Another Obliger (tipping to Rebel) explained why she liked the company of Rebels:
We Obligers do have that rebellious streak—like I love nontraditional hair colors. That’s why we love Rebels. Rebels tell us it’s okay to indulge that rebellious nature, and that gives Obligers the freedom from some obligations. My husband and best friend are Rebels. They make life more fun and think my “weird” style is cool. Plus they remind me when it’s time to take care of myself before I hit burnout. Whereas Questioners and Upholders (my brother and stepfather) just keep asking why I took on so many responsibilities if I “couldn’t handle them.”
In fact, Rebels may save Obligers from falling into Obliger-rebellion, because a Rebel will encourage an Obliger to resist an outer expectation. As one Obliger put it, “Living with a Rebel can sometimes be challenging, but the one word he understands is no. For him, it’s normal to not feel like doing something, and he doesn’t expect me to say yes to everything. Since I feel that not obliging is often harder than obliging, this gives me more space to be myself.” This permission may act as a relief valve to the pressure of expectations that the Obligers feel.
On the Rebel side of the Rebel/Obliger pairing, an Obliger makes it easier for the Rebel to ignore everyday expectations—because the Obliger picks up the Rebel’s slack. One Rebel wrote, “I’d say my husband is a great partner who makes my life smoother by doing the chores of daily life, but hopefully he’d say that I help him live in the moment and enjoy the journey.” The marriage works if both people agree that this is an acceptable trade-off.
An Obliger friend told me, “Where we live, we need car toll tags. I got my Rebel husband a toll tag, put it on the counter for him to put in his car, he ‘lost’ it, and now he has a huge stack of fines for not paying his toll.”
“Aren’t you annoyed,” I asked, “that as a family, you’ve wasted all that money?”
“No, he knows that I’ll contact the authorities and tell them that we did have the toll tag, but it was defective, and get the fine excused, but still, that’s work that I’m going to have to do—because he hates the idea of having to pay the toll.”
As an Upholder, I must say, I was staggered by this story.
Another Obliger with a Rebel spouse recalled, “Before getting married, I visited a friend’s house, and stuck to the fridge was a list of ‘His’ and ‘Hers’ chores. I was appalled, and I thought, ‘I’d never keep a list like that. That’s not the kind of score-keeping marriage I want.’ For me, harmony is the most important thing. I’d rather do more work than worry about keeping track of what the other person is doing.”
To me, as an Upholder, her desired arrangement seems unfair. I’d feel resentful if Jamie imposed expectations on me without assuming any himself. But perhaps to others I might seem like the scorekeeper that this Obliger didn’t want to be.
A friend said, somewhat bitterly, “Rebels are the people we all take care of.” And that’s the paradoxical aspect to this pattern: The Rebels become dependent. Their freedom from the mundane responsibilities of life is often possible because someone else handles the duties of daily existence for them.
Similarly, while refusing to commit to plans makes Rebels feel free, their behavior often allows others to set the agenda. One Rebel explained, “I have the most fun when my husband (who has the itinerary planned out) doesn’t tell me the plan ahead of time. He says, ‘This is what’s happening, if you want to join in for any or all of it.’ We just flow from one activity to the next, and it’s fun and feels spontaneous.” Well, it feels spontaneous to her, and she feels as if she’s making her own choices—but someone else is setting the itinerary.
When Rebels are paired with Questioners or Upholders, the relationship may take much more work. A Questioner with a Rebel husband and child wrote:
I get why the Rebel spirit might have been great during the French Resistance. But we’re not living during the French Resistance now. I regret that I married a Rebel. He was far more agreeable to my requests when we were dating. Once we got married, that stopped. We can try to make the best of it, but it’s just way harder than it could be had I married, say, an Obliger. And I drive him crazy with all my questions.
Not all such pairings are this difficult. For instance, at dinner, I sat next to an Upholder husband married to a Rebel. When I asked him—in more delicate terms—how he put up with it, he explained, “It works because my wife is a highly considerate, loving person.” “Interesting,” I thought. A good example of how a person’s Tendency is just one aspect of their personality. “If I ask her to do something,” he continued, “her immediate response is to say no. But after a week or so, she’ll propose her own solution that takes my view into account.”
“Like what?”
“For instance, she proposed some porch furniture, and I said I thought it might look cluttered. She said, ‘No, you’re wrong, it will be fine’—but a week later, she showed me her new plan, and it was much less cluttered.”
“Right.” I nodded. “Has she ever refused to do something, where you considered it a big problem?”
“Oh, sure. Like when we got married, she didn’t write thank-you notes. That was a big issue.”
“Couldn’t you have written the notes?” I asked.
“I would have! But by the time I realized that this was an issue, we’d opened a bunch of gifts without keeping track of who gave us what, and it was too late.” He sighed. “I can still get worked up, thinking about it.”
Another Upholder married to a Rebel explained the dynamics of their marriage:
My husband and I met in college, and our Tendencies were clear from the start; in college, I excelled, he almost flunked out. Although my husband is incredibly intelligent, when he had an assignment he didn’t like, he chose to answer different questions than the ones posed by the instructor. He learned on his own terms, but this often resulted in a failing grade. My husband also attended college as a nontraditional student (he started at 24) because he does things on his own timeline. I’m a dedicated rule follower with two graduate degrees.
It took me a while to understand that my husband will frequently do the opposite of what I recommend or ask. Although many people might find these differences difficult, I appreciate my husband’s independence.
My husband’s Rebel Tendency has helped us follow a more unconventional lifestyle. Since I’m the more career-oriented, he has moved several times to follow my career, and I’m currently the breadwinner. We don’t have any children by choice. My husband is working on writing a novel from home. He financially (and emotionally) supported me while I completed my M.A. and Ph.D., and he quit as soon as possible to pursue his writing. We share domestic tasks and each cook for ourselves.
I’ve come to appreciate that his Rebel Tendency means that I’m off the hook when it comes to his life choices (although it can be difficult when those life choices overlap with mine) because I literally cannot force him to do anything.
As with all relationship combinations, success comes when we can focus on the positive aspects of our sweetheart.
Dealing with a Rebel Child
Unprompted, many Rebels have told me about the specific moment when they realized, as young children, that no one could make them do anything. “I was sitting on the floor and my mother was trying to make me put on my shoes,” wrote one Rebel. “And I thought, ‘She can’t make me!’ and I refused. I sat there for two hours.”
Rebel children can be a challenge. When they’re asked or told to do something, they tend to resist. They want to choose their own way; they don’t want others to set expectations. A friend said, “I told my Rebel daughter that I would tuck her in ‘in five minutes.’ She responded, ‘How about four?’ ”
The fact is, though parents, teachers, and coaches often want to push Rebels, that’s a very counterproductive strategy. A fifteen-year-old Rebel explained:
I lived with my liberal, freedom-giving mom for twelve years until I moved in with my conservative, restrictive, disci
pline-oriented Upholder dad. With my dad, if I do something he needs, he gets triumphant, and says something like “If only you did that more often.” Whenever he’s not like this, we have a great relationship, but when he asks me to do something, I resist. He doesn’t understand how I work, and he thinks I’m lazy and disrespectful.
Sadly, this father hasn’t figured out that telling a Rebel child what to do doesn’t work. It’s possible to make a child do something, of course, by establishing consequences that are sufficiently dire—but that’s very difficult to enforce over the long run.
So what does work? The same formula that works with adults: information, consequences, choice—with no nagging or badgering.
This is tough. It can feel scary to allow Rebel children to do what they want—but since prodding them to follow a certain course so often backfires, it’s more effective to trust to their own judgment (as risky as that might seem).
One parent of a Rebel explained, “The best way to wrangle the Rebel child is to give the kid the information to make a decision, present the issue as a question that he alone can answer, and let him make a decision and act without telling you. Let him make a decision without an audience. Audiences = expectations. If he thinks you’re not watching, he won’t need to rebel against your expectations.”
One serious Rebel issue? A child who wants to drop out of school. I heard from one member of a family that decided to accommodate a child’s Rebelness:
My sister Lynne is clearly a Rebel. She’s struggled since kindergarten, never due to lack of intelligence. Throughout high school, she’s talked about dropping out. This summer, it looked like it was finally going to happen (with only one year left to go).
Before my parents sat down to talk to her about it, I’d suggested to my mom that she let Lynne drop out. I explained Lynne’s Rebel Tendency and how she’d find a way to do what she wanted. My mom reluctantly agreed.
A few weeks go by, and Lynne starts talking about finishing high school online, instead of dropping out. Today, she told me she’s going back to school. They reworked her schedule to suit her needs better.
Without a doubt, my parents letting Lynne make her own decisions brought this result. She feels in control and like it’s her decision (which it is). I can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened if they’d pushed her to stay in school.
Along the same lines, I heard from a teacher:
I’m a teacher at our local county jail, mostly GED and high school diploma courses. Recently I had a student who was getting in her own way—arguing with the guards and not completing assignments. I believed her when she said that she really wanted to get her GED—yet she wasn’t making progress.
It dawned on me that she is a Rebel. I shared your theory with her, and it really helped her see herself in a new, more positive way. I stopped asking her to do homework and let her decide each day how she wanted to study: computer software, group lesson, independently, or not at all. As I write this, she has passed five of the five tests, and thus completed her high school equivalency.
Rebels can do whatever they want to do.
Because Rebel children are likely to resist if an adult asks or tells them to do something, it’s very important to pay attention to language and to avoid anything that smacks of an order. To a parent, saying, “Honey, tell Aunt Jane what a nice time you had” may not seem like a command—but it is. The Rebel child may have intended to say something polite—but no longer. Instead, in the car on the way to Aunt Jane’s house, a parent could remark, “Even though it’s not much fun to visit Aunt Jane, you remember to thank her every time we see her. You show real thoughtfulness in the way you speak to her.” Then let the child decide how to behave.
A music teacher explained how she tailored her approach to a Rebel student:
I’d tried to help one Rebel student to become a leader rather than a “disrupter.” So I’d ask him to do things, like pass out supplies, help the person next to him. I could see he wanted and liked to be in charge…so why was he not jumping at the chance to lead and help his neighbors? I learned that as a Rebel, he refuses because he wants leading and helping to be his decision, not mine. So I told the class, “Show me your part of the song and hand movements, all of you at the same time. I want to see who’s doing a good job, so I can find a leader.” Now, he has a choice: Is he going to try hard, or is he going to shy away? Well, he tried really hard. So I asked him, “Do you want to be leader for your section?” I didn’t tell him, I asked him. He said yes. Man oh man was he excited to lead that section.
To try to channel a Rebel child’s energies and interests, it’s helpful to point out how much he or she enjoys an activity, so the child may choose to keep doing it. “Wow, seems like you like writing for the newspaper, it’s fun to see your name in print and to hang out with everyone else who works on the paper.” “It feels good to see your name on the list for the honor society.”
Parents and teachers can help Rebels spot the reasons they might want to meet an expectation. For example: “Kids who get good grades this semester will qualify for the class trip to the White House next spring.” One Rebel music teacher explained, “To motivate Rebel students, I emphasize the incredible opportunities that they might have if they play well. That’s what worked for me…the chance to be admired!”
Rebels respond much better when an action is framed in terms of choice, freedom, and self-expression instead of constraint and duty. “When you want to learn to ride a bike, you can, and then you can ride off with your friends on fun adventures.” Not, “Your friends will make fun of you if you can’t ride a bike.”
With Rebels, it’s crucial to be frank about the consequences of not meeting an expectation—and to allow them to experience those consequences. But this can be painful, for both parent and child. One Rebel explained:
As a Rebel myself, I’d say this: Rebels learn best by suffering the consequences of their decisions. I can assure you that I pay my bills on time and that everything in my house is in working order. If you’re parenting a Rebel child, you may have to suffer along with them while they learn the consequences of their decisions. But the quicker you allow this to happen, the sooner they will learn what they can get away with—and what they can’t.
Also, Rebels are powerfully motivated by identity, so it can be helpful to tie an action to an identity that the child values. A Rebel recalled:
The most effective approach is to give Rebels a choice that resonates with their identity. For example, punctuality was a source of tension between my mother and me for years. She would nag, gently remind, yell—nothing helped. Finally, one day she said, “Look, right now, I feel like I can’t trust or rely on you. I also feel like when you keep me waiting, you’re telling me that your time is more important than mine. If that’s who you want to be—someone that others can’t rely on and who makes them feel unimportant, fine. Or, you can be someone that people can trust, rely on, and who makes others feel valued. It’s your choice.” It was like a switch flipped instantly. Because she gave me a choice—and I immediately knew what resonated with my sense of authentic self. Then it became easy.
Also, if something’s enjoyable, a Rebel is far more likely to do it. With a Rebel child (and this is true of most children, of course), it can help to make an activity more fun. “To get my son to brush his teeth,” one father recalled, “we’d make up games. He’d pretend to be a vet cleaning the teeth of a bear, or a mechanic washing off an engine.” A Rebel child might enjoy a challenge: “Bet you can’t get ready in less than two minutes, can you beat your old record?”
One helpful example of dealing with a Rebel child appears in one of my favorite books, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s These Happy Golden Years. Just sixteen years old, Laura (a Questioner, by the way) is teaching school, and her student Clarence is a Rebel who refuses to study. He can’t stand to be told that he must do schoolwork, and he refuses, even though he’s a smart boy who wants to learn.
When Laura asks her parents for adv
ice, Ma observes, “Better not try to make him do anything, because you can’t.” So Laura changes her approach. After Laura gives the other students their assignments, she tells him, “This doesn’t mean you, Clarence; it would make your lesson far too long….How much do you think you can learn? Would three [pages] be too much?”
In this way, she does two things. First, she leaves the choice to Clarence and gives him freedom. Second, she gives him the kind of challenge that Rebels often respond to. When she suggests that he can’t master three pages, and when the other students start pulling ahead of him, he thinks, “I’ll show her.” Within a week, Clarence has caught up to the rest of his class.
It’s crucial to remember that for Rebels, they must feel that they’re doing what they want, not what others want. A Rebel wrote, “If you tell me to do something, I feel like your prisoner. But if you tell me, ‘Here are four possibilities, decide for yourself,’ then it’s more likely that I’ll do one.”
I’ve noticed that Rebel children seem to have unusually close relationships with grandparents—maybe with grandparents, they find the satisfaction of a close family bond, with fewer expectations.
Because they understand the Rebel perspective, Rebels may find it easier to raise a Rebel child. One Rebel mother wrote, “My four-year-old daughter is a Rebel as well. She loves choices and getting to make her own decisions, not just for herself but for all of us. And I totally get it, so I let her pick out her own clothes, pick out my clothes, choose sleep over getting to preschool on time, have spaghetti for breakfast and eggs for dinner.” Of course, this pairing has its own challenges. A Rebel friend told me with a sigh, “When we’re at a restaurant, I don’t want to tell my son to stop blowing mustard through the straw onto the table. I want to do it, too.”
As always, when we recognize a Tendency, we can communicate more effectively with a particular person. No matter how much love we feel, if we don’t understand how to reach someone, our most well-intentioned words and actions can go astray.
The Four Tendencies Page 16