“I don’t like my kid.” This statement must sound outrageous. It certainly isn’t something that should be said frivolously or even teasingly. It most certainly shouldn’t be said to any child. It might, however, be a statement that could be said to a confidant who could be of some help understanding and dealing with not liking a child. We hear these statements rather frequently from people who come to us seeking some guidance with dealing with their children. More regularly, however, we hear statements of dislike for some member of one’s family, be it child, spouse, or extended family member. Let me give you some examples of the reasons people feel these things and feel safety saying them to us in confidence. Secondly, I would like to provide some reasons for why people don’t actually like people in their families, how liking and loving are often quite disparate, and thirdly, how people might handle such feelings.
Before we get to examples, causes, and cures, I should mention that people don’t readily make such statements about their family members. Rather, they tend to simply complain about them. With a few exceptions most people come to therapists with complaints about people in their lives, very often their spouses, parents, or children, and sometimes their bosses or colleagues at work. It is always a challenge to help people understand their feelings of dislike, which is usually based on some kind of loss and concomitant hurt, but it can take months or years, if ever, for people to see their own feelings. It is hardest for people to admit that they don’t like their children, which is where we will start.
Disliking children
Consider the following stories of children that we have heard (all identifying information adjusted retaining the essence of the complaint:
- Child has molested several other children. The church the family used to attend has not allowed them to return to church, at least with this child. School has been on the alert because of the possibility of his molesting other children. He has been tested as intellectually functioning several years below his physical age
- Child of nine tends to throw a fit when he doesn’t get his way, yelling and screaming, often breaking things, and rolling on the floor. He is actually quite bright and has been tested as being intellectually far ahead of his physical years
- Child is almost completely nonverbal with anything he thinks and feels. He can be satisfactorily in his room playing on his computer for hours. He does not respond to questions or statements.
- Child steals food, so much so that her parents have had to put a lock on the fridge door and pantry to keep her from stealing food.
- Child frequently stops up the toilet with his feces and refused to deal with it. Often, he has left the toilet bowl full without telling anyone. Once, he tried to plunge the toilet without success and then used several towels to clean up the mess before hiding the dirty towels in a closet only to be found several days later by a parent.
- Child is routinely dishonest, even about very small things, so much so that she can be trusted in any way. She might lie about what she did in school, what she likes, where she went, or what she feels.
None of these children is intrinsically likable although understandably, it is hard for a parent to admit they don’t like these children despite their tendency to yell at them, demean them, punish them, and complain to us about them. We have found it helpful to help parents of difficult children to admit that they “don’t like them.” Then, this disliking tends to decrease in intensity and duration and be replaced with not liking something about the kid, perhaps most things. This can lead to appropriate encouraging and challenging children who need both. Importantly, we do not suggest saying, “I love you but I don’t like what you do” because a child cannot really distinguish between what s/he does and what s/he is.
Dislike other family members
- Man and wife couple. I regularly do an intake assessment on a couple in which I initially meet with the couple to hear what their concern is, then meet with each partner separately to gather a social history and make clinical observations, this followed by extensive psychological testing and then an interpretative session with both of them present. The couple in my mind is one where during my session with the wife, she demanded that she spend an hour talking singularly about what she determined was wrong about her husband, and wanted to continue for a second hour.
- Other couples. With few exceptions all couples complain about one another taking the forms of feeling neglected or registering complaints about the spouse
- Extended family members. This is very common, like the mother-in-law who isn’t liked, the father-in-law who intrudes on the family all time, the alcoholic family member, or perhaps just the family member who has a substantially different political or religious persuasion. These days, many people separate from extended family because one member loves Trump or hates Trump together with all that goes with these loves and hates.
- A sister who alleged that her brother molested her when she was a child. This woman later admitted that it was their father who molested her, not the brother, but she hasn’t had the wisdom and courage to apologize for her allegation
- A woman who has totally separated herself from her biological family bringing a good deal of hurt and misunderstanding to her family members. Many people have been in the same situation where one child is molested and damaged while another child is favored in the family making two people being raised in “completely different families.”
You didn’t have any choice to what family you were born. You do have a choice with whom you make friends., Certain family members may not be ones you choose as friends. Then you might find a way to keep a safe distance from family member you don’t particularly like. It is never helpful to tell family members that you don’t them, and even worse to act out your dislike of them by choosing to be with them more than you want to.
So, what are the things that have caused a person to dislike a family member, and what can be done about it? Let’s first look at the causes of disliking a family member.
Causes of disliking a family member
- Simple, if also profound differences in persuasion, values, and beliefs
- Projection of other people you dislike who are of a similar persuasion
- Long-term dislike that has not been seen and expressed, much less resolved
- Outrageous behavior that you have tolerated but not effectively tolerated
- A genuine impediment in the other person, such as intellectual, physical, or emotional that has implications for how the person engages the social world
- Envy of the other person, perhaps that s/he has something or has had opportunities that you haven’t had
- You love the person, perhaps deeply, even though you don’t like him/her. This is something that Deb and I deal with all the time. Love is blind, so the saying goes, but liking or disliking is not blind. So, we end up with blind spots that are related to the people we love.
Dealing with not liking someone in your family
- Admit to it: first to yourself and find a way to accept the fact that you may, indeed, love someone, perhaps very deeply, whom you don’t like.
- Differentiate what you like from what you don’t like. You may discover that there is a lot more that you like than what you dislike but you have fallen prey to thinking that you have to like everything about someone.
- Admit to at least one other person that you don’t like, not the person him/herself; perhaps a close confident or a therapist
- Find a way to carefully distance yourself from this person. You may never need to deal with the disliking, but you can keep a safe distance so the dislike doesn’t turn into hate or disgust, much less your saying something untoward
- Keep a safe distance, which may in terms of geography, frequency of contacts, and intensity of contacts. You may never really be able to particularly like certain family members but you can love them…at a safe distance.
- Not liking spouse is a case in its own because ideally one’s spouse or life’s partner should be a friend first, a lover second, and a partner third. Many romantic relationships begin with love and sex first and then partnership but never friendship. Making friends with a spouse is a real challenge, especially if you have been unhappy with him/her for a long time and have been tolerating them.
The more you admit to not liking someone, the less the not liking will dominate your feeling and the more you might just be able to love the person more as the not liking shrinks.