No...No...No

Instead of banging my head against the  wall each time I spoke to my porcupines, I decided to look up for some answers to why they derive so much pleasure(?) by being so bull-headed.  This is what I found.

Negativism is a behaviour charaterised by the tendency to resist complying to suggestions and directions...something which happens I think 95 % of the time.  Make a polite request, and you'll get a direct no in return...No amount of cajoling, or even appeal to good sense will make the person change the fixed mindset.

According to studies, negativism appears and wanes at various stages of a person's development. Active negativism, that is, behavior characterized by doing the opposite of what is being asked, is commonly encountered with young children. I think we think of this stage as the 'terrible two and three' when a child tries to exert his automony..."No,No,No."...is the automatic response that has exasperated many a befuddled parent.
Studies have revealed that negativism develops during the first year of life, and resurfaces during toddlerhood and again during adolescence. Yup...the teenaged years is sometimes punctuated with either sullen sulky silence, or loud outbursts.  Yes...all teens feel that the world is against them...that they are at the receiving end of all the actions of their forefathers. So they shut their eyes and ears from whoever they think have contributed to their pathetic lives...and somehow revel in an amount of self-pity.

Negativism is often used by adolescents as a way to assert their autonomy from their parents and to control their own behavior. But here lies the danger.  It is not something that you can easily snap out off. It is almost cancerous in nature, for it takes over the whole being. When negativism does not diminish, it becomes a characteristic of the individual's personality. Negativism is an aspect of one of the essential features of oppositional-defiant disorder, characterized by a pattern of behavior that is defiant, negativistic, and hostile toward authority figures.  People like this do not trust anyone, except themselves, and will always be suspicious to people and their motives.  They do not appreciate kindness, and find it difficult to accept, when good is done to them.

*** I suppose I will have to keep on learning in order to understand.

Dear God,
Please preserve my sanity for if I do understand,
I need to keep on going despite the odds.
Ameen.