expressive moment, trying to control it when the child has flipped their lid and are in an emotional place where they're not able to respond to much reasoning, and we're not going to get very far with that. So again, if you'd like all the tips and tools related to this and the three main replacement options, please check out the replay that you can purchase at sustainable parentingcom slash workshop. But I hope that these three reminders of what to shift will get you in a starting place of at least decreasing the errors that you have possibly been making in moments of rude or aggressive behavior, to help you to parent with kindness and firmness at the same time. So parenting finally feels sustainable. Join us next week as we're going to talk about proven ways to decrease negative thinking errors in your child.