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

by William Stixrud

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.

The Buddha (The Resting State) For years when scientists used MRIs to assess the brain’s activity, they studied what activates the brain when it’s given a specific task (like counting backward from one thousand). But around the turn of the twenty-first century, scientists started looking at what happens when we’re just sitting with our own thoughts. What they discovered was that there is a complex and highly integrated network in the brain that only activates when we are “doing nothing.” This is known as the default mode network. Our understanding of its functioning is still new, but we know it must be very important, as it uses 60 to 80 percent of the brain’s energy.18

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.

A brain that is stretching itself and utterly engaged looks very different from a brain that is high performing but under the influence of toxic stress. Chronic stress can transform into anxiety when you don’t give your brain and body a chance to recover. Instead of seeing lions only when you’re on the savannah, you see them everywhere, even when they’re nowhere near and really you’d do much better to chill out and graze. The amygdala becomes bigger and more reactive than it should be, and with the prefrontal cortex cut off, you have a hard time distinguishing between things that are threatening and things that aren’t.20 Welcome to anxiety.

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.

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.

When Bill said this to a group of teachers and tutors, one teacher angrily argued, “Of course you can. I make my kids do things all the time.” But this isn’t really true. Suppose your child doesn’t want to eat what he is served and you set about to “make him.” What do you do? Do you force the child’s mouth open, put food in it, and move his jaws up and down? If you do, who’s really eating? The child isn’t eating—he’s being force-fed. With homework, if a child truly resists your attempts to get him to work, what are you going to do? Prop his eyes open, move the book in front of his face? Even if this were possible and actually worked, would it be good for him? Would he actually learn?

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 situation, including those she can’t control, such as where she’s seated in a testing room, or when someone breaks up with her.

We strongly support music training for kids, in part because there are few things that are better for the developing brain. At the same time, Bill has always been grateful to his own parents for letting him quit piano lessons in third grade—and not ruining music for him. Bill’s parents could tell that he had some musical ability and were willing to get him the instrument he wanted to play (the accordion—don’t ask), but they insisted that he first demonstrate that he could practice regularly on the piano that the family already had. Because Bill was pretty good at picking out tunes by ear, he chafed at being required to read music, and asked to quit after about four months of lessons, to which his parents agreed. Six years later, when the Beatles came to America, Bill took electric bass lessons and organ lessons and taught himself to play guitar—all in order to play the music he wanted to play. Today Bill still plays in a rock band and spends a fair amount of time every week playing and singing—much more so than most of his friends who were “made” to practice as children. He has also followed many kids who quit their lessons with their parents’ blessing and later passionately took up the same instrument or another one when they didn’t feel forced. The fact is that many kids love to play an instrument, practice independently, and experience playing in the school band or orchestra as the most enjoyable thing in their life. Many other kids are willing to go along with practici...

Ned found himself in a situation much like this when he and his wife decided to give their son more responsibility for his work. He stumbled, and the teacher wrote the following e-mail: I’ve noticed that over the last few months Matthew has been scrambling to finish homework during the advisory time before the day begins and seems really stressed about it. Do you get the sense that he has not finished his homework when he leaves for school in the morning, or is it more that he has forgotten about assignments and is rushing to finish them before class? I’m just wondering if perhaps he needs some more coaching about managing homework completion at home. I also know he is busy outside of school with many commitments, so I’m not sure if he simply doesn’t have enough time at night or over the weekend to finish his homework given all that he has going on. Let me know any insights as to how I might help him so he doesn’t get so crunched time-wise. I want this last month of middle school to be as enjoyable as possible for him. Here’s Ned’s response: Many thanks for writing. Matthew is doing work last minute because he hasn’t finished his assignments. We have worked hard this year to avoid asking, “Have you done it? Are you finished?” and instead asking, “Do you need help with any of your work? Do you have a plan? Have you got it?” My belief is that he, like many boys, only works under pressure. So he dawdles in the evenings and rushes in the morning, in part because that’s the fin...

Stress is catching, like an emotional virus.

For example, when parents are anxious about math, their kids are more likely to be anxious about math, too, but only if the anxious parents often help with the homework.7 In other words, if you have math anxiety, your kid is probably better off if you don’t offer your help.

Ned’s daughter, Katie, for instance, consistently perceives that people who are angry near her are angry at her. She is a classic orchid child.

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? Though we offer some tools in this book, we also encourage parents suffering from anxiety to consult with a therapist. There are ways of retraining our minds to avoid negative feedback loops and to deflect potential sources of anxiety.

Let’s take the arena of playground equipment, as Hanna Rosin did in an article for the Atlantic.

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. 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.”

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