Something hardwired is going on here. The child expects to look up to the parent, to be instructed by the parent, indeed to be commanded by the parent. If the parent instead serves the child, then that relationship falls out of its natural balance. You may not earn your child’s love at all—and the more you try, the more pathetically unsuccessful you may be. I have seen precisely this dynamic play out at least a hundred times in my own medical practice over the past quarter century. The parent who puts the child’s wishes first may earn only the child’s contempt, not their love.
