‘I hate you’ could be the start of a fruitful conversation. How to make a Christian response

I have been considering how we can create guidelines for ourselves about how to respond to aggressive or argumentative behaviour? And how can we pre-empt these situations by forward thinking?

One thing I struggle with as a parent is trying to answer all my children’s incessant stream of questions and concerns… In actual fact it is not a struggle, it is a mistake!

Have you ever started answering one of these questions only for them to ask another or start doing something else while you are mid flow with your wise and insightful response?! That’s because sometimes, often (!) this question is not a question, it’s an exploration. It’s an internal dialogue that spills into an outward torrent of information processing and a whirring of cerebral mechanisms as they learn and grow and push against their current understanding in order to attain new understanding.