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

by William Stixrud

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.

Without a healthy sense of control, kids feel powerless and overwhelmed and will often become passive or resigned. When they are denied the ability to make meaningful choices, they are at high risk of becoming anxious, struggling to manage anger, becoming self-destructive, or self-medicating. Despite the many resources and opportunities their parents offer them, they will often fail to thrive. Without a sense of control, regardless of their background, inner turmoil will take its toll.

Now many parents instinctively understand that these assumptions are untrue (and we will spend some time in this book debunking them). But that perspective dissipates when they feel pressured—by peers, by schools, or by other parents—to ensure their child isn’t falling behind. The pressure is rooted deeply in fear, and fear almost always leads to 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.

We start with the assumption that kids have brains in their heads and want their lives to work and that, with some support, they’ll figure out what to do. They know it’s important to get up in the morning and get dressed. They know it’s important to do their homework. They feel the pressure even if they don’t show it, and if they are struggling, nagging them about it will only reinforce their resistance. The trick is to give them enough freedom and respect to let them figure things out for themselves. Even if it were possible to control our kids and mold them into who or what we want them to be, we might be less stressed, but they would be more controlled than self-controlled.

Agency may be the one most important factor in human happiness and well-being.

It’s why we should let them do what they can for themselves, even if we’re running late and it will take them twice as long. It’s also why the surest way to get a picky five-year-old to eat his vegetables is to divide the plate in half and let him choose which half to eat.

Over the last sixty years, study after study has found that a healthy sense of control goes hand in hand with virtually all the positive outcomes we want for our children. Perceived control—the confidence that we can direct the course of our life through our own efforts—is associated with better physical health, less use of drugs and alcohol, and greater longevity, as well as with lower stress, positive emotional well-being, greater internal motivation and ability to control one’s behavior, improved academic performance, and enhanced career success.8 Like exercise and sleep, it appears to be good for virtually everything, presumably because it represents a deep human need.

As it happens, kids are more likely to persevere and to reach their full potential if they know they don’t have to do something.

So how do you capitalize on positive or tolerable stress while avoiding the bad kind? It is simple in theory, but tricky in execution: kids need a supportive adult around, they need time to recover from the stressful event, and they need to have a sense of control over their lives.

In acclaimed stress researcher Robert Sapolsky’s words, “Dopamine’s more about the wanting than the getting.”17 It is the key to drive. When you are under chronic stress, dopamine levels go down the tubes over time. It’s harder to want to do something, and as a result, you lose your motivation.

The main thing to remember for now is that chronically stressed kids routinely have their brains flooded with hormones that dull higher brain functions and stunt their emotional responses. Parts of the brain that are responsible for memory, reasoning, attention, judgment, and emotional control are dampened and eventually damaged. Over time these areas can shrink, while the parts of the brain that detect threats grow larger. Ultimately, an overactive stress system makes a child far more likely to develop anxiety disorders, depression, and a host of other mental and physical problems.

Chronic stress can create a feeling of helplessness. If nothing you do makes things better, why try to do anything at all? This sense of helplessness will leave you feeling that you just can’t accomplish a task, when in reality you could do it very capably.21 Chronic stress leads to behaviors like problems sleeping, binge eating, procrastination, and a lowered willingness to take care of yourself. Dopamine levels fall, as do levels of norepinephrine and serotonin.22 This is how stress can spiral into depression.

Toxic stress isn’t good for you at any age, but there are certain times in your life when it’s worse than others. Just as eating disorders can have a profound effect on young, growing bodies, chronic stress can have devastating effects on young, developing brains. The times when our brains seem to be the most sensitive to stress are: 1) prenatally (highly stressed pregnant women tend to have children who are more responsive to stress), 2) in early childhood, when neural circuits are particularly malleable, and 3) during adolescence, that powerful but vulnerable period between childhood and adulthood.

Children between the ages of twelve and eighteen show more brain development than at any time in life other than the first few years.

Normal adolescents, even those who aren’t experiencing any particular stressor, have exaggerated stress responses.

Adults who experienced even a single bout of major depression in adolescence are likely to display long-term problems in their work, their relationships, and the pleasure they take in life.26 Even after teens appear to have fully recovered, they are more likely to have mild but persistent symptoms like pessimism or sleep or appetite issues that will make them more vulnerable to depression later in life.

Ask your child if there are things he feels he’d like to be in charge of that he currently isn’t.

When your child is crying because she was excluded by two of her friends or was criticized in front of the class by her teacher, it’s easy to feel that it’s your problem, too. It hurts you to see her hurt—few things inspire the ire of parents more than seeing someone mistreat their child. That hurt may even stay with you long after she’s forgotten it. But ultimately, it is your kid’s problem, not yours.

Parents commonly feel responsible for policing homework without thinking about the underlying goal: to raise curious, self-directed learners.

If you act as if it’s your job to see that your child does his homework, practices the piano, or plays a sport, you reinforce the mistaken belief that somebody other than he is responsible for getting his work done. He doesn’t have to think about it because, on some level, he knows that eventually someone will “make” him do it.

We have a coda that spells things out even more clearly: You can’t make your kids do something against their will. You can’t make your kids want something they don’t want. You can’t make your kids not want what they want. It’s okay, at least right now, for them to want what they want and not want what they don’t want.

Kids need responsibility more than they deserve it.

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.

We recognize that there comes a point when a child no longer needs help getting dressed or putting on her shoes, and we also need to recognize the point when that child no longer needs our help managing her homework.

Kids won’t reach their potential by constantly being driven. In fact, the opposite is true; they will do what is necessary to get you off their back, but they won’t do more. People go the extra mile when it matters to them, not when it matters to you.

We need to set clear ground rules, while keeping in mind that our ultimate goal is not to produce compliant children as much as children who understand how to act and interact successfully in this world.

When it comes to making decisions about your kids’ lives, you should not be deciding things that they are capable of deciding for themselves.

When we try to direct our kids’ lives, we might see short-term gains, but there will be long-term losses.

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

Kids need to practice making their own decisions before they can do so legally. Telling our children how to make good decisions (or telling them how to do things for themselves) isn’t enough. It’s not enough to show them, either. They need to actually do it. They need practice. 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. Not surprisingly, they have difficulty setting and meeting goals and making good decisions when it comes time to pick classes or a major or more generally to manage their day.

This may be a hard one to swallow, but it’s really hard to know what’s in your child’s best interest. In part this is because you don’t know who your kid wants to be—that’s for him to figure out, ideally with your help.

How children feel about things and what they want are important components in their decision-making process—as important as the hard facts. However much we may want to override our kids’ negative emotions, we can’t.

Toddlers: Offer to let them choose between two outfits. Or, if they are up to the challenge, let them dress themselves, offering your help but not forcing it on them. It may take them ages to put on their pants, and they may grapple with the frustration of not being able to do it correctly or easily. But they are learning to master important skills. You can also offer them agency within a larger framework. “Would you like to play with blocks or to paint?”

“As you get older, I want you to be able to confidently make decisions for yourself. I know it makes you really anxious at this point, so I would be happy to make the decision for you. Before I do, though, I want you to tell me what, if you were going to make it yourself, your best decision would be.” Letting them make good decisions is a long-term goal, and we don’t need to force kids to do things before they’re ready.

Overall, try to remember that negotiating is a great thing for your kid to know how to do. You want him to learn to advocate for himself and to practice those skills for the real world. If he’s never able to “win” with his parents, he’ll internalize that message. He may be more apt to sneak, lie, or cheat to get what he wants, or to give up pushing back on authority altogether, believing that he has no voice. To improve your legitimacy, you have to show your child that he is being heard. So give him credit for making good arguments, by sometimes changing your position so that he knows that a well-thought-out argument is in fact a worthwhile pursuit.

Tell your child, “You’re the expert on you. Nobody really knows you better than you know yourself, because nobody really knows what it feels like to be you.”

Tell your teen you want him to have lots of practice running his own life before he goes off to college—and that you want to see that he can run his life without running it into the ground before he goes away. Emphasize logical and natural consequences, and encourage the use of family meetings to discuss family rules or family policies more generally (e.g., no gaming during the week).

Our anxiety is seeping into our kids. Children don’t need perfect parents, but they do benefit greatly from parents who can serve as a nonanxious presence. When we are not unduly stressed, worried, angry, or tired, we are much better able to comfort an infant, handle the behavioral challenges of young children, and respond to our teenager’s limitations without impulsively saying or doing something hurtful. When we can be a nonanxious presence for our children, we do a world of good—just by not freaking out. 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.

From the time babies are in the womb, they are influenced by their environment and sensitive to our stress. From then and throughout the early years of life, if a child’s parents are highly stressed, the child’s genes are affected—including genes involved in insulin production and brain development. Stress affects the gene expression of the fetus and young infants through a process called methylation. A certain type of chemical (called a methyl group) “locks” the gene that’s supposed to turn off the stress response in the on position.5 Changes in gene expression can continue to be seen right through adolescence.6 While stress in utero and in the first year of life have the most decisive impact on the developing brain, recent studies have shown that secondhand stress persists.

If you think you can hide your anxiety from your kids, you are deluding yourself.

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.

If we’re unable to accept our kids as they are, how can we expect them to accept themselves?

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. It’s easier to adopt this philosophy when we’re calm, and it’s easier to be calm when we adopt this philosophy. 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.

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.

Virtually all our anxiety as parents is about the future—over which we have relatively little control.

When fear rears its head, remember to take a long view. Life isn’t a race, and the world is full of late bloomers. We know hundreds of stories of children and teenagers who weren’t doing well only to turn out to be happy and successful. Who your child is as a ten-year-old or a teenager is not who he will always be.

If you worry constantly about the possibility that your child will fall into the small category of kids who chronically struggle, you’re only making matters worse.

Envisioning the worst-case scenario and letting it play out can actually be a calming process. Asking “What would I do?” and realizing that they would still love and support their child helps them let go and stop trying to control a situation they cannot control.

Your responsibility is to love and support your child. It isn’t your responsibility to protect him from pain. You can’t.