Tag Archives: opportunities

How to Step Out of a Power Struggle

When we engage in power struggles with our children, it means we are invested in being right. When we must be right—”I’m the parent, I know best. You must do what I say”—the child is wrong and is left feeling powerless. The child then must fight back to preserve integrity; either that or the easy-going child submits again and again learning in the process to seek the approval of others to gauge her self-worth.

Engaging in a power struggle keeps the parent in the position of having to be right.

Backing down from the fight may feel too vulnerable for many parents. The parent expect the child to back down, to give up, to acknowledge being wrong — in other words, the parent expects the child to be the grown-up first.

Parents often feel at a loss when they don’t know what to do, when what’s “right” is not apparent. It feels weak and scary. But this place of doubt, the space where you just don’t know, where vulnerability lives, is a place of opportunity — one never found when

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Worried your child is a quitter?

How many times have you signed your child up for swimming, soccer, gymnastics, violin or piano lessons, camp—she even being begged for it—only to hear, “I don’t want to go”? It’s hard not to be furious—“But you said this is what you wanted”—especially when money is involved. Sometimes your child has been involved with the team or the lessons and says, “I want to quit.”

There’s no doubt that parents have hopes and expectations wrapped up in their child’s learning experiences. And what of the parent who never got the opportunity for anything extracurricular and is proud to be able to afford these opportunities for his child? Or the parent whose childhood was formed by her camp experiences, yet her child stubbornly refuses to go to camp?

Fears pop quickly to the surface: “She’s a quitter”, “He never can commit to anything”, “What will her boss do when she decides one morning she doesn’t want to go to work?” “He just gives up.” Those fears lead us to all kinds of bribery and manipulation to get our kids to do

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