How Parental Roles Change

A Primer on Leading Children to Make Good Decisions

by Matthew Henry from Burst

Children don’t always make the best decisions. In fact, they’re pretty terrible at it. As parents, it’s easy to feel as though our role is to bring down the hammer of tyranny and enforce the rules of the house (or else!), but going too far not only strains your relationship with your child, it harms your child’s ability to make good decisions on their own.

As our young ones level up in age, we have to change how we relate to them, which requires adjusting our roles in the relationship.

When It’s Okay to Make All of the Decisions

At three-years-old, children need to be told that power outlets, boiling water, and swimming pools are no-gos. These are binary “safe” or “unsafe” decisions that we make on their behalf so they have the opportunity to grow into productive members of society…hopefully.

The line starts to blur when the decisions are less binary. Is it safe to ride a bike? What about jumping a bike ramp? What about a bike ramp that jumps over five of your friends…or through a ring of fire and over two hungry lions?

Obviously, the lions are overdoing it, but let’s go back to that bike ramp. Who built it? How tall is it? What is it made of? How good of a…