Our kids feel pressure when we are controlling, but that might be because we are feeling so much pressure. The more we feel pressure—whether that’s external from work/family/community expectations or internally driven by our ideas of “good parenting”—the more stressed and defensive we may get to prove to everyone else and ourselves that we know what we’re doing. That combination of pressure, stress, and defensiveness to prove ourselves can increase the impulse to control.

When you start a conversation with your kids about the summer schedule, how do you approach the discussion in a way that doesn’t set up a summer-long battle of the wills?

By definition, parenting includes having expectations and standards for our children, setting limits, and directing our children to do things they don’t want to do—like pick up stinky socks littering the house. (Please tell me that’s not just my kids.) So, how do we accept our responsibility to actively raise our children while not controlling them?

The reality is that we want to feel in control as parents, and we usually don’t. Feeling out of control naturally leads to more controlling behaviors, which ends up doing more harm than good in parenting. Such as undermining our child's personal sense of control. When we control our children more, they feel more out of control themselves. We rob them of exactly what we are seeking for ourselves.

The bottom line is if we want to raise children who feel autonomous in the world – a strong sense of self and self-worth, living by their values – we need to be less controlling. When we control less, our children experience more freedom to explore the why of behaviors, internalizing the purpose and meaning of doing what we want them to (like be on time) instead of learning to do a behavior just to please us or avoid punishment.

The danger of our modern parenting culture is that the worries and over-analysis can turn into a noisy traffic jam in our brains, paralyzing us and stressing us out. Hint: the more stressed we are, the more controlling we usually become.
How we promote calm and wellness in our parenting selves comes back to balance. How? Let go of what is likely unhelpful worries (eg, your 3-year-old who doesn’t want to potty train will eventually use the toilet), to better focus your energies.