February 19, 2025 • 13 mins
In this episode, I introduce the concept of ADULTHOOD BIAS —the tendency for adults to forget what it was like to be a child, who does not possess rational thought or abstract reasoning until about age 12. This bias causes frustration when kids act impulsively, give one-word answers, or behave in ways that don’t make sense from an adult perspective. Children don’t think or reason the way adults do; they react emotionally and live in the moment. When we expect them to process situations like we do, we set ourselves up for unnecessary struggles.
I explain how recognizing adulthood bias can help parents respond differently—validating feelings instead of dismissing them, setting limits when necessary, and improving communication. By shifting our perspective, we can better connect with our kids and support their emotional development. If you’ve ever been confused by your child’s behavior, this episode will help you see it through a new lens.
Ask Me Questions: Call (813) 812-5525, or email: brenna@thekidcounselor.com
Podcast HQ: https://www.playtherapyparenting.com/
My Newsletter Signup: https://www.playtherapyparenting.com/newsletter/
My Podcast Partner, Gabb Wireless: https://www.playtherapyparenting.com/gabb/
Common References:
Landreth, G.L. (2023). Play Therapy: The Art of the Relationship (4th ed.). Routledge.
Bratton, S. C., Landreth, G. L., Kellam, T., & Blackard, S. R. (2006). Child parent relationship therapy (CPRT) treatment manual: A 10-session filial therapy model for training parents. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
You're listening to the
Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
Hi,
I'm Dr. Brenna Hicks,
The Kid Counselor.
This is the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast where I give you insight,
awareness,
and enlightenment about your parenting
and your relationship with your kids.
In today's episode,
I would like to present.
(00:23):
A new term or a phrase,
if you will,
to help us better understand
why it is difficult to relate to our kids sometimes.
And not relate to them relationally necessarily,
not relate to them
in some familial kind of way,
but to really understand what's going on for them and why
(00:44):
they do and say the things that they do and say.
There's often a disconnect and so many times
parents get frustrated
that
Quote,
I talk to my kid
and nothing happens.
I ask my kid questions and I get one word answers.
My kid just does the most random things
and there's absolutely no explanation for it.
(01:06):
If those phrases sound familiar or you say them on a semi frequent basis,
the phrase that
we've come up with
to describe this
is adulthood bias.
And I wanna dive into that a little bit today
because I think this will shed a lot of light
and give a lot of perspective
on why sometimes things just don't make sense to us
(01:29):
and that we often look at what goes on in a normal everyday scenario with our children
and it's just confusing and annoying
what goes on
but that's driven by our adulthood bias so.
Here's what we know.
Let's go back to early podcast episodes.
We know that kids aren't rational.
(01:50):
We have talked about that a lot.
When we grasped that concept.
That should influence a lot of our interactions.
But because of adulthood bias.
We often forget.
That
we are cognitive,
we are rational,
we have abstract reasoning,
(02:12):
we are processing things intellectually,
and they are not.
They are here and now,
emotionally driven.
Experiential beings.
So this is where adulthood bias gets in the way,
because uh,
you know,
your kid
gets really angry and kicks the wall and leaves a hole in the drywall.
(02:38):
Why in the world would you do that?
What were you thinking? why? you know better,
what is going on?
Those are all very rational,
intellectual,
reason-based questions.
And here's the truth,
if the child were thinking
or reasoning or rationalizing anything,
they wouldn't have kicked the wall and left a hole in it,
(03:00):
but they weren't.
See,
here's the interesting
dynamic that we tend to forget.
We,
we
were kids once.
We know
that
we were once childlike.
We once experienced childhood just like our children do.
And we were exactly like them.
But we have forgotten what that's like,
(03:23):
because we now possess the capacity to reason.
We now possess the capacity to be rational.
So therefore,
look,
if we get back to our
innate instincts,
we wanna kick something sometimes too.
We want to put our fists through drywall sometimes too.
We wanna throw something sometimes too,
(03:43):
and you know what,
let's be really real,
a lot of adults still do.
So this is not something that we just automatically
escape as soon as we become an adult.
Some adults still react that way.
Their emotions still drive everything they do and they
don't have abstract reasoning get involved at all.
So there are adults that very much behave in those ways,
(04:06):
but if our abstract reasoning
overrides our desire to just emotionally express how we're feeling,
We
have totally forgotten that kids live there all the time.
So when a child kicks the wall and puts a hole through it
or
(04:27):
throws the Hot wheels and it leaves a dent somewhere,
or they push their sibling and their sibling falls over and cuts their knee.
Or whatever the scenario is.
We forget
that they didn't think about any of those decisions.
They acted
on emotional impulse.
(04:49):
I'm angry,
I push.
I'm frustrated,
I throw.
I'm upset,
I kick.
It is 100% experienced emotion,
feeling driven.
No brain engagement whatsoever.
Developmentally appropriately,
we cannot fault them for that.
(05:09):
We cannot expect it of them
until around 12 or 13,
they're not able to do it.
So,
adulthood bias
is something we need to keep in check
because while we were kids once
we've forgotten,
but we do possess the capacity
to go back and meet kids and their emotions.
(05:31):
Kids do not possess the ability to come up and meet us in our thought.
So this is a one way street here.
We have to go down to them.
And adulthood bias is what keeps us from doing it
because we treat them like small adults.
Actually,
I have an online community for child-centered play therapists,
(05:53):
and we were posting about this kind of a
related topic in these last couple of weeks and
my husband acknowledged that Doctor Phil
was the one who kind of coined the phrase,
you're not raising children,
you're raising mini adults.
That is
the most uninformed sentence that has ever come out of
a psychologist's mouth,
(06:14):
in my opinion.
And I'm not saying that to be critical of Doctor Phil.
He works with adults and so,
you know,
maybe he doesn't really fully understand childhood and,
and age appropriate behavior.
We're not raising mini adults.
They're not adults,
they're children.
Until the age of 18,
they are still in their childhood years and until the age of 12 or 13,
(06:36):
they don't even possess the
cognitive development.
To even get halfway to thinking like an adult.
So we are not raising mini adults,
we are raising children,
and children are emotional,
and children experience things and they feel things.
And their brain
(06:58):
is shut off.
And we can't expect them to change that.
They're not able to change it.
So every time we ask a child a question.
And get I don't know or in one or a one word answer,
that's a reminder of our adulthood bias.
Every time we watch our child do something that's completely irrational,
(07:19):
completely impulsive,
completely crazy,
completely confusing.
That's our adulthood bias kicking in.
If we could remember what it's like to be a kid.
Kids just do things because they feel like they want to do them.
They have no ability to say,
well,
you want to jump into that recycling bin and strap it to a
(07:42):
skateboard and have someone pull you on a bike down the road,
but that's probably not a good idea because you're going to fall out and get hurt.
We forget that they don't even have the ability to do that.
By the way,
that's a true story from my childhood.
Uh,
yeah,
I,
I,
you know,
I don't even know why I'm sharing this,
but,
so my brother,
3 years younger than I am,
(08:04):
he
I don't even remember if it was bungee corded or duct
taped or I don't even know how it was affixed,
but we had our
plastic recycling bin,
big rectangular box of sorts
that is
attached in some way,
shape,
or form to his skateboard.
He has me sit in the recycling bin attached to the skateboard,
(08:25):
holding a rope,
and he has the rope tied to the back of his bike and he takes off down the
road and is going as fast as he can on said bike to pull me down the street.
And he had loosened the trucks.
Now,
for those of you that are not skaters,
the trucks are
the wheels and metal supports on the bottom of the skateboard.
(08:47):
He had loosened them so he could do better tricks.
Well,
what happens when you go really fast and you have loose trucks,
everything starts to wobble like an earthquake.
And so I am wobbling like an earthquake,
rolling down the street at way too fast of speeds and the whole thing tipped
and I fell and I still to this day have a mushroom shaped scar
(09:10):
on the side of my right knee
because of.
A recycling bin and a skateboard and a bike with my brother who
was probably,
I don't even know,
7 at the time
and had no abstract reasoning
and had no rational thought and was not cognitive at all and was like,
this should be fun.
And I,
who at 10 years old also did not possess any of those abilities,
(09:33):
was like,
sure,
why not?
And here we are,
you know,
all these years later and I still have a mushroom shaped scar.
The point is,
kids do not think.
And we can't expect them to.
And the irony is
we are constantly thinking about their behavior.
And we're constantly frustrated by their behavior
(09:55):
because we want them to behave differently.
There are times when we need to set limits.
There are times when we need to reflect feelings.
There are times when we need to provide choices.
Those are all age appropriate,
developmentally appropriate
interactions.
And we don't mean to,
but often our conversations and the way that
(10:16):
we approach things because of our adulthood bias.
It actually is dismissive to kids.
It actually makes them feel like
they
Shouldn't feel the way they do,
and they very much should feel that way because they're feeling beings.
Their feelings are huge,
their feelings drive everything that they do.
(10:38):
So when we go,
that's not a reason to cry.
Why,
why are you upset about that right now?
This is not a big deal.
That's dismissive to a child and that's our adulthood bias getting in the way.
It is a very big deal and it feels very big and deep to them.
But our rational brain goes,
OK,
you can't play with your friend today,
it's,
it's gonna be fine.
(10:59):
But it doesn't feel fine to them.
So I'm hopeful that this will help you understand how to better relate,
better understand,
better preserve the relationship,
because if we recognize our own adulthood bias
and we're able to respond differently as a result.
It will help our communication.
(11:20):
It will help children feel heard and understood.
It will allow us to provide play therapy based interventions.
So if necessary,
we'll set a limit.
We'll follow the
three step limit setting process.
We always need to validate our children's feelings.
We can provide choices for empowerment or for enforcement.
(11:41):
There's all of these skills that we talk about all the time
that are the antidote to the adulthood bias.
Because if we operate in our adulthood bias,
we're going to get angry,
frustrated,
disappointed,
we're going to ask questions,
we're going to lecture,
we're going to over-talk,
we're going to over rationalize,
we're going to have 10 minute conversations with kids
(12:01):
when they checked out after the 1st 10 words.
All of that is driven by adulthood bias.
So if we can grasp this,
in conjunction with kids aren't rational,
do you see how these two go together?
Kids aren't rational,
and we have adulthood bias.
You fuse those two things together,
it will change every interaction that you have with your children
(12:22):
for the better.
So I hope that that encourages you.
I hope that that enables you to feel like there's a why behind
some of the things that go on with our kids,
because kids' behavior can be confusing sometimes.
So
this is a why.
We don't see it the way they see it because of our adulthood bias.
I hope that that helps you and makes you feel supported and encouraged.
(12:43):
If you would like to reach out to me to say hello,
to
send me a question.
To ask me something that's going on.
I'd love to hear from you,
brenna@thekidcounselor.com.
Thanks so much for hanging out with me each week.
I don't take it lightly that
you give me some of your time each week
and that we are on this raising children journey together.
So thanks so much.
(13:03):
I really appreciate y'all.
We'll talk again soon.
Bye.
Thank you for listening to
the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
For more episodes and just subscribe to our newsletter,
please go to www.playtherapyparenting.com.
You're listening to the
Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
Hi,
I'm Dr. Brenna Hicks,
The Kid Counselor.
This is the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast where I give you insight,
awareness,
and enlightenment about your parenting
and your relationship with your kids.
In today's episode,
I would like to present.
(00:23):
A new term or a phrase,
if you will,
to help us better understand
why it is difficult to relate to our kids sometimes.
And not relate to them relationally necessarily,
not relate to them
in some familial kind of way,
but to really understand what's going on for them and why
(00:44):
they do and say the things that they do and say.
There's often a disconnect and so many times
parents get frustrated
that
Quote,
I talk to my kid
and nothing happens.
I ask my kid questions and I get one word answers.
My kid just does the most random things
and there's absolutely no explanation for it.
(01:06):
If those phrases sound familiar or you say them on a semi frequent basis,
the phrase that
we've come up with
to describe this
is adulthood bias.
And I wanna dive into that a little bit today
because I think this will shed a lot of light
and give a lot of perspective
on why sometimes things just don't make sense to us
(01:29):
and that we often look at what goes on in a normal everyday scenario with our children
and it's just confusing and annoying
what goes on
but that's driven by our adulthood bias so.
Here's what we know.
Let's go back to early podcast episodes.
We know that kids aren't rational.
(01:50):
We have talked about that a lot.
When we grasped that concept.
That should influence a lot of our interactions.
But because of adulthood bias.
We often forget.
That
we are cognitive,
we are rational,
we have abstract reasoning,
(02:12):
we are processing things intellectually,
and they are not.
They are here and now,
emotionally driven.
Experiential beings.
So this is where adulthood bias gets in the way,
because uh,
you know,
your kid
gets really angry and kicks the wall and leaves a hole in the drywall.
(02:38):
Why in the world would you do that?
What were you thinking? why? you know better,
what is going on?
Those are all very rational,
intellectual,
reason-based questions.
And here's the truth,
if the child were thinking
or reasoning or rationalizing anything,
they wouldn't have kicked the wall and left a hole in it,
(03:00):
but they weren't.
See,
here's the interesting
dynamic that we tend to forget.
We,
we
were kids once.
We know
that
we were once childlike.
We once experienced childhood just like our children do.
And we were exactly like them.
But we have forgotten what that's like,
(03:23):
because we now possess the capacity to reason.
We now possess the capacity to be rational.
So therefore,
look,
if we get back to our
innate instincts,
we wanna kick something sometimes too.
We want to put our fists through drywall sometimes too.
We wanna throw something sometimes too,
(03:43):
and you know what,
let's be really real,
a lot of adults still do.
So this is not something that we just automatically
escape as soon as we become an adult.
Some adults still react that way.
Their emotions still drive everything they do and they
don't have abstract reasoning get involved at all.
So there are adults that very much behave in those ways,
(04:06):
but if our abstract reasoning
overrides our desire to just emotionally express how we're feeling,
We
have totally forgotten that kids live there all the time.
So when a child kicks the wall and puts a hole through it
or
(04:27):
throws the Hot wheels and it leaves a dent somewhere,
or they push their sibling and their sibling falls over and cuts their knee.
Or whatever the scenario is.
We forget
that they didn't think about any of those decisions.
They acted
on emotional impulse.
(04:49):
I'm angry,
I push.
I'm frustrated,
I throw.
I'm upset,
I kick.
It is 100% experienced emotion,
feeling driven.
No brain engagement whatsoever.
Developmentally appropriately,
we cannot fault them for that.
(05:09):
We cannot expect it of them
until around 12 or 13,
they're not able to do it.
So,
adulthood bias
is something we need to keep in check
because while we were kids once
we've forgotten,
but we do possess the capacity
to go back and meet kids and their emotions.
(05:31):
Kids do not possess the ability to come up and meet us in our thought.
So this is a one way street here.
We have to go down to them.
And adulthood bias is what keeps us from doing it
because we treat them like small adults.
Actually,
I have an online community for child-centered play therapists,
(05:53):
and we were posting about this kind of a
related topic in these last couple of weeks and
my husband acknowledged that Doctor Phil
was the one who kind of coined the phrase,
you're not raising children,
you're raising mini adults.
That is
the most uninformed sentence that has ever come out of
a psychologist's mouth,
(06:14):
in my opinion.
And I'm not saying that to be critical of Doctor Phil.
He works with adults and so,
you know,
maybe he doesn't really fully understand childhood and,
and age appropriate behavior.
We're not raising mini adults.
They're not adults,
they're children.
Until the age of 18,
they are still in their childhood years and until the age of 12 or 13,
(06:36):
they don't even possess the
cognitive development.
To even get halfway to thinking like an adult.
So we are not raising mini adults,
we are raising children,
and children are emotional,
and children experience things and they feel things.
And their brain
(06:58):
is shut off.
And we can't expect them to change that.
They're not able to change it.
So every time we ask a child a question.
And get I don't know or in one or a one word answer,
that's a reminder of our adulthood bias.
Every time we watch our child do something that's completely irrational,
(07:19):
completely impulsive,
completely crazy,
completely confusing.
That's our adulthood bias kicking in.
If we could remember what it's like to be a kid.
Kids just do things because they feel like they want to do them.
They have no ability to say,
well,
you want to jump into that recycling bin and strap it to a
(07:42):
skateboard and have someone pull you on a bike down the road,
but that's probably not a good idea because you're going to fall out and get hurt.
We forget that they don't even have the ability to do that.
By the way,
that's a true story from my childhood.
Uh,
yeah,
I,
I,
you know,
I don't even know why I'm sharing this,
but,
so my brother,
3 years younger than I am,
(08:04):
he
I don't even remember if it was bungee corded or duct
taped or I don't even know how it was affixed,
but we had our
plastic recycling bin,
big rectangular box of sorts
that is
attached in some way,
shape,
or form to his skateboard.
He has me sit in the recycling bin attached to the skateboard,
(08:25):
holding a rope,
and he has the rope tied to the back of his bike and he takes off down the
road and is going as fast as he can on said bike to pull me down the street.
And he had loosened the trucks.
Now,
for those of you that are not skaters,
the trucks are
the wheels and metal supports on the bottom of the skateboard.
(08:47):
He had loosened them so he could do better tricks.
Well,
what happens when you go really fast and you have loose trucks,
everything starts to wobble like an earthquake.
And so I am wobbling like an earthquake,
rolling down the street at way too fast of speeds and the whole thing tipped
and I fell and I still to this day have a mushroom shaped scar
(09:10):
on the side of my right knee
because of.
A recycling bin and a skateboard and a bike with my brother who
was probably,
I don't even know,
7 at the time
and had no abstract reasoning
and had no rational thought and was not cognitive at all and was like,
this should be fun.
And I,
who at 10 years old also did not possess any of those abilities,
(09:33):
was like,
sure,
why not?
And here we are,
you know,
all these years later and I still have a mushroom shaped scar.
The point is,
kids do not think.
And we can't expect them to.
And the irony is
we are constantly thinking about their behavior.
And we're constantly frustrated by their behavior
(09:55):
because we want them to behave differently.
There are times when we need to set limits.
There are times when we need to reflect feelings.
There are times when we need to provide choices.
Those are all age appropriate,
developmentally appropriate
interactions.
And we don't mean to,
but often our conversations and the way that
(10:16):
we approach things because of our adulthood bias.
It actually is dismissive to kids.
It actually makes them feel like
they
Shouldn't feel the way they do,
and they very much should feel that way because they're feeling beings.
Their feelings are huge,
their feelings drive everything that they do.
(10:38):
So when we go,
that's not a reason to cry.
Why,
why are you upset about that right now?
This is not a big deal.
That's dismissive to a child and that's our adulthood bias getting in the way.
It is a very big deal and it feels very big and deep to them.
But our rational brain goes,
OK,
you can't play with your friend today,
it's,
it's gonna be fine.
(10:59):
But it doesn't feel fine to them.
So I'm hopeful that this will help you understand how to better relate,
better understand,
better preserve the relationship,
because if we recognize our own adulthood bias
and we're able to respond differently as a result.
It will help our communication.
(11:20):
It will help children feel heard and understood.
It will allow us to provide play therapy based interventions.
So if necessary,
we'll set a limit.
We'll follow the
three step limit setting process.
We always need to validate our children's feelings.
We can provide choices for empowerment or for enforcement.
(11:41):
There's all of these skills that we talk about all the time
that are the antidote to the adulthood bias.
Because if we operate in our adulthood bias,
we're going to get angry,
frustrated,
disappointed,
we're going to ask questions,
we're going to lecture,
we're going to over-talk,
we're going to over rationalize,
we're going to have 10 minute conversations with kids
(12:01):
when they checked out after the 1st 10 words.
All of that is driven by adulthood bias.
So if we can grasp this,
in conjunction with kids aren't rational,
do you see how these two go together?
Kids aren't rational,
and we have adulthood bias.
You fuse those two things together,
it will change every interaction that you have with your children
(12:22):
for the better.
So I hope that that encourages you.
I hope that that enables you to feel like there's a why behind
some of the things that go on with our kids,
because kids' behavior can be confusing sometimes.
So
this is a why.
We don't see it the way they see it because of our adulthood bias.
I hope that that helps you and makes you feel supported and encouraged.
(12:43):
If you would like to reach out to me to say hello,
to
send me a question.
To ask me something that's going on.
I'd love to hear from you,
brenna@thekidcounselor.com.
Thanks so much for hanging out with me each week.
I don't take it lightly that
you give me some of your time each week
and that we are on this raising children journey together.
So thanks so much.
(13:03):
I really appreciate y'all.
We'll talk again soon.
Bye.
Thank you for listening to
the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
For more episodes and just subscribe to our newsletter,
please go to www.playtherapyparenting.com.
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