When do kids learn empathy?



You might be worried, “Why doesn&#8217;t my son seem to care about his friend&#8217;s tears? Why doesn&#8217;t my daughter stop teasing her little brother when she sees that he is distraught?”



First of all, nothing is wrong with your child. I know you didn’t ask this, but I think it’s the question that’s underneath our my-kid-isn’t-showing-empathy worries.



Your child is not a cold-hearted, cruel sociopath. And it&#8217;s critical that you believe this—remember, we are our children&#8217;s mirrors. Our kids can feel how we see them, and then they take on this reflected image as who they are.



So if your kid is a &#8220;good kid having a hard time,&#8221; then why do they struggle so much to care about their impact on others?



<h2>Regulation is a prerequisite for empathy</h2>



Our kids cannot access empathy when they’re full of shame and dysregulation, as their bodies are in pure survival mode with no access to higher-order thought processes.



So, then what do we do? First, focus on the core issue: your child is dysregulated and cannot make good decisions for themself.



Here’s an example of how to connect to the underlying emotion of their behavior: Your child’s brain and body have been taken over by an out-of-control feeling. There&#8217;s literally no way of telling them, &#8220;Look at your friend, she&#8217;s crying, you hurt her!&#8221; can help.



Try this instead: &#8220;I will not let you throw blocks.&#8221; Move in and remove any block from their hands, and take them away from the area immediately. A firm boundary is a form of love, a way of essentially saying to your child, &#8220;I can see you&#8217;re unable to keep yourself and others safe. I will help you.&#8221;



Then take this child (likely screaming, that&#8217;s okay!) to a separate room and sit with them. Prevent damage (hitting, kicking, etc) and just say, &#8220;I&#8217;m here. Something was really hard for you. It&#8217;s okay. I am here with you. I&#8217;m here.&#8221; Over and over. Your own regulated presence is the key to restoring regulation.



<h2>Model your empathy</h2>



As you focus on your child&#8217;s regulation, you help show him your empathy—from your boundary-setting and then seeing their feeling state under their behavior. This is what leads to a child&#8217;s ability to develop empathy for others.



Will it happen overnight? No. An inconvenient truth of parenting is that change takes time. Stay the course. You&#8217;ll start to see changes, and you&#8217;ll know it was all worth it.

Close-up of mother comforting child outside; foreheads touching

How to Help Your Child Build Empathy

Rudeness

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The most meaningful moments in my house, with my kids, are marked by more questions than answers. More wondering than deciding. More “not-knowing” than knowing. After all, we really want our kids to learn how to think through tricky situations and complex problems, which means we need to focus on teaching our kids how to think and not what to think.&nbsp;



And when it comes to gratitude, well, teaching kids how to think is critical. After all, gratitude is a feeling that arises when we can notice what’s around us and access perspective, which doesn’t happen by performing certain behaviors but, instead, by engaging in a certain thought process.&nbsp;



After all, we have to make space for gratitude. We have to slow down and notice how we feel, notice things in our environment, and notice the context of the world around us. This doesn't happen overnight for our kids and it won’t happen if we don't create an environment for this type of mindfulness.



So how can we get better at slowing down and noticing? It starts by asking more questions than delivering truths. By wondering about things and being curious. And then pausing and not concluding.



Below is a list of questions that I use to stimulate gratitude in my house. Remember the exact content of the conversation that transpires is less important than the process of thinking and wondering. Meet your child's thoughts with lots of responses like, "Huh, tell me more," and, "So interesting!" and "I'm so glad you're sharing that with me, keep going..." This helps us teach kids how to think, which is always more impactful in the long run than teaching kids what to think.



<ol><li>I'm noticing that you’re playing with your dinosaurs. When I realize I'm doing something I love, I have a warm feeling in my body that’s kind of like an “Ah, I love this, I appreciate that” feeling for me. Do you ever have that?</li></ol>



<ol start="2"><li>How do we get the things we have? It's interesting, right? We have books, and toys, you got a new jacket this year… how does that happen, you think?</li></ol>



<ol start="3"><li>Here's something tricky. If we have enough money to buy something, does that mean we should buy it? It’s interesting, right? If I had enough money to buy myself a new t-shirt every day, should I? How do you think adults decide what to buy and what not to buy for themselves and their kids?</li></ol>



<ol start="4"><li>Have you ever heard of the idea of taking things for granted? It’s when you get used to having something instead of appreciating having that thing. For example, I often take for granted that we have food on our table every day. Today I’m going to be more aware and really notice the food we have. Anything you sometimes take for granted?</li></ol>



<ol start="5"><li>Here’s an interesting word: enough. What do you think that means? How do we know when we have enough? What is enough screen time? Sweatshirts? What is enough money? When you get more of something, does your enough stay the same or change? What does it feel like to have enough? What does it feel like to not have enough? What does it feel like to have more than enough?</li></ol>



Questions help us look more deeply into ourselves and I promise they stimulate gratitude more than any declaration or behavior ("Let's take a moment to feel grateful for each other" or "Say thank you to Grandma!").

How to Talk About Gratitude With Kids

Did I Ever Tell You About The Time...

How to Handle Screaming

This outline is designed to guide you through the <a href="https://cms.goodinside.com/workshop/1558/parenting-strategies-problem-behaviors/view/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Conquering Problem Behaviors Workshop</a>. We hope this helps you organize your thoughts and remember key ideas. 



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Conquering Problem Behaviors Outline

When do kids learn empathy?



You might be worried, “Why doesn't my son seem to care about his friend's tears? Why doesn't my daughter stop teasing her little brother when she sees that he is distraught?”



First of all, nothing is wrong with your child. I know you didn’t ask this, but I think it’s the question that’s underneath our my-kid-isn’t-showing-empathy worries.



Your child is not a cold-hearted, cruel sociopath. And it's critical that you believe this—remember, we are our children's mirrors. Our kids can feel how we see them, and then they take on this reflected image as who they are.



So if your kid is a "good kid having a hard time," then why do they struggle so much to care about their impact on others?



<h2>Regulation is a prerequisite for empathy</h2>



Our kids cannot access empathy when they’re full of shame and dysregulation, as their bodies are in pure survival mode with no access to higher-order thought processes.



So, then what do we do? First, focus on the core issue: your child is dysregulated and cannot make good decisions for themself.



Here’s an example of how to connect to the underlying emotion of their behavior: Your child’s brain and body have been taken over by an out-of-control feeling. There's literally no way of telling them, "Look at your friend, she's crying, you hurt her!" can help.



Try this instead: "I will not let you throw blocks." Move in and remove any block from their hands, and take them away from the area immediately. A firm boundary is a form of love, a way of essentially saying to your child, "I can see you're unable to keep yourself and others safe. I will help you."



Then take this child (likely screaming, that's okay!) to a separate room and sit with them. Prevent damage (hitting, kicking, etc) and just say, "I'm here. Something was really hard for you. It's okay. I am here with you. I'm here." Over and over. Your own regulated presence is the key to restoring regulation.



<h2>Model your empathy</h2>



As you focus on your child's regulation, you help show him your empathy—from your boundary-setting and then seeing their feeling state under their behavior. This is what leads to a child's ability to develop empathy for others.



Will it happen overnight? No. An inconvenient truth of parenting is that change takes time. Stay the course. You'll start to see changes, and you'll know it was all worth it.

It's Okay Not to Share

You’re at a playdate and your child pushes his friend Piper — right in front of you! Your reaction? “Say sorry to Piper now! Come on!” Your child looks to the ground and then walks away.&nbsp; You get angrier and escalate, “If you don’t say sorry to Piper, no TV tonight!” And yet, still… nothing. Guess what? All of this is understandable, both your reaction and your child’s, and I’ve been there, too.&nbsp;



So what is really happening here and why is your child refusing to say sorry? Well, here’s the bigger story: in this moment, your child isn’t so much refusing to say sorry as much as your child feels like their character is under attack. And there’s no way a child or an adult can apologize if they are contending with a big, unmanageable "I'm a bad person" feeling.



This feeling has a name — shame — and it freezes us in place, making us unable to work through a situation productively. So what can we do? What will help a child “un-freeze”? And what will help a child learn how to apologize?&nbsp;



Change starts when a parent sees a child's goodness under their behavior. So, let’s walk through what this looks like IRL.



<h2>Connection and repair</h2>



First, lower the shame. Then, model repair. How do you lower shame? One word: CONNECTION.



Share with your child that YOU see his goodness and that you know he has a repair in him that he just can't find right now. And know this: this is actually true! Your child’s empathy is in there. It’s just currently blocked by the shame.&nbsp; Once the shame diminishes, he'll have access to a repair.&nbsp;



Next, model the repair yourself. These two steps might sound something like this:



To your child: “It’s hard to find your apology voice. I’ll use it for you.”&nbsp;



To the other child: “I’m sorry, Piper. I was so frustrated and it came out as a push. I’m working on staying calmer when I have big feelings. Anything I can do to help?”



And remember this: don't turn to your child after and say, "See, that was easy!” Instead, just let the experience speak for itself and move on.



<h2>The power of modeling</h2>



You do two things by modeling a reflective apology: you help mend the situation and you preserve your relationship with your child.&nbsp;



Does this let your child "off the hook?" No, not at all. This shows your child that good kids sometimes do bad things. And that even when they do, repair and connection are possible. Over time this will allow your child to find the goodness under his bad behavior and one day generate his own apologies.&nbsp;



We have to help a child find his good feelings about himself before he can deliver some of those good feelings to an injured party. Trust the process.

When Your Child Won’t Apologize

When Your Child is Rude in Public

“Your Haircut Looks Crazy!” and Other Not-So-Nice Comments

My Child Says “NO” to My Request

Stop Calling Your Kid "Defiant"

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“She Can’t Play With Us!” and Other Tricky Friendship Moments

Conquering Problem Behaviors: Parenting Strategies for Hitting, Biting, Rudeness, and More

Self-disclosure: I’m not very good at sharing. On the plus side, I’m pretty good at turn taking.



If I'm in the middle of reading a book and my friend sees it on my bedside table, I wouldn’t say to her, "Oh, you want to read it too? Let's find a mutually agreeable time to read it page-by-page together" or "I mean, I'm not done yet but I guess, yeah, you can take it for a while."



I’d probably say, "Sure, I'll give it to you when I'm done."



If I'm cooking and my husband wants to use the same pan, I wouldn’t share it by saying, "Oh... hmm... I'm kinda in the middle of... Okay, I'll empty these green beans into a bowl and you can use it then give it back to me and I'll finish.”



I’d probably say, "Oh you need this too? Ok, I'll let you know when I'm done, a few minutes."



I often wonder if emphasizing sharing over turn-taking is the biggest contributor to kids having such a hard time being generous with their "stuff.” After all, if I was expected to give away my novel or pan midway through, I would get possessive and sneaky about my things, too. I wouldn't want to keep a book out when my friend came over and would want the kitchen to myself when I cooked.



When we force a child to share, we’re not teaching them generosity—we’re stirring up feelings of insecurity and possessiveness. So, instead of forced sharing (“Aliyah is sad, let her have that truck!”), try emphasizing turn taking (“Looks like Aliyah wants that truck too. When you’re finished, please let her know.”)



When I’ve talked about this issue in my private practice, parents often say, "Ok, but my child doesn't even like friends to play with toys he's not using!"



Here are a few more thoughts on how to respond to sharing struggles.



1. Trust and control are opposites. The more we control sharing, the more we show our kid that we don't trust him to turn-take.&nbsp;



2. Give your child a choice. Allow your child to put away a few toys before a playdate.



3. Validate your child’s feelings. If your child goes into "No! She can’t have that!” mode with everything another child touches (It’s normal! I've been there!), tell your child, "I know, it's so hard when friends come over and play with our toys! All our toys will stay in our house, sweetie. Aliyah is using that truck right now. I'm sure he will let you know when he is finished."



4. Set boundaries with empathy. Prevent your child from grabbing (by staying near him) and if it feels necessary, remove your child from the room, saying, "It's hard to make good choices right now. I'll help you. You're not in trouble. I'll stay with you here until your body feels calmer and then we can go back and play with Robbie."

When Your Child Struggles With Sharing

Our kids' difficult moments come from a failure of emotion regulation, not a failure of logic.



When our kids act out, we either interpret these moments through the lens of "What's wrong with my kid, why did he do that?" or "What’s going on for my kid, I wonder why he did that?" This not only determines our response, but also wires our children for how they will think about themselves, whether they will ask themselves "What’s wrong with me, why did I do that?" or "What's going on for me, I wonder why I did that?"



I want the second option for my kids, for sure.



<h2>The dysregulation behind bad behavior</h2>



In their early years, kids experience emotions that are too big to manage alone in their bodies, which is why the feelings come catapulting out of their bodies as difficult behaviors: hitting, throwing, flailing, and more.



When our kids hit or yell or say something nasty to a sibling, it's not that our kids were considering the situation, assessing their options, and then acting out. These moments never stem from the logic system.



What's happening then? Our children became overwhelmed by a big feeling, thought, urge, sensation, or fear... some internal experience. This experience just becomes too big to manage and it explodes out of their bodies as a behavior.



(And yes, if you're wondering, this all applies to us adults as well.)



<h2>The problem with logic</h2>



We often have a mismatch as us parents use the logic system to respond: we explain, we lecture, we ask them why they did something, expecting an answer. This not only doesn't help but it infuriates a child, because we are approaching regulation with logic. This doesn't compute. It's as if we are speaking another language.



Here's a more general point: We overvalue logic. There's a seeming intellectual superiority to logic over feeling, which is too bad given that our feelings happen first. We feel before we think. If anything should be getting our respect, it's our feelings.



When your child acts out, notice your urge to use logic. Greet it ("Hello logic! Appreciate all your hard work... it's just that you're not useful at this moment.") and then connect, empathize, and be curious. Aim to support your child, instead of solving the situation. Aim to connect, instead of being right.



If we cannot use logic through difficult moments, what can we do? Build regulation.&nbsp;



<h2>How to build emotion regulation</h2>



To me, parenting is all about building our kids' capacity to regulate difficult emotions. We build regulation with two things: safety and goodness.



<ol><li>Establish safety</li></ol>



We must establish safety first. Removing a child who is throwing blocks from a block area isn’t a punishment or a consequence; we’re removing them for their own and everyone else’s safety. Our first and foremost job as a parent is to make sure our child is safe.



We establish safety when we assert our sturdy leadership, telling them, "My number one job is to keep you safe and right now safety means you and I together in a separate room." We don't need our child's permission or approval and we should anticipate pushback and screaming. It's critical to follow through to allow for the feelings of safety.



<ol start="2"><li>Find goodness</li></ol>



Next? Regulate yourself, find your goodness ("I am a good parent, my child's behavior is not a measure of my parenting!"), and then show this goodness to your child.



Children respond to the versions of themselves we reflect back. Want your kid to act like a good kid? Treat him like one. Separate his behavior on the outside from who you see on the inside.



Tell your child: "I won't let you throw blocks. I know that you were having a hard time. I care about that and I care about you."



Our kids feel good inside when we stay with them when they're upset. Sit with your child. Breathe. Stay.



The next day, after you've established safety and goodness, work on the skills your child is missing. Create a situation where you can "play around" with frustration. Practice breathing, self-talk, taking breaks. This is key for change.

How to Respond to Your Child’s Bad Behavior

If whining gets under your skin… join the club. I’m a founding member. We’re in this together.



Why do our kids whine? Hear me out on a few ideas.&nbsp;



<h2>Feeling helpless</h2>



Whining is a sign of desire and powerlessness, and there’s not many things harder than feeling those two things together. Confession: I whine under these conditions as well. I remember a few months ago when I showed up to a coffee shop a bit before opening. I was desperate for coffee, but also cutting it close for work. The manager told me, “We’re not open” and I whined, “Pleeease?” I felt desperate and powerless.



<h2>Looking for connection</h2>



When whining, kids often feel alone and unseen. As parents, we must sometimes make decisions that we feel are right even in the face of our kid’s protest, but this doesn’t preclude us from understanding and connecting. Connect with humor, validation, permission, hugs, and generosity (see examples for each strategy below). You can also connect with the plight of being a child: “You wish you were an adult and could decide on screen time yourself.&nbsp; I get that. Being a kid can be really hard.”



<h2>Looking for a release&nbsp;</h2>



The other day at lunch, my son whined for a grilled cheese cut into pieces and a grilled cheese that was whole, warm water and cold water, apples, no, actually pears. I paused and thought, “Huh. My son is whining and being unreasonable as a way of saying to me, ‘Mommy, be firm, provide a sturdy container for me. I need a good cry.’”&nbsp;



I stopped trying to make things better and just said, “These are our food choices today. Nothing feels good, huh? Nothing feels like you want it to.” He screamed and protested and cried. He needed it. Sometimes the best thing we can do as a parent is welcome the mess of our kid’s feelings.



<h2>5 ways to respond to whining</h2>



Here is a list of response-to-whining ideas. Let us know what you try, what resonates, what doesn’t, and what your most difficult whining moments are.&nbsp;



<ol><li>Humor. “How did that whine get in here?” Go “throw” the whine out and say, “Whew! It is O-U-T, OUT! Ok, sorry, what did you ask for? Ice in your water? Sure I’ll grab you some.” </li><li>Model the request without whining. “Dad, can you please grab me that book? Thank you so much.” Then go say in your “own” voice, “Oh sure sweetie, no problem.” </li><li>Permit protest. “You’re allowed to not like my decision.” </li><li>Play the Fill Up Game. “Oh no! I think you’re not filled up with Mommy.” Fill your child up with successive hugs and then add one more to give “extra Mommy.” See what happens next. </li><li>Empathy plus a boundary. “I know. It’s tough to be a kid. You wish you could make all of your own choices. I get that, I really do.” Remember, we can be firm and loving in these moments.&nbsp;</li></ol>

Why Kids Whine and What to Do About It

Your child receives a gift from his grandma. There’s a pause. An absence of a “Thank you.” And then, worse... Tears. Protest. Maybe words like, “I don’t even like this!” Then what? Your embarrassment. Your association to words like “spoiled” and “entitled.”



Do I think your child’s behavior is okay? Well, to be honest, that isn’t the question I would ask here. This is the question: What’s going on here, really? Why do kids often appear ungrateful when they receive gifts? Why do kids appear ungrateful in other situations? And what can we do about it?



Lots of us have these moments. Even outside of holidays or birthdays, our kids might arrive at the dinner table and say “Chicken again? Ugh!”



If you’re like me, you usually want to reply to these moments with something like, “You’re so ungrateful, come on!” Let’s rethink this response.&nbsp;



<h2>Regulating disappointment</h2>



The idea that you should feel nothing but gratitude when you receive a gift doesn’t help our kids actually learn the process of feeling grateful.



This is about emotion regulation. We can’t have space in our bodies for feelings like gratitude until we’re able to regulate the other feelings in our bodies. If my six-year-old wanted a video game and received a hat for his birthday from grandma, he has to be able to regulate his disappointment for not getting the video game before feeling gratitude for the hat.



If we approach gratitude through the lens of emotion regulation, we can help our kids feel&nbsp; grateful for any gift or gesture, while still feeling disappointed or upset. Rather than teaching our kids to “behave” gratefully, we have to prepare our kids (and ourselves) to manage a wide range of feelings.&nbsp;



<h2>Gratitude is a feeling, not a behavior</h2>



The other important aspect of cultivating gratitude in our kids is asking them the right questions—not forcing them to perform the right behaviors.&nbsp;



Understanding the feeling of gratitude relies on reflecting, not doing. When we are willing to explore tricky topics with our kids, we stimulate a thought process inside our children about what it means to be grateful for something. There's nothing that teaches children how to reflect and be thoughtful as well as the actual experience of reflecting and being thoughtful.



That’s why good questions (“What does it mean to have ‘enough’? Hmm..”) stimulate gratitude more than any rule or behavior ("Say thank you to Grandma!").&nbsp;

Rethinking Ungrateful

Lying. You ask your kid if they’ve washed their hands, and they say yes even though you know they haven’t moved from the couch. You see your child break a lamp and they insist, “It wasn’t me! It just fell down!” Your teenager tells you they didn’t use their phones after hours, even though you’ve seen the usage data.&nbsp;



It is infuriating when we watch our children deny something we know to be true.&nbsp; These reactions come to mind as a parent: How disrespectful! Are you trying to pull one over me? Do you think I was born yesterday? If you had just told me the truth to begin with, I would have never gotten so angry!



So, why do kids lie, and what’s a parent to do? If we suspend our judgment and feelings and instead zoom out and become curious, lying becomes kind of fascinating, right? We can have a child who essentially knows that we know the truth… and the child will still maintain a different story. There’s something very interesting going on.



This article explores what motivates lying, how to avoid power struggles, and how to respond to lying in a way that gets to the core of the issue and increases truth-telling going forward.



<h2>What motivates kids to lie?&nbsp;</h2>



When a child is lying, here’s what’s happening: Attachment.



Attachment is an evolutionary mechanism to protect children. Staying close to parents ensures biological survival and psychological security—both necessary for a child to grow and thrive.



Through the mechanism of attachment, children learn and then maximize what brings their parents closer through love, validation, non-judgmental curiosity, and empathy; they also learn and then avoid what makes their parents more distant through criticism, ignoring, being sent away, and rage.



Here’s how this relates to lying: If children believe that their parents will react to the truth with some combination of anger, judgment, and punishment (all signs of distance), they lie to preserve attachment.&nbsp; If children believe that parents will react to the truth with concern, inquiry, and an understanding that there’s a goodness underneath a “bad behavior,” they will be honest all day, every day.



For kids to be honest, telling the truth must increase connection and closeness.&nbsp; This is not to say that there can’t also be signs of disappointment or frustration—of course there can—but if these aren’t combined with messages of connection, love, and understanding, then lying is more adaptive to a child than telling the truth. And kids cannot fight the evolutionary mechanisms designed to protect them.



<h2>How to support truth-telling in the first place:</h2>



Once children understand that you’re more interested in the feelings and struggles underneath their behaviors, truth-telling becomes more natural.&nbsp;



Some of the best times to work on the importance of telling the truth come, ironically, at the moment of your child’s lie—but not in the way you might think.&nbsp; Parents need to resist the understandable urge to “be right” (I know this is so hard!) and to instead connect to the feelings that motivated the behavior in the first place. If you can respond with connection and interest, your child will, over time, become less and less likely to lie to you.



Outside of the moment of a child’s lie, you can act as a role model by acknowledging when it feels hard to tell the truth and modeling how to cope with feelings like shame or embarrassment.

Why Do Kids Lie?

When it comes to your child asking question after question after question, there’s one key piece of advice: Don’t. Take. The. Bait.



This is a key skill as a parent. In fact, it serves us well in all relationships to recognize when someone’s words are just a clue into how they feel, not really how they feel. Not taking the bait means stepping back, reflecting, and recognizing when your kid's questions aren't, in fact, questions, but pleas for acknowledgement.&nbsp;



Let’s say you tell your child he cannot have a playdate on Saturday. You have a reason why and you've told your child your rationality, and yet something is off, your child keeps asking the same questions on loop:



"But why not? Why can't Max's dad take me?”



"How about I go for just a little?"



"Why could I go to Jasper's last weekend, but not Leo's tomorrow?"&nbsp;



And so on. You get frustrated, the yelling escalates, and then everything feels awful. What's happening here? Well, I can tell you this first: these are not real questions.



<h2>Real questions versus pleas for acknowledgement</h2>



Real questions are ones in which the question-asker legitimately doesn't know the answer, is open to hearing any answer, and—this is key—is looking to learn, not prove or convince. Anything else is an expression of a feeling that happens to have a question mark at the end. What's key, to avoid escalation, is to recognize these moments for what they are.



When your kids say to you, "It's not fair, why do you decide everything?", they're not looking for an explanation of adulthood versus childhood or a lecture on your ability to prioritize long-term benefit over short-term gratification. They're looking for you to see their experience and their frustration. They want you to recognize how hard it feels to be a kid—to want things so badly and have an adult get in your way.&nbsp;



When you start substituting "answering" for connecting to your child's underlying experience, everything shifts.&nbsp;



Your child: “Why do you get to decide everything?!”



You: “I hear you. You wish you were an adult so you could make all decisions for yourself. And when you are… you’re going to do great because you know who you are and what you want.”



If you're someone who likes extra credit, start noticing these dynamics in other relationships, too: at work, in your marriage, in friendships, and yes, even in yourself—notice when some pressing question may really be an expression of how you're feeling and a desire for that feeling to be seen.



<a href="https://www.goodinside.com/video/1335/how-to-respond-to-i-hate-you/">Up Next: How to Respond to "I Hate You!"</a>