The Six-Year-Old with a Knife

There's a reframe that changes everything about how you deal with the certain someone in your orbit who consistently puts things at risk without seeming to understand why. The one where you walk away furious, not because of what they did, but because they couldn't see what they did.

Here it is: What if they're not a difficult adult? What if they're a six-year-old with a knife?

A founder I was in session with recently hit a familiar wall. Their co-founder kept making decisions that threatened investor relationships, torpedoed vendor negotiations, and required hours of cleanup every week. The frustration had curdled into something deeper and more insidious: resentment. It was their slow-burning reaction to an increasingly frustrating working relationship, doing nothing more than make this founder want to pull out their hair.

I had always likened resentment to drinking a sort of poison and hoping someone else dies. It's pointless, negative rumination that only ever affects one person... the one with resentment!

Together, we traced their resentment back within them residing next to its cozy neighbor, fear. Fear of what this person might do next. Fear they'd sink the raise. Fear their lack of awareness would cost the company everything they'd built. And fear, when aimed at someone or something you can't control, becomes resentment almost automatically.

So how do you stop drinking the poison? The Type As among us would love to think that if only we found the right words to explain or negotiate with this person, the argument will finally land. That's usually wishful thinking at best.

I knew my client had young kids, and I asked them to imagine their son a few years back as a sweet six-year-old child:

"Can you think of a time when he put himself in harm's way? What comes to mind?"

"Oh, I'm looking right at him. It was when he wanted to help with dinner and cut vegetables. And I had my eyes off of him for a split second, and I turn back around and he had a knife. A very sharp knife."

"What did you do?"

"I swooped in, I took it. I said, 'No, no, no, put that down. When you grow up, I will teach you but not until you're older.'"

So you see your six-year-old with a knife, you move quickly, you take the knife, and you send the situation on with some compassion. You don't yell at the kid, or go on a 20-minute diatribe on knife safety. What would they learn? Nothing. The logic wouldn't land, and you know that, so you don't waste your breath on it. You just handle it.

Resentment assumes the other person is on your level and choosing to be difficult. Compassion recognizes they may simply be operating at a different developmental stage entirely. At least in this one domain (for now). This is not to say you should actively infantilize the adults in your life, but rather that you have a choice in how you respond.

When you can genuinely hold that frame, the charge starts to drop:

• You stop being surprised by the behavior. Six-year-olds grab knives. That's what they do.
• You stop expecting the conversation you keep trying to have to eventually work.
• You stop taking it personally. They're not coming for you. They just don't know.

You respond from the right posture: calm, clear boundaries, without the energy drain of fighting someone you can't reason into growth. When you're honest with yourself about who you're actually dealing with, you can show up right-sized for the situation, instead of burning yourself out in a fight that was never going to go the way you wanted.

So, if there's someone in your life you've been trying to reason into a person they're not, stop reasoning. Take the knife. Do it with love.

Disclaimer: The client gave permission to share this story. Everything that could identify them has been changed.