Wouldn’t it be convenient if we had a little bar in our peripheral vision that told us how much power we had… kind of like a video game?  As teachers, we seek to empower our students in an effort to get them ready for life.  When is too much power a problem, though?

    I, of course, know my answer for that.  A kid has too much power when parents and teachers are having to bribe or threaten him to get him to do something.  If the request is reasonable, bribing or threatening should not be required.

   Giving a child too much power starts early.  Allowing your toddler to decide where and when he sleeps, when and what he will eat, and whether or not the family can stay at a particular event seems crazy to my generation.  It seems to be the norm, however, nowadays.  When I am interviewing prospective students and their families, I am very careful not to allow students in who display too much power over their parents.  Truth be told, all kids struggle for power… as they should.  It’s in the struggle that kids grow and learn.  I just want the ones who earned their power, as opposed to those who demanded and “got” it.

   Probably the best way to illustrate what I mean is with an example. Your child should want the power to decide his off-school agenda.  He earns that privilege by choosing to get homework and chores out of the way first.  Because he was wise with his time, you grant the power to choose the rest of the evening’s agenda.  You don’t, however, let him close his door and surf the Internet all evening any more than you let him go out every evening with his friends.  With these poor decisions, he should experience a loss of power.

   Parents, you should not feel guilty that you require your child to sleep in his room in his bed.  It’s not wrong to require that your child eat the dinner you are making for the family.  You do not owe your child a reason for picking him up from daycare later than you thought you might.  And it is very right for you to expect your child’s room to be cleaned up when you ask.  After all, you’re paying the mortgage.  (There are exceptions to each of these; I am, of course, talking in general.)

   So many talking heads would have you believe that a child’s life should be stress-free.  Not only has there never been a stress-free childhood in the history of mankind, but to try to make it happen quintuples parent stress! On the contrary, stress is required to make a great adult.  As babies, we screamed when we were stressed.  I’m wet! I’m hungry! I’m sleepy!  When we became toddlers, we experienced stress to potty train and to learn what we could do and what we could not.  Stress continued throughout school:  learning to read, memorizing our basic facts, gaining friends, playing sports.  Sure, there are stressers that are bad:  bullies, stringent rules, peer pressure.  But, as we navigated through those stressers, we inevitably became stronger. And what did we do with that knowledge when we became adults?  Seek to make sure our kids never had any of the stress we did!  

     If our kids are going to turn out well, we have got to let them earn their power, just as we did.  Nothing is sadder to me than a kid who has everything and/or whose parents let him call the shots.  These are my whiniest students.  You’d think they’d be delighted, but they are not.  They’re missing the one thing they crave:  a challenge.  Everything is given to them; nothing is earned.  

   I am fond of telling my kids that I want them to “roar,” not “purr.”  Another phrase I often tell them is to live their lives out loud.  Both of these phrases encourage the child to express the power he has earned.  Life is challenging, but if they have been challenged all along by loving parents and teachers, no challenge in life will be too much for our children to handle.  

-       Michelle