The Case for the “Self-Driven Child”
In my experience, the topic of parenting always elicits the worst case of "everyone in the room is immediately an expert". People are incredibly opinionated and judgmental about the subject, and often take a dismissive attitude rather than a learning attitude about it.Part of the reason is as a population, we talk about parenting advice in a universal, context-independent way but the sheer amount of distinct situations in parenting makes it easy to poke holes in universal advice.Another reason is that we each have our own experience of being parented (often not positive), and may subconsciously judge advice based on its potential to lead to a child experiencing the same bad experiences we had, rather than the overall objective merits of said parenting direction.A third reason is that we underestimate the amount of negotiating, manipulating, and psychological back and forth that managing kids adds to parenting decisions. Even if the parenting direction is good, executing it properly is an entirely different matter.Having said that - I agree with most of this article. Control or the illusion of it is a very strong ingredient for mental stability and confidence, especially in undesirable environments. Lack of control in a undesirable situation leads to a feeling of helplessness, which can have cascading effects on mental health.That said, like most parenting advice, I don't think this qualifies as universal advice. It fits a large body of contexts, but there are several parenting situations I can imagine this having largely little to no effect in.