Bitch Quota and a Writing Prompt
What it is and why you should care
3 Pillars Parent Newsletter #28
By: Glenn Collins and Catherine Lynch
Dear awesome parents,
This edition applies to all your relationships, not just your kids. Enjoy!
The Bitch Quota:
What it is, and what it’s not:
No, not the pejorative B-word that’s a put-down to women. We’re using it here as a verb: “to bitch at someone”. It’s nagging, whining, and complaining at another person, usually to get them to do or not do something. We’ll be addressing the specific case of when Mom or Dad bitches at their kids - as I’m sure we’ve all done sometimes!
So what exactly is the Bitch Quota? (BQ, for those of you who love acronyms)
Bitch Quota: The amount of bitching we can do at someone on any given day before they tune you out, resist, shut down completely, or lash out.
Before we dig into the BQ and why it’s important, here’s the backstory about how this term came to be: We were eating dinner at a restaurant recently when a family came in and was seated next to us. Father, mother, and 2 kids in their early teens. When they arrived the kids were talking, smiling and laughing. They were animated and in a good mood.
Maybe something had happened earlier in the day or maybe mom thought they were being too loud. Whatever the case, she started bitching at her son as soon as they were seated.
“Stop fidgeting”, “Stop teasing your sister”, “Sit up straight”, “Stop playing with your straw”, “Put away your phone”… On and on she went. It seemed her son could do no right.
Of course we don’t know the backstory for this family - we never do when our lives briefly intersect strangers’ lives in public - but what we could clearly see was the effect her words had on the kids. Her son went from cheerful and high energy to sullen and withdrawn. From happy to be there to couldn’t wait to leave.
Beyond that however, the mom’s bitching and the son’s subsequent bad mood cast a pall over the whole family outing. Gone was the happy energy and free flowing conversation. Their meal was eaten mostly in silence.
We weren’t intentionally trying to eavesdrop, but they were less than 6 feet away and mom wasn’t trying to keep her voice down. It was impossible to miss and painful to witness. On the way home, I told Catherine that the mom’s bitching had really put a damper on a good time for the family and she quipped that the mother had exceeded her bitching quota. We shortened it to bitch quota, and thus a new term was added to our parenting lexicon.
Note: Bitching at someone doesn’t depend on the gender of the person doing the bitching. In this incident, it was a mother bitching at her son, but we’ve also witnessed dad’s bitching at their kids. We’re sure you’ve witnessed your share of bitching from both men and women too.
We generally resort to bitching we’re feeling frustrated, angry, or powerless to get our kids to do what we want: get off their device, do their homework or chores, stop fighting with a sibling, etc. The other methods we’ve tried haven’t worked and we’re at the end of our rope. We just want their behavior to change.
So we bitch at them. We try to make them feel bad so they’ll change their behavior. And it frequently works. They do what we want - even if it’s just so we’ll stop bitching at them. But here’s the problem: while bitching at our kids can get us what we want in the moment, we risk losing something far more precious: access to their heart.
Too much bitching, and they put up a wall. Shut us out. We lose influence and we’ve damaged the relationship. Remember, parenting is a very long game. We don’t want to trade short term wins for long-term negative consequences.
We get it. Sometimes time is short, or a behavior hasn’t responded to anything else, or you’ve had a bad day, or or or…. We’ve all bitched at our kids. And that’s OK. None of us are perfect - and sometimes they might even deserve it! Our goal might be to never bitch at them, but realistically we should try to keep it to a minimum. To keep it under their BQ.
4 things most people don’t realize about the BQ:
Misjudging Other’s BQ: We overestimate how much bitching we can get away with. We continue to whine, complain, and harass well after the other person’s BQ has been reached.
State of the Relationship and BQ: In general, the better the relationship, the more bitching it takes to exceed someones BQ. Conversely, the poorer the relationship, the less bitching it takes.
A Downward Spiral: Regularly exceeding a person’s BQ creates a downward spiral in the relationship: As the relationship gets worse, the BQ gets lower and lower. It gets to the point that any amount of negative interaction at all gets the other person’s hackles up even over “minor” things.
Less is More: The less bitching we do, the more effective it is when we do it. (In an ideal world everyone is so mature and responsible that bitching is never necessary :-0). Remember the boy who cried wolf? It’s kinda like that.
So now that we know what the Bitch Quota is and why it’s bad to exceed it, what can we do about it so we have a happier family, like these lovely ladies?
4 Action Steps you can take today so you don’t exceed your kid’s BQ:
Have lots of good interactions: These are deposits to the relationship bank account. They help offset the inevitable withdrawals when we have negative interactions such as bitching at them. Aim for lots of small positive interactions. A smile, a friendly greeting, or your attention when they want to tell you something. They all count and they add up.
Give more agency: Everyone needs to feel that they have a lot of say over their lives, kids included. The more agency they have, the better your relationship will be. Extra points if you give them agency before they demand it.
Have Conversations: When the urge to bitch strikes, that’s the time to ask questions (the truly curious kind, not the demanding kind) and listen to find out what’s really going on under the surface. Why they’re behaving that way.
Have more empathy: Being a kid, especially a teen, can be hard. All that we know, understand, and do as adults - they’re still trying to figure out. Give them a little grace.
We’ll be delving deeper into motivation and behavior change in future issues. It’s a big topic that’s incredibly important for parenting, involving diverse areas such as psychology, behavioral science, sociology, and neuroscience. Stay tuned!
Writing Prompt:
Have you ever gone over your Bitch Quota? What happened, and more importantly, how did you fix it? Don’t just think about this - most people discover that writing clarifies and improves their thinking.
Curiosity Corner:
Found on a roof in central Pennsylvania….anybody know who this is? He/she has no legs.
It's a crowned slug caterpillar. It will turn into a moth the color of a brown paper bag.