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

by William Stixrud

She explores this question through the example of a toddler who falls and whose parent swoops in to pick her up before she even has a chance to register what’s happened. The parent is working like mad to make sure the child doesn’t suffer—but why? Suffering, though painful to watch, is essential for the development of resilience.

Remember that magic line: “I have confidence in your ability to make informed decisions about your own life and to learn from your mistakes.”

3. Giving kids a sense of control is the only way to teach them competency—in decision making, and in whatever skill they’re learning.

They need to experience the natural consequences of their choices, ranging from being uncomfortably cold when they decided not to wear a coat, to getting a bad grade on a test because they decided not to study. We commonly see adolescents and young adults go off to college without having had much of an opportunity to make decisions about the things that matter, including how they want to structure their time, what they want to commit their energy to, or whether they want to be in school at all.

4. You don’t always know what’s best.

5. Kids are capable. Really.

6. Good decision making requires emotional intelligence. Kids need to learn what matters to them.

How children feel about things and what they want are important components in their decision-making process—as important as the hard facts.

It means saying something like, “I trust you to make a good decision, and this will ultimately be your call, but I want to be sure you make the best decision possible, so I’d like to help you think through the pros and cons of either option. I also want you to talk to people who have more experience and to get their feedback. Finally, I think it’s important that we talk together about a possible Plan B if your decision doesn’t go the way you want.”

Cost: Strain in the parent-child relationship would come from trying to force the child to do something he doesn’t want to do. There would be negative consequences from essentially telling Andy, “I know better than you do. Your opinion doesn’t matter.” Andy would miss out on the empowerment that comes from really having to think about what’s best for his future, and the maturation that would come from doing so. His parents would lose out on Andy’s turning to them for advice.

That doesn’t mean they won’t make mistakes—they will. But with every mistake, they’ll develop better instincts and self-awareness, especially if you help them process what went wrong without blaming or saying, “I told you so.”

Now it doesn’t always work out this ideally, but by conveying to Jeremy that she trusted him to make his own decisions and learn from his mistakes, Kathryn opened herself up to being a resource and sounding board.

Often what we think of as a cataclysmic setback is really nothing more than a ripple. Parents tend to worry far into the future, thinking, “If he gets stuck now, he’ll always be behind.” But that’s not true. Most development of children’s brains happens just by getting older. Letting them get stuck every once in a while, while you’re available to help them get out of the ditch, can actually help them grow.

“What about kids who won’t listen to reason when we discuss pros and cons?” Again, we want kids to make informed decisions that aren’t crazy. If children will not consider the relevant information, we don’t support letting them make the decision.

Bill reminded them that they can’t make their daughter want what she doesn’t want and they can’t make her do what she doesn’t want to do. He also pointed out that it couldn’t be their responsibility to make sure that her life was successful, and that their job was to support her, express empathy, set limits when necessary, and model assertiveness.

Part of making home a safe base is remembering that it’s your child’s life, not yours, and that his problems are his problems, not yours.

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.

Make enjoying your kids your top parenting priority.

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.

Remember the question we asked in Chapter Two: Whose life is it? If any one of these things happened, would you still love your child and do everything you could to help him? Of course you would. Your responsibility is to love and support your child. It isn’t your responsibility to protect him from pain. You can’t.

Learning how to recognize and manage risk is part of growing up. Remind your children that you are not always watching them and that you cannot always keep them safe, so they will take some of that responsibility on themselves. They will be more careless if they take it for granted that you are always there.

Adopt an attitude of nonjudgmental acceptance.

The common denominator in all emotional pain is a desire to change current reality (“I need my child to do better in school, to do better socially, to be less anxious, to eat more [or less, or better], to not be so addicted to video games and social media,” et cetera). In their book Rapid Relief from Emotional Distress, Gary Emery and James Campbell recommended that we teach ourselves to make peace with reality by first honestly accepting it for what it is.17 They advocate a formula known as ACT: Accept, Choose, Take Action. In the context of your kids it might look like this: I Accept the idea that my kid is underachieving/doesn’t have friends/can’t read, and I see this as part of his path. I Choose to create a vision of myself as a calm, compassionate parent who has a supportive relationship with my son. I will Take action by offering to help, focusing on his strengths, setting limits where necessary, and modeling acceptance and self-care. I will also seek help from others if my child needs assistance with reading, math, or any area where a third party can help him more than I am able to. Acceptance does not mean approving, condoning, or letting yourself be abused. It simply means acknowledging reality as it is rather than internally railing against it or denying it entirely. Accepting reality is the only alternative to counterproductive ideas like “I know how the world/my son/my daughter is supposed to be (and this ain’t it).”

Acceptance is a powerful stance. For one thing, accepting your children the way they are conveys respect. Acceptance is also a choice, and choosing to accept that “it is what it is” increases our sense of control.

Acceptance increases our flexibility and allows us to respond thoughtfully, rather than instinctively and reactively.

This short-term external motivation isn’t the type we’ll be talking about in this chapter. Our aim is to focus on the self-motivation necessary for the long game—the inner drive that we want our kids to have so that they commit to something and persevere, develop their potential, and take steps toward living the lives they want to live. Research over the last four decades has repeatedly demonstrated that incentives like sticker charts, consequences, and other forms of parental monitoring that are “laid on” children actually undermine this type of motivation. What we’re trying to do is to help kids to motivate themselves and to realize that they have something important to offer the world. We want to help them learn to run their own lives and seek to make them meaningful.

Studies show that rewards for things like grades or other achievements can lower performance, crush creativity, and lead to bad behavior, like a willingness to cheat on a test or take performance-enhancing drugs.1 Significantly, these external motivators can reinforce the idea that someone other than the child is responsible for his life. Rewards can erode self-generated interest and lead to interest only in the reward itself. What’s more, our clever brains see through external motivators; we’ve evolved in such a way as to detect them and to resist attempts to be coerced. We’ll devise ways to get the reward without doing the job or assignment. This is why kids can get As in courses they hardly remember after a few months.

She posits that when students have a “fixed mindset,” they see their mistakes as coming from a lack of ability, something they’re powerless to change. In contrast, when students have a “growth mindset,” they focus instead on their own effort as a means to become more successful. A growth mindset offers students a sense of control, as they believe that it’s in their power to get better and better at something—indeed, at anything. Dweck’s studies have found that students with a growth mindset tend to see learning as a more important goal in school than obtaining good grades. Their motivation, in other words, is internal. They are not relying on someone else’s pronouncement that they are worthy or smart. Promoting a growth mindset is one of the best ways to improve your child’s sense of control, to foster their emotional development, and to support their academic achievement.

To encourage a growth mindset, Dweck recommends praising effort and the various strategies kids use to solve problems, rather than their built-in ability.

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

competence is more about our feeling that we can handle a situation than it is about being really great at something.

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 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.

If you believe in education and hard work, and want your children to as well, we don’t recommend scolding them each time they come home with a subpar grade. Though you may think it’s the best way to communicate values, it’s actually counterproductive because it signals conditional love. Chances are that they are already irked by the grade, so offer a sympathetic, “I know this is upsetting to you. I know you worked hard on that. I’d be happy to talk through things to help you for next time, if you want.” Note that this response is sympathetic (relatedness). You’re also reminding your child that there are ways to get a better outcome next time (competence). And by ending it with “if you want,” they see they are in control, that you’re a consultant, not a manager (autonomy).

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.

This process is true for the eight-year-old, and it’s also true for a fifteen-year-old who may struggle in school but is passionate about skiing, or drawing, or playing an instrument. The best way to motivate him for the things you think he should focus on is to let him spend time on the things he wants to focus on.

We often try to help kids see the distinction between things they feel like doing and things they want to do. To illustrate this, Bill will ask them to think about new parents. He tells kids that when his daughter was a baby and it was his responsibility when she cried in the middle of the night to bring her to her mother to be fed, he never once felt like getting out of bed. But he wanted to do it because it was important that his daughter not suffer (and that he and his wife eventually get back to sleep). Using this logic, we encourage kids to tell themselves, “Even if I don’t feel like doing my work, I want to do it because it’s important for me and for my future.” Not surprisingly, kids often find that telling themselves “I want to do it” is more motivating than telling themselves otherwise.

Every success coach or productivity guru will tell you that if a child can visualize himself accomplishing a goal he has chosen for himself, it tricks the brain into thinking he’s done it. The same is true of writing goals down—it’s powerful reinforcement, and if that goal is there in your child’s handwriting it’s a great reminder that it’s his goal, not yours.

Some additional strategies for igniting the saboteur include: Frequent exercise. Even short bursts of exercise can activate the brain enough to get started on something, in part by increasing dopamine in the prefrontal cortex. Physical activity is physically activating.

There’s also recent evidence that chewing gum can improve activation, processing speed, and work production.

Circuit training. Saboteurs often do well when they work intensely for short periods marked by a timer and then take a prescribed break. If you think about it, “takeoffs” and “landings” are memorable in lectures and lessons. But in the middle, our brains meander. So twenty minutes of science, twenty minutes of Spanish, and twenty minutes of social studies, with breaks in between, repeated twice, may have better impact than forty consecutive minutes of each. Adding more starts and stops encourages the brain to be more attentive and motivated.

And we see it in the realm of the brain, where daydreaming, meditation, and sleep give the brain rest—consolidating new information and skills in memory and making the brain healthier when it returns to a period of activity.

the fact that so much of the brain activates when we’re at rest strongly suggests that rest should be taken seriously.