Why was my daughter's reaction so intense?

Why was my daughter’s reaction so intense?

My daughter is in high school, recuperating at home due to illness. At noon today when discussing what to eat, my daughter said she was tired of eating outside and told me to cook for her to eat. After being silent for a moment, she said she was hungry and couldn’t wait, so might as well have instant noodles.

I said okay, I’ll make noodles for you.

I thought cooking would be healthier, and I could add eggs, so I took the initiative to cook a bag of noodles for her. As soon as the noodles were cooked, my daughter came over and saw I had cooked them, and immediately started hysterically yelling at me, asking why I had cooked them again.

I said I thought cooking would be faster, what’s the difference between one bowl of noodles?

Crying and sobbing, she yelled at me saying this isn’t just about the time difference between cooking and instant noodles right? Yesterday when you asked me what to eat, I sent you the recipe for braised beef rice, and said to just make it according to the recipe. But you didn’t listen, you just had to do things your way, it’s not tasty!! It’s really not tasty!! You didn’t even say if you were using beef shank or beef brisket. We don’t have beef shank at home (she had used it up last week making braised beef rice herself), you should have asked Dad to buy it!! You always do everything according to your own ideas, and I found out you “lied” to me about this after it happened - is this a small matter? Is this a small matter?

She cried for a long time.

Lately my daughter has been throwing temper tantrums over various seemingly trivial things. Is this a small matter, or an accumulation of things? What is her mental state?

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Actually, you’ve discovered that people are more easily dissatisfied and prone to complaints the more they are served, especially when the service is freely given and bestowed. What do people complain about the most?

Guess:

— it’s the weather. Right?

The weather is free for everyone, so anyone can complain about it!

The freer something is, the lower the cost of complaining.

When do people not complain? It’s when they personally pay a lot of money to purchase services.

Why can you loudly talk to the waiters in street side restaurants but be very polite when eating at a Michelin three-star restaurant?

Why do you nitpick and scrutinize when buying vegetables at the market but act scared and respectful when casually window shopping at luxury brand stores?

Why? Because when enjoying free services, people think everything is their right, and may even feel that others owe them. But when they spend money themselves, they want to feel that it’s worth the cost, and even if the goods or services are subpar, they’ll swallow it like pulling out teeth.

This is actually a very common psychological mechanism - after spending money, people want to convince themselves it wasn’t spent in vain. But the way they convince themselves is not through objective evaluation of the quality of goods/services - rather, they will subjectively embellish and give bonus points to it.

The more money spent, the higher bonus points they will give and the more difficult it is to acknowledge shortcomings. This psychological mechanism is essentially how people adjust themselves in response to “cognitive dissonance”, an instinctual self-protection. When one realizes a contradiction between their attitude and actions, they will unconsciously correct this contradiction.

Regarding purchasing services, since they cannot objectively change the fact that high-priced services were purchased, they can at least help adjust their perception subjectively.

There are many similar examples - for example, beef prepared by your wife is likely not as fragrant as that from a Michelin restaurant.

Experiments have also shown that placebo pills deemed more expensive have better “effects” than cheaper ones. There are countless such examples.

This is one of the reasons why people often lose temper and complain towards loved ones - because loved ones provide many things for free, and these free things are taken for granted when received but realized as extremely precious when lost, and one finds that besides their loved ones, no one else can give them such things.

Hence many parents do not understand - how come the children are still dissatisfied and complain everyday despite all they’ve done for them? The answer is precisely that they’ve done too much, the more done the more mistakes, the more done the bigger the resentment.

Of course this does not mean parents should neglect their children. But they must understand people have this psychological mechanism - if they want non-complaining children and harmonious parent-child relationships, they have to cultivate the children’s sense of service while freely providing - they cannot let the children only be served but should also teach them to serve others.

Only when the children learn to serve others and become servers themselves will they realize the true value within those “free things”. In fact parents only need to let the children do small things they are capable of. Help with laundry, tidying up, meal prep, dishwashing - who doesn’t know dishwashers will exist later? But is washing dishes really about teaching skills? No, it’s about nurturing a sense of responsibility and contribution.

If parents truly cannot bear to let children work or objectively they are too busy with studies, another approach is to enroll them in team sports - basketball, football, volleyball teams, bands, orchestras. In teams people need to contribute and serve each other - at least teammates have to serve each other, there’s no free rides or expectations to be pampered. These plans should be implemented as early as possible.

Don’t use homework as an excuse - everyone needs to learn empathy, tolerance and understanding through work and service to others. If parents do not teach this, letting society and future families teach will not be a pleasant experience. By then if the children complain, it will be truly irreparable.