When I was growing up, my mom and I had an ongoing struggle over my requests to do things with my friends. I would ask if I could spend the night or have dinner with one of my girlfriends, and she would say no. Not always, but often enough.

My natural reaction was to ask “why?”

I couldn’t understand why she should object if I was invited, their parents were on-board, I had no plans or obligations, and my chores were done.

Her answer was usually, “Because I said so.”

To me, that meant: “Because my actual reasons are too flimsy to justify.”

Hindsight

As an adult, I look back and try to fill in the blanks about such things.

Why would someone say no if there is no scheduling conflict and the other kid’s parents are happy to host? It seems so random on the surface.

But knowing my mother, it no longer seems random to me for multiple reasons.

• We didn’t have a lot of disposable income.
• My mom worked second shift, so she wasn’t around during normal hours to supervise children.
• Our house was often not tidy enough to be up to her standards for company.
• She would never have wanted other people thinking she wasn’t an ideal mother.

All these things meant it was hard for her to allow me to offer an invitation in return later on. And not being able to reciprocate would mean we were being quite rude, by her estimation.

Why didn’t she just explain?

Since there were actual, practical reasons to say no—why didn’t she just level with me? We probably could have avoided a lot of frustration and fights that went nowhere, right?

But that assumes I would have understood and accepted her worries as valid.

And I must admit… I wouldn’t have. Unless she helped me understand. If she had explained things on the level of my ability to understand, I could have gotten there.

Her need to offer a dinner or a sleepover in exchange for one given to me could have been explained as a simple rule of polite society. I was willing to accept not slurping my soup and saying “please” and “thank you,” so there’s no reason to assume any other etiquette rule would have been rejected.

Her embarrassment over having kids come to our house when it was messy could have been a motivator to get me to help clean the house on a routine basis.

And her not wanting to spend the few nights she had off from work entertaining a bunch of strangers could have been explained in the context of wanting to spend some quality time with her kids. I would have loved to hear that she wanted some one-on-one time doing fun things with me.

What might have worked better than, “Because I said so”?

How about: “We won’t be able to invite _______ for a sleepover for the next 2 months because of my work schedule. It would be considered rude for you to go right now, because they’ll be thinking they’re never going to get an invitation. How about if we try to set something up for next month instead? And this Friday night, you and I can have some special time together _________________ (insert some fun activity) before I go to work.”

Why else don’t parents explain?

Sometimes there are sensitive reasons for being vague. Maybe you are keeping the confidence of someone else in the family when you say your son can’t do something for unspecified reasons. Maybe you are trying to protect your daughter from something so horrible you don’t want her to have to think about it—like someone nearby being beaten up or murdered. Maybe you don’t think they’re old enough to handle details on topics like addiction or sex.

There are countless perfectly valid reasons an adult may choose not to give a specific explanation for their decisions. But that lack of explanation can be incredibly frustrating for the child.

Can you give them reason enough?

Next time you find yourself not wanting to give a full explanation—consider if there’s a way to provide an honest, if somewhat simplified, reason.

Let’s say you want to tell your son he can’t walk to the park alone because some local kid was shooting up heroin behind the jungle gym last week, but you don’t want to get into a big discussion about drugs. Instead of a vague “no,” can you say: “I know you’ve gone alone before, but there were some people causing trouble there last week. If you can wait a few minutes, I’d like to go with you to make sure there’s no one there who shouldn’t be.”

Or maybe mommy and daddy would like some “alone time” as husband and wife, when junior asks to sleep in their bed. Instead of just saying “no,” how about: “You know how I sometimes spend time with just you, because you’re special to me and I love you? And you know how much fun those times are? Well, sometimes I like to spend time alone with mommy, too—to make her feel special and show her how much I love her. Tonight is one of those times. And since you’re such a big boy, I know you’ll understand because you want mommy to feel special and loved, too.”

Authority with fairness

The important part is that the child receives enough of a “why” to understand your decision is reasonable. They want to know they are being treated fairly, and that their requests are given genuine consideration.

The explanation doesn’t have to be comprehensive, but it should be true. If you start making things up, you’ll eventually be caught in a lie, and then your credibility will always be in question. And of course, the older the child, the more complex and complete should be the explanation.

Consider this. You ask your boss for a promotion and he just says “no.” You’d be frustrated—maybe even angry. First, it’s quite disrespectful to not even offer an explanation. Second, it doesn’t give you any reason to expect you could get a better result in the future. If he instead says the position has already been filled or you would need to get a particular certification to qualify or that you have to wait until the job has been posted publicly for a month—you would feel you’ve been treated fairly even though the answer is still “no.”

So in essence, just treat your kids the way you’d like to be treated. You’ll find they respond pretty much the same way you do… because they’re human too.