The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives

by William Stixrud

From 1960 until 2002, high school and college students have steadily reported lower and lower levels of internal locus of control (the belief that they can control their own destiny) and higher levels of external locus of control (the belief that their destiny is determined by external forces). This change has been associated with an increased vulnerability to anxiety and depression. In fact, adolescents and young adults today are five to eight times more likely to experience the symptoms of an anxiety disorder than young people were at earlier times, including during the Great Depression, World War II, and the cold war.2 Are things really harder now than they were during the Depression? Or are we doing something that is dampening their natural coping mechanisms?

We all do better when we feel like we can impact the world around us. That’s why we continue to push the button to close the elevator door even though most of them don’t work.3 It’s why, in a landmark study conducted in the 1970s, nursing home residents who were told and shown that they had responsibility over their lives lived longer than those who were told that the nursing staff was in charge.4 It is also why the kid who decides on his own to do his homework (or not) will be happier, less stressed, and ultimately more capable of navigating life.

False Assumption 4: The world is more dangerous than ever before. We have to supervise our kids constantly to make sure they don’t get hurt or make bad decisions.

We really can’t control our kids—and doing so shouldn’t be our goal. Our role is to teach them to think and act independently, so that they will have the judgment to succeed in school and, most important, in life. Rather than pushing them to do things they resist, we should seek to help them find things they love and develop their inner motivation. Our aim is to move away from a model that depends on parental pressure to one that nurtures a child’s own drive. That is what we mean by the self-driven child.

It turns out that it’s the sense of control that matters, even more so than what you actually do. If you have confidence that you can impact a situation, it will be less stressful. In contrast, a low sense of control may very well be the most stressful thing in the universe.

It is frustrating and stressful to feel powerless, and many kids feel that way all the time. As grown-ups, we sometimes tell our kids that they’re in charge of their own lives, but then we proceed to micromanage their homework, their afterschool activities, and their friendships. Or perhaps we tell them that actually they’re not in charge—we are. Either way, we make them feel powerless, and by doing so, we undermine our relationship with them.

Bill cried every day for the first week of first grade because he didn’t know any of his classmates. His teacher was quietly supportive, and when other kids would whisper, “Mrs. Rowe, he’s crying,” Bill would hear her say, “He’s going to be fine. He’ll like it here, don’t worry.” He did, in fact, figure out how to manage the stress of an unfamiliar situation and the coping skills he learned appear to have generalized, as he never cried again in an unfamiliar environment. (So far, anyway.) The teacher was right to let him work it out, instead of swooping in and giving him the sense he couldn’t handle it on his own.

When you’re sitting in a waiting room or unwinding after dinner, if you’re not reading, watching television, or on your phone, your default mode network is projecting the future and sorting out the past. It’s processing your life. It activates when we daydream, during certain kinds of meditation, and when we lie in bed before going to sleep. This is the system for self-reflection, and reflection about others, the area of the brain that is highly active when we are not focused on a task. It is the part of us that goes “off-line.” A healthy default mode network is necessary for the human brain to rejuvenate, store information in more permanent locations, gain perspective, process complicated ideas, and be truly creative. It has also been linked in young people to the development of a strong sense of identity and a capacity for empathy.19 Not surprisingly, stress impairs the default mode network’s ability to work its magic. Scientists are concerned that because of technology’s ubiquity, young people have too few opportunities to activate their default mode network and, as a result, too few opportunities for self-reflection.

This is a reframing that is difficult for many parents, who want the best for their kids and want as much as possible to protect them from suffering. But the reality is that if you want to give your children more of a sense of control, you will have to let go of some yourself. A consultant who loses his wits when the company doesn’t hit its targets or fails to reach its full potential becomes part of the problem. Remember that your job is not to solve your children’s problems but to help them learn to run their own lives. This reframing means that while we should guide, support, teach, help, and set limits for our kids, we should be clear—with them and with ourselves—that their lives are their own. As Eckhart Tolle wrote, “They come into this world through you, but they are not ‘yours.’”1

Second, when parents work harder than their kids to solve their problems, their kids get weaker, not stronger. If you spend ninety-five units of energy trying to help your child be successful, he or she will spend five units of energy. If you become frustrated or anxious and raise the ante, spending ninety-eight units of energy in clamping down even harder, your child will respond accordingly, and spend just two units. In Jonah’s case, he had a tutor, a therapist, and a school counselor who communicated regularly with his parents about his missed assignments. Jonah took no steps himself. This counterproductive dynamic will not change until the energy changes, which often happens when a parent, fully exasperated, says, “I can’t take this anymore. You’re on your own.”

Some parents who are familiar with research on brain development say, “How could I possibly trust my kid to be responsible for his education? His brain isn’t mature yet.” This is true at some level—his sense of judgment is still developing. But that’s just it: he needs room to develop. Kids need responsibility more than they deserve it. For most adolescents, and even for younger kids, waiting until they are mature enough to get all their homework done and to turn it in on time before giving up the enforcer role means you’ve waited too long. As we mentioned, the parts of the prefrontal cortex that regulate emotions don’t mature until you reach your early thirties, but we’d be hard pressed to find a parent who would want to wait that long to let their “kids” make their own decisions. The brain develops according to how it’s used. By giving your child the opportunity to make decisions for herself while still young, you will help her brain build the circuits that are necessary for resilience in the face of stress. A small experience of control over her circumstances, such as choosing her own clothing or decorating her own room, will activate her prefrontal cortex and condition it to respond effectively.3 Strengthened by this sense of control, the brain’s Pilot grows stronger, rather than ceding power to the Lion Fighter at the first hint of stress. By giving your five-year-old the ability to wear clashing clothes if she chooses, you will be helping her to cope better in every ...

There’s another moral to Jonah’s story. Teachers can teach, coaches can coach, guidance counselors can outline graduation requirements, but there’s one thing only parents can do: love their kids unconditionally and provide them with a safe base at home. For children who are stressed at school or in other parts of their lives, home should be a safe haven, a place to rest and recover. When kids feel that they are deeply loved even when they’re struggling, it builds resilience. Battling your child about due dates and lost work sheets invites school stress to take root at home. So instead of nagging, arguing, and constant reminding, we recommend repeating the mantra, “I love you too much to fight with you about your homework.”

The difference in attitude and performance of these two kids was not a matter of brain maturation or emotional maturity (she was eight and he was nineteen), and while ADHD is what brought them to my office, that diagnosis is beside the point here. The real issue was the internalized sense of who’s responsible for what. The girl accurately saw her homework as her responsibility and willingly did it, further strengthening her sense of mastery and autonomy. Throughout his life the boy saw homework as something that was being forced on him and that he didn’t need to think about because someone eventually would get on him about it. This mindset didn’t translate into college success. He had a very low sense of control regarding his own academic life, accompanied by a lot of anxiety, difficulty sleeping, and emerging depression. He did get back on track eventually. But it took time and a break from school until he determined that he was ready to try again.

mom recently told us she had been bemoaning her latest battle with her teenage son when one of her friends, whose son was in his twenties, told her, “It’s not worth the fight. One of my greatest regrets is that the last few years my son lived at home, we spent most of the time fighting about homework. I wish I could have those days back and just enjoy him. Now all that fighting seems so pointless and I feel like I missed out on him.”

“Crazy” will be defined differently by different people, of course. A helpful yardstick is to ask if most reasonable people (like an aunt or uncle, a teacher or coach) would consider the choice to be a terrible one. We wouldn’t consider it crazy for Greg’s bright twelve-year-old to decide to go back to her local public school. The school may have had fewer resources than the private school her parents decided to switch her to, and some of the classes may have been less well taught, but if she felt at ease and surrounded by supportive friends, it is possible that she would perform better and be happier. If she decided she wanted to leave home and join the circus, that would be another matter.

Beyond this, if a child is seriously depressed or suicidal, all bets are off. Her logic is impaired and you cannot start with the baseline belief that she wants her life to work out. People who are depressed can’t think clearly, as depression is defined, in part, by disordered thinking. Likewise, if a kid is dependent on alcohol or drugs or engaging in self-harm, he or she cannot adequately weigh the pros and cons and come to a good decision. We at times need to make decisions for kids who are temporarily not capable of making reasonable informed decisions for themselves, but the general principle still holds.

It is also benefitting from the internal motivation that comes from autonomy. The more experience kids have of managing their own stress and overcoming their own challenges, the more their prefrontal cortex will be able to regulate their amygdala.

People whose emotional brain centers are damaged can’t make simple decisions like whether to go out to dinner, because they don’t know what they want.6

We want kids to practice tuning in to their own

emotions, and asking, What’s right for me?

In fact, a recent study showed that other than showing your child love and affection, managing your own stress is the best thing you can do to be an effective parent.

Instead, he panics. His amygdala takes over. And before you know it, he’s stressed and grumpy, too. If this happens too much, his amygdala becomes larger and even more reactive. In Robert Sapolsky’s words, if stress persists for a long time, the amygdala becomes more and more “hysterical.”9

There’s a concern about telling kids too much and burdening them with emotions they are not prepared to handle, but whatever you do or don’t tell them, be mindful both of your child’s ability to feel your emotions and of her fear, uncertainty, and doubt. In the absence of a story or explanation, people tend to create their own, and often the scenarios kids will come up with are more alarming than the truth.

The second way you can inadvertently turn your child’s anxiety genes “on” is through your behavior. Let’s suppose your anxiety is more of the social variety (the most common form of anxiety, by the way), which means you experience intense fear of being scrutinized and negatively evaluated by others in social situations. A study out of Johns Hopkins University found that parents who suffer from this form of anxiety tend to have difficulty communicating warmth and affection, are more critical, and generally express more doubt about their children’s abilities than less anxious parents do. They are more apt to be overcontrolling and less likely to grant autonomy—behaviors known to increase anxiety in children.10

If you have unmanaged anxiety, tread carefully. Because of your anxiety, it will be harder for you to give up control when it comes to your kids, which may very well result in their rebelling, which will make your anxiety spike and your need for control even greater . . . which will make them further rebel. You see the negative feedback loop here?

Just as our kids mirror our stress, they can also mirror our calm. You probably know calm people, those who always project an aura of well-being and are able to maintain a sense of control while accepting the messiness in the world around them. They are the ones you want to call in a crisis, or whose presence you crave when you’re feeling edgy, because they somehow help level you out. Without preaching, without even doing much of anything, these people communicate calm and confidence to those around them, and help others develop a similar sense of balance in their own lives.

What these rat mothers were doing was making home the safe base we’ve been arguing for in this book. When your home is a calm space, free of excessive fighting, anxiety, and pressure, it becomes the place to regenerate that your kids need. They can go back into the world and better deal with fraught social dynamics, academic stresses, and challenges like tryouts or auditions, knowing that at the end of the day they have a safe place to recover.

When we’re calm, we can let kids experience discomfort and learn to manage it themselves. We can allow children to experience their own painful feelings without rushing in to take responsibility for resolving them. When we’re calm, we don’t give our kids excessive power to take us up and down with them. When parents separate their happiness from their children’s, when they accept that it’s okay for mom to be happy and at peace even if her twelve-year-old is not, it’s easier for them to offer the support their kids need. We often emphasize this point to parents whose kids are really struggling; while they almost never cause their children’s problems, their responses become part of a family dance that often takes them out of the role of chief consultant and into the role of worrier in chief.

In a competitive, overly busy world, it’s so easy to forget the basics: that enjoying your kids is one of the best things you can do for them, and for yourself. You don’t have to spend every moment with your kid, or convince yourself parenting isn’t hard when it is. But think for a moment about the giddy look we give babies when we see them in the morning or after a long day away. Think about the experience of being that baby: every time someone looks at you, they smile as if you’re a miracle. Your kid needs to feel the joy of seeing your face light up when you see him because you are genuinely happy to spend time with him. This feeling is incredibly powerful and important for his self-esteem and sense of well-being. Bill still remembers that when he went through a difficult period in his early twenties, he had a pair of friends who always expressed how happy they were to see him. This was forty years ago, and still it’s seared into his consciousness. This powerful memory helped shape Bill’s thinking when he started to do psychotherapy with kids and families. He began to suggest to parents that they make enjoying their kids their top priority so that their kids would have the experience of being joy-producing organisms.

In a survey conducted in the late 1990s, children and teenagers said that what they wanted above all—even more than spending more time with their parents—was for their parents to be happier and less stressed.

Second, if you want to keep your children as safe as possible, the best thing to do is to give them experience and teach them judgment.

They will be more careless if they take it for granted that you are always there. In the words of one of Ned’s good friends Jennifer, don’t try to carpet the world when it’s far easier to give out slippers. Or, to quote a character from the film Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: “We don’t need you to make us feel safe . . . you made us feel brave and that’s even better.”

Autonomy, they argue, is the most important of the three for developing internal motivation, so let’s start there. According to SDT, the best way to motivate a child (or an adult, for that matter) is to support their sense of control. Hundreds of studies of schools, families, and businesses have found that explaining the reasons why a task is important and then allowing as much personal freedom as possible in carrying out the task will stimulate much more motivation than rewards or punishments. We now know that if teachers foster autonomy in their students, they will catalyze internal motivation and a desire for challenge, and that if parents promote autonomy and mastery, their kids will be more likely to explore their interests and extend themselves. The very best thing you can do to help your children develop self-motivation is to give them as much control over their choices as possible, including asking them what it is they want to be competent at and in charge of.4

Finally, relatedness refers to the feeling of being connected to others, of being cared about. When your child feels connected to his teacher, he’ll want to work hard for that teacher. When Ned asks the students he coaches what their favorite class was the previous year in school, he always follows up their answer with another question: “Was it the class or the teacher?” At least half the time, the answer is, “It was the teacher. She was really great.” Likewise, when your child feels connected to you, when you communicate unconditional love and he tells himself, “My parents care more about me than about my grades,” then it is more likely that your child will internalize your values. Self-determination theory calls this “integrated regulation.” It is a child’s identification with the values and goals of the people who care for him and love him unconditionally.

When kids work hard at something they love and find challenging, they enter a state of what’s come to be called “flow,” where time passes quickly and their attention is completely engaged, but they’re not stressed. When you’re in flow, levels of certain neurochemicals in your brain—including dopamine—spike.6 These neurochemicals are like performance-enhancing drugs for the brain. You think better in flow, and you process information faster. To be fully engaged this way, the activity has to be challenging enough not to be boring, but not so difficult that it’s overly stressful. Think of playing tennis against a partner who is not nearly at your level. Completely boring. If you’re playing against someone who is vastly more skilled, it’s so punishing it’s not enjoyable. A partner with whom you’re well matched? That’s where you find your flow.

So when you see an eight-year-old highly focused on building a Lego castle, lips pressed in concentration, what she is actually doing is getting her brain used to being motivated. She is conditioning her brain to associate intense enjoyment with highly focused attention, practice, and hard work. Just as frequent exposure to high levels of stress can sculpt a young brain in ways that are unhealthy, frequent exposure to states of flow can sculpt a young brain to be motivated and focused. Researcher Reed Larson has studied the development of motivation in children and teens, and he’s found flow to be the secret sauce.7 In interpreting the results of Larson’s results, the great neuroscientist Marian Diamond concluded that, “while ‘wrapped up’ in a favorite pastime, children report feeling excited and forgetting their problems. The high internal motivation accompanying those feelings is a form of reinforcement for directed effort, learning, and accomplishment that can’t be achieved in any other way as successfully.”8 Think of it like cross-training. Maybe what you ultimately want is a kid who has the mental and leg strength to run a marathon, but playing jump rope or hopscotch is a great way to get those legs primed and ready.