The Control Conundrum

I didn’t truly understand what my book was about until I finished writing it. It took ten months of researching, thinking, and writing to realize the whole point of a book about autonomy-supportive parenting isn’t really autonomy-supportive parenting. It’s about control.

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.

A prime example of facing my own control issues was the experience of parenting an almost 7th-grader in summer freedom last year. Her “meals” barely resembled actual food. She scheduled her own fun. When I encouraged daily reading (easily accepted by the other two kids), she looked at me like it was the most ludicrous request I could have possibly issued. I thought to myself, “how do I make her read?” But that’s the controlling impulse. As an established middle-schooler, she was slipping away. From me, and my control.
 
Doing my best to keep an autonomy- supportive mindset, I resisted the urge to tell my young teen that she had to read an hour a day or she would lose her phone. That would be the most straightforward and possibly effective approach, at least in the moment. But using empathy and perspective-taking, I reminded myself how unjust that would feel to her. I would also not accomplish what I really hoped for, which is that she develops her own motivation to read—because she enjoys it, not because I “made” her.

My autonomy-supportive mindset helped me take a pause to reflect on my own motivations too. Why do I see reading as so important? I have always loved reading – am I projecting my own identity and values onto her? (This is an important question for most parents!) I knew it would help our relationship and resolve this standoff more positively if I could proceed thoughtfully instead of reactively.

I mostly backed off (hey, I’m human, there were moments I couldn’t help bringing it up). I found more natural opportunities to show benefits of regular reading rather than lecturing or insisting. I resisted the pull of using her phone as a threat. I took deep breaths and remembered the bigger parenting goal of my daughter finding her own motivation.
 
That response fit the reading power struggle, but there are times that our children need to do things they don’t want to do (homework, cleaning rooms, going to a family event). This is the autonomy-supportive versus control conundrum, which I also call the “you can’t make me” part of parenting.

There’s so much to say about control that I dedicated a whole chapter to it in my book, and in every chapter with scripts and vignettes, I contrast the controlling response (quite easy to generate) with the autonomy-supportive response. But for now, I hope reading this helps you contemplate your own controlling impulses—not in shame or self-judgment, but simply with awareness that this is a normal human response. And awareness helps us harness it.

Next week, I will talk more about how to harness controlling impulses through influence instead of control.

Update on my anti-reading daughter (now facing summer of being an almost-8th grader!): she finished last summer devouring a book of choice in a few days. At the beginning of her school year, she asked permission to read a memoir with adult themes and dedicated her phone-free afternoon time to enjoying this book. Her agency, her choice, her motivation. She may not be the avid reader I always was, but — news flash — she’s not me! And she’s amazing as she is.

I hope sharing my personal struggles help shed even a glimmer of light on your own. I want to hear from you – do you feel like you get controlling at times as a parent, against your best intentions? Where are your control trigger points in this parenting season, this month, or today??

**You can pre-order my book Autonomy-Supportive Parenting: Reduce Parental Burnout and Raise Competent, Confident Children on Amazon and Bookshop.