This is a complex topic to address. I think my self-righteous and judgemental SD's (26&28) punish because it gives them a sense of power and control. They learned from BM who is the queen of attempted manipulative and punishing behavior, not only towards DH and I, but that is her way of being in the world in general.

SD's feel justified in their punishments, especially towards me. They seem to be feeling somewhat guilty on being so cruel towards DH.
Although, being nicer to him and nasty to me is likely a form of triangulation/manipulation rather than true reform or understanding of themselves. 

Now that they are adults OSD has taken over the role of queen Diabla on behalf of BM with YSD falling not far behind. 

I have also read about how babies prefer people that are similar to themselves, not only in appearance but also in language. Babies show preference towards people that speak their own language without an accent. It's very interesting to understand. This preference doesn't stop after baby-hood ends either. 

IMO it requires a higher level social intelligence to overcome these bias'. That is what separates us from the monkeys. We can use higher consciousness to understand that being different doesn't signal a threat. 

BM and SD's are primitive thinkers. 

I am learning to notice my own feelings and emotional reactions (without judgement) to how the SD's are. This helps to de-escalate my own internal reactions to them. There is no need to internalize, invest emotionally or take it personally in how uncomfortable and weird it is to deal with them. They created and continue to maintain toxic, negative interactions  and that is on them, not me. I recognize and release. 

I find that the zero-tolerance model does not take much time or effort. It just takes zero tolerance for any deviation from the test of reasonableness that we set, and the application of instant behavior modifying consequence.  Each person and each situation have variables in how this is structured and applied.  If they have the TV or music up to loud, they are asked to turn it down.  If they refuse, then the music is turned off and they no longer can enjoy the music.  Until the next time when hopefully they learned something from the previous action/lesson cycle.  Adapt the result to the behavior.  Positive performance begets positive results.  Converselely, negative performance begets negative results.  Fine tune through the lather, rinse, repeat process.  In my wirehead engineeric brain, it is the application of control system design and tuning to human choices.  Filtering out either over or under damped conditions so that the behavioral elevator arrives at the correct destination safely and comfortably without either slamming people through the roof  or floor when it crashes to a stop. Which it is the goal of the design to avoid.

It is not a commitment to negative; it is a commitment to putting ourselves, our marriage, our partnership, our own quality of life, and raising kids to viable reasonable adulthood above that of those who violate the standards of reasonableness. It is they that choose to violate the standards.

At my core I would classify myself as a pleaser. For far too long that put me at a distinct disadvantage to those who recognized that my go to was to be nice and accommodating.  It took a number of years of being taken advantage of for me to get to my limit and to start drawing the enough is enough line and putting the behaviors of others firmly on their shoulders rather than accommodating their choices on my shoulders.

I find that this frees up the overwhelming majority of my life to be very positive.  They can join me in being positive, or not. Their choice.

However, if they choose to cross the boundary into the realm of unreasonable, it is instantly game on.  Which takes very little effort to invoke and far more often than not sends them very quickly cringing back under their rock to contemplate how things turned out for them.

For young-uns, it is much harder on me to highlight the boundary, explain the problem and apply the consequence than it is with adults or proto-adults.  Though I find it much easier to put the behaviors of children on the shoulders of their failed parents while directly correcting the behavior in near real time. Or better yet, in real time.   Even when there is a toxic side and a positive side, when these types of kids ply their noxiousness, it is the failure of their parents.

Regarding bullying.  IMHO there is an intent element to bullying that differentiates it from poor decisions or occasional poor behavioral choices. In my mind, bullying has a focused and considered element to it that is not driven by the actions of someone else.  Consequences on the other hand, are in response to a choice that someone makes.

Yes, my usual oversimplified pragmatism.

The reasons why people choose to behave as they do at any given time are potentially just about infinite. That is why I find it far simpler to just focus on what they chose to do Vs why they may have chosen to do it.  If they choose well then no issue. Whatever their reason(s) may be, their choices are theirs.

Hopefully kids arrive at a place of successful adulthood without too many painful experiences and have evolved past whatever baggage they are raised with to be reasonable adults who behavior respectfully toward themselves and others.  To be nice, until it is time not to be nice when others deviate from the realm of being respectful and reasonable.

All IMHO of course.

Last edited by Rags (11/11/2025 8:23 pm)