Redefining Sass in Childhood

A simple essay descends into a rant in front of your very eyes

I’m sat on the playroom floor with a bunch of hastily-attached hairclips digging into my scalp and some poorly applied nail polish adorning my fingers. I think we’re playing shops, but for some reason I’m also Muffin from Bluey. She’s Bluey, obviously. Yes, I know she’s wearing a Cinderella dress. No, don’t point out the discrepancy. It’s not worth it.

I go to give her some change from the till, only to find that all the play money (the few notes and coins that aren’t under the sofa) is gone—it’s all in my daughter’s little handbag.

“Pause game,” I say. “Do you want to put some of that money back in the till so I can give you change?”

She stares at me dead in the eye. “Don’t ever pause my game again,” she says.

A few days later, we’re in the car on the way to nursery. She likes listening to Yellow Submarine, so I put it on and we sing along together. Then after it’s done, Twist and Shout comes on. I launch into it with the confidence of someone with the music turned up just enough so they can’t actually hear their own voice.

My eldest cuts me down. “Stop singing now, Daddy. It’s not good anymore.”

It was nice of her to imply it was good at one stage, I suppose.

What I’m getting at with these two anecdotes is that my three-year-old—like most pre-schoolers—can be a bit sassy when she wants to be.

And do you know what? I don’t mind it at all. In fact, I like it a lot.

But just looking up a definition of the word sass, you can see that some other parents—most likely of previous generations—may not see it in such a favourable light:

Sass - noun: impudence, cheek; “the kind of boy that wouldn't give you any sass.” verb: be cheeky or rude to (someone); "we wouldn't have dreamed of sassing our parents”

Especially in the context of parenting and interactions between children and adults, this definition puts a negative slant on the kind of confident, assured and cheeky retorts we’ve all been on the receiving end of from our kids.

I think these definitions need to evolve—we need to redefine the kind of sass that’s an indicator of a strong sense of self-assurance, self-esteem and assertiveness, so that people stop marrying it with overtly rude behaviour.

Let me explain: I set out writing this essay to be an ode to the sassiness of little kids and how we need to nurture it and push it in the right direction rather than stamp it out as previously generations did.

Honestly, I didn’t think this viewpoint as a particularly controversial one.

And yet, I started trawling the web for articles, surveys and the like for corroboration. Instead, these are the kinds of headlines I got when I Googled “is sass in kids a good thing?”:

• Sassy Kids: How to Deal with a Mouthy Child

• Back-Talk Boot Camp: Stop the Sass

• Is kids’ sass factor out of control?

• How to Punish a Child

Then I started reading some posts from some parent bloggers about sassiness (not here on Substack), and one of them in particular (that I won’t link to as I don’t want to single them out) really rubbed me up the wrong way.

Here’s some select quotes:

I looked up synonyms for "sassy" -- disrespectful, mouthy, overbold, rude, smart-alecky, smart-mouthed... the list goes on. I don't know about you, but I don't want [my child]¹ to be any of that.

Obviously “rude” and “disrespectful” are not traits you want for your child—fine. But throwing “smart-alecky” and “smart-mouthed” throws up red flags for me. To stamp that kind of expression out of a child is to take away their critical voice, to mould them into permissiveness. Also not a fan of rallying against a child being “overbold”—who are we to decide how bold our child wants to be? By what measure do we decide that someone is too bold?

Would a man want to marry a woman who acts like this?

Um, what the fuck?

I don’t want to come across as some sort of male saviour or anything, but being the dad of two girls has solidified the feminism inside me to the point that shit like this gets me really angry. My daughter will be just as fiery, bold, sassy, and will take up as much space as she damn well pleases—and she will not give a shit what “a man” thinks of it—you can quote me on that.

A further point on this front before I move on. Out of the four articles I linked earlier that I’ll put under the “how to brow-beat the character out of your children” banner, three of them use stock images of a parent and a child. All three of the children in these images are girls. In fact, it’s occurred to me that the word “sass” isn’t used about boys. Neither is “bossy”, come to think of it. Why is that?

My wife read a book after our first daughter was born called Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I read it too. It opened my eyes to so much, and set in my mind a blueprint for how I wanted my daughter (now daughters) to grow up. In light of the above and by ways of rounding off this particular strand, I’ll just drop one of my favourite passages from the book:

I wanted my girls to know this: You are a human being, and your birthright is to remain fully human. So you get to be everything: loud quiet bold smart careful impulsive creative joyful big angry curious ravenous ambitious. You are allowed to take up space on this earth with your feelings, your ideas, your body. You do not need to shrink. You do not need to hide any part of yourself, ever.

In fact, that quote addresses the last part of this particular blog post that’s riled me so:

…we need to stop praising "sassy." Let's, instead, praise and promote kids being helpful and kind and classy and respectful and positive and all of the wonderful characteristics that we want to see in them as adults.

There’s no reason why kids can’t be bold, outspoken and sassy when they need to be, as well as helpful, kind and respectful. The world is ready to throw our kids challenges that all require different approaches. I’d rather my children have a full range of strategies for dealing with these challenges. Just being kind and respectful doesn’t always cut it in the face of injustice.

And breathe. Back to it.

I was kind of surprised by all these pieces—and having read the articles in question, I don’t think it’s just a question of semantics.

Kids can trigger us greatly with their choice of words, and sometimes they cut right to our core. Especially in younger children, there’s usually a very good idea why they’re choosing to communicate with us in that particular way, and it has nothing to do with rudeness or disrespect.

Kids, particularly under five, are often trying to express emotions that they don’t necessarily have the words for—at least not the words we’d use. This often results in meltdowns, tantrums, throwing things or otherwise saying stuff that we’d put under the “sass” umbrella.

It’s the prevailing opinion of experts such as Janet Lansbury that it’s up to us to give our kids the space to express these difficult or new emotions, and them help our kids understand what the emotion is and how to express it in a healthier, more constructive manner the next time.

Unfortunately, I get the feeling that a lot of the normal expression of feelings that pre-schoolers will inevitably exhibit still get the Back-Chat Boot Camp treatment.

As difficult as this kind of behaviour is to deal with, and as much as we’d rather our kids lined up at bedtime like the Von Trapps or ate their dinner like with all the grace and decorum of some angelic kids in a commercial, there are going to be times where they’re really testing us—but it’s only because they’re trying to tell us something. Employing a near-Victorian era stance of “seen but not heard”, labelling anything other than total obedience as something that needs to be corrected or punished and totally quashing any form of their self-expression will lead to them not feeling like they have a voice, and growing up not knowing how to use it.

I know this all too well. I was one of those three-year-olds that my parents still affectionately refer to as a “little bastard”. I’d always be throwing tantrums, acting out against other kids at nursery school and generally “acting up”. What was really happening was that I was trying to communicate something. I didn’t know how to communicate it, and so I picked whatever course of action I had available. Each and every time however, I was slapped back down. I learned that it was dangerous to use my voice, or what passed for my voice back then. It was easier to shut up and get on with it. I guess that’s why I prefer writing to speaking now.

Maybe my feelings here are driven by my own personal experiences, and maybe this is why this essay is quickly descending into a rant. But I can’t help but feel a bit pissed off reading articles about techniques to get our kids to shut up and stop talking back. They’re kids, for fucks sake. They’re our kids. They rely on us to show them healthy boundaries, teach them right from wrong. We’re meant to nurture them and help them repurpose that fire in their bellies—not extinguish it.

Something I’ve learned in counselling is that what triggers is not because of the actions, words or event that happens in front of us, but rather the reaction in our minds that happens as a result. Renowned psychologist and my dream therapist Gabor Mate discusses this a lot. My own example of this is that I get triggered massively by my daughter not eating at meal times. I’ve worked out that this is most likely because of the way I’d be spoken to at meal times when I was a fussy eater at the same age. I’ve spoken before about the parenting playbook—what we’ve seen modelled to us in our childhoods often becomes the easiest, most well-worn path to follow when it comes to our own brand of parenting. I was shouted at for not eating my food, and thus the urge to do the same to my daughter is greater than it otherwise would have been.

I know there’s loads of times that we just need a break from the tantrums and meltdowns—believe me, I KNOW. It can also be true at the same time that kids don’t deserve to be stifled and stripped of their voices every time they say something that’s not “Yes, mother. Thank you, father.”

And of course, there’s a balance to be struck between self-assured sass and overt rudeness. But that’s our job to find that sweet-spot. We’ve got a better idea of where that spot is, but a lot of us (me included) had to find that cliff-face for ourselves through years and years of biting our tongues and not wanting to be seen as difficult or outspoken. Let’s instead show our kids where the line is from an early age, trusting in our own ability as teachers that they’ll learn and respect the difference.

I know what some people would say to all of this. It goes something like this (and if I was reading this aloud, I would put on a funny voice for this bit):

“But you’re not preparing them for the real world!!!”

Well guess what? The real world is coming for them—whatever I do or don’t do. I know there’ll be more boundaries they face in the future, and most of them will be one’s they’ll have to figure out for themselves. I’d much rather send my kids off into the wide world with a surety of their own voice; a self-assurance that we’d done our best to foster, not stamp out under the false banner of discipline.

Fortunately, I did find some supporting opinions to my own. Chief among them was

Melinda Wenner Moyer

—who writes the consistently-brilliant

Is My Kid the Asshole?

—who wrote back in 2021 about kids feeling safe to express their true selves, and how it aids their development.

I’ve got on far too long on this. To distill my views on this subject beyond the rage-induced diatribe that this post became: let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water by squashing the barest hint of rebelliousness in our kids. By all means, set the appropriate boundaries, but don’t mistake your kid’s attempts at communicating feelings past their vocal ability as “disrespect”—that’s our feeling, not theirs. Let’s not be responsible for another generation of people who don’t know how to use their own voice come adulthood.

Instead, let’s normalise sassy kids. Let’s celebrate them expressing their individuality, and—beyond the pre-school ages—standing up for what they believe in, because we taught them that using their voice was a safe and necessary thing to do.

Over to you

I’m fully prepared for being in the minority on this, and that many of you might disagree with me. Maybe my personal circumstances are responsible for this opinion rather than anything else, but either way I’d be interested to hear what you think on this!

Previously on Some Other Dad

1. Removed the name of the blogger’s child.