Who's in Charge Around Here?

“Would you do me a favor and brush your teeth, honey?”

I recently heard a friend of mine asking her daughter that very question.

Would you do me a favor and brush your teeth?

Clearly, her and I have very different views on what constitutes a “favor.”

A few days later, I heard a man in a restaurant asking his little boy to “do me a favor and try a bite of your salad.”

I’m sure if the two things had have happened a few months apart, I’d have thought nothing of it, but the first experience was still fresh in my mind when the second one occurred, and it got me thinking…

Do parents exercise their authority over their kids anymore, or have we grown so concerned with empowering our kids that we’ve taken a subservient role?

I first got to thinking about this after we got our puppy.

As I was watching the first of many training videos, the instructor explained the consequence of not taking authority over your new puppy.

“He needs to know you’re the boss. They’re pack animals, and someone’s got to lead the pack, and if it’s not you, he figures it’s up to him. That causes anxiety in the dog, because he doesn’t know how to lead.”

No, I’m not suggesting that human children are the same as puppies, but I had to admit, this particular scenario sounded awfully familiar.

Picture yourself on an airplane and the pilot coming over the speaker saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re approaching some inclement weather. Would you like to ascend to 45,000 feet and try to get above it, or would you prefer to ride it out at our current altitude?”

Dude, just fly the plane. You’re the pilot, isn’t this the kind of decision you’re supposed to make?

In the cover article of last month’s Maclean’s magazine, Dr. Leonard Sax, a family physician in Pennsylvania, and author of “The Collapse of Parenting,” says that the our scorn of power imbalances, whether based on religion, gender, race, or what-have-you, has us categorizing children as a minority group, and we feel the need to empower them.

“When parents begin to cede control to their kids, food choices are often the first thing to slide,” he says. “A rule such as ‘No dessert until you eat your broccoli,’ has recently morphed into, ‘How about three bites of broccoli and then you can have dessert?’ The command has become a question capped with a bribe.”

According to longitudinal studies done by Dr. Sax, children who are left to discover right from wrong on their own are more likely to be anxious, depressed, addicted to drugs or alcohol, and less likely to be gainfully employed.

“Parents who are authoritative have better outcomes,” he says, “and it’s a larger effect than the effect of race, ethnicity, household income or IQ.”

So why have we, the parents, adopted this new approach and given up all of our monarch-like powers?

Two things I know about my husband and I, and suspect is true of most parents:

1) We want to maintain a proper balance of respect and authority, and

2) We really, really don’t want to make any mistakes.

It feels like we’ve become conditioned to view wielding any kind of authority over our kids as oppressive, un-nurturing, and self-serving, and let’s face it, those are some pretty major parenting no-nos.

What we don’t seem to appreciate is that our kids need us to guide the ship. In situations where they feel confused, unsure, or conflicted, they could really use a parent there to give them some guidance. In situations where they don’t particularly like the direction that guidance is taking them, well, sometimes they just need to be told.

We’re human beings and we’re constantly striving to improve ourselves, but maybe, in this particular endeavor, we’ve taken a good idea and run it a little ways past the goal line. But tonight, I’m putting my foot down. I’m going home after work and putting on my sherriff’s badge. The kids are going to clean up their rooms, eat what I make them, and get into bed straight after their baths.

Assuming that’s okay with them.