One of the phrases that I seem to be hearing often now from my teenagers is: “It’s no big deal.” As you might imagine, this phrase is only used when it is very likely that the issue at hand is, IN FACT, a big deal—so, I’ve grown to hate the phrase with a deep and burning passion. I’m also not too keen on the phrase that I keep finding coming out of my own mouth, “Oh, it’s a very big deal!”
Of course, as often happens in matters of communication, my kids and I are talking in code. When they say, “It’s no big deal”—what they really mean is: I wish you wouldn’t make a big deal about this, I think people are overreacting, I wish you didn’t know/hear/care about this, or simply, leave me alone. And, when I say, “It’s a very big deal!” I’m trying to let them know that I do care, I am on to them, and I’m not really very thrilled about having to play the heavy (take the call from school, be called into mediate, have to tell them for the 800th time to turn the music down, or whatever.) So, we do the “big deal dance.”
Of course, everything can’t be a “Big Deal”—my kids are right in thinking this. My son has started saying that he thinks “everyone is overreacting” which does add some clarity in regards to why he thinks things shouldn’t be a concern. And, sometimes, I have to admit that he is right—some things that get blown into “big deals” are, in fact, very “little deals” if they are really any sort of “deals” at all.
And, what I would like to gain the fortitude to say is that as long as they are minors and I have to get involved, then I get to decide if it is, in fact, a big deal or not.
See Also: Can You Stay Calm and Neutral During Discipline? and Obviously, Clean Means Different Things to My Kids and Me