This post may ruffle some feathers, so beware!

When I was reading a chapter on sheltering and control in Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood, they said, “Isn’t it ironic that parents who attempt to hoard control wind up losing most of it?” (128)  I think this is so true in many facets of our lives.

Stories

Now I know that some of these are extreme cases, but they still prove a point!  For instance very controlling parents who basically dressed their High School daughter and were so strict that she ended up losing her virginity in a classroom at an after school program.

Or the Drill Sergeant parent, who made every decision for their child, told her what to do and when to do it.  She sneaks out of the house (because her friends told her to), gets in a car, the car gets in a race, and she ends up dying in a car accident.

I know a family that home schools all their children strictly because they didn’t want their daughter exposed to the sex education program and she ends up being pregnant at 14!

Reasoning

Children are desperate for control.  Our job is to let them make their own decisions from a young age so that they learn every decision has consequences, whether they be good or bad.  It’s better to let them learn this a little at a time.  This way, when a decision turns out to be a bad one, the price is not so high.

If you hoard all the control, your children will take it.  They usually wait and start taking control in big chunks, make big decisions, decisions that they are not yet mature enough to be making.

I know the world can be a very scary place, but unfortunately it’s the world we live in right now.  Expose your children to a little bit at a time, discuss with them while you still can influence them.

If you expose them when you have control you can make sure that it’s at a level that they can handle for their age.  Then when your children get older and run into scary situations they will be more likely to make an educated decision on their own.

Here is a post on giving children choices.

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Thank you Imagine Fitness for the photo.