Choosing a Strategy: Power, Rules, and Insight
Although all of the phrases above are probably used in your house at one point or another and they may feel similar as ways of moving through disagreements, they are in fact reflective of three distinct ways to settle differences and negotiate: power, rules, and insight. Each strategy has its own benefits and costs, and each is appropriate at some times and less so at others.1 For example, even though we sometimes need to assert our power as parents (“because I said so!”), if we do nothing but insist that our children obey our every word, we run the risk of being tuned out by them or rebelled against, never mind the missed opportunity to better understand them and demonstrate a better way to solve problems.
Stories from Home: By the time my daughter was a teenager, she had figured out that she didn’t have to do what I said. This became clear the night that I pulled over our car and told her that we were not going home until she told me where she had been that evening (I knew she hadn’t been where she was supposed to be). She didn’t care about the consequences, and so we sat there in the car on the side of the road, silently, for more than an hour. Eventually, I realized that we couldn’t stay there all night and we went home anyway.
This parent tried to use power by pulling over the car and insisting they talk before driving home, but this power-move flopped. The daughter wasn’t bothered by sitting awkwardly in the silent car. Her parent couldn’t force her to talk, and so the choice of strategy backfired. What’s worse, the attempt at power may have inspired the daughter to clam up even more, to avoid being in a vulnerable position. Power is a quick-to-implement strategy, but can ultimately shut down any conversation.
The second strategic choice is using the rules (“this is the way we do things”). This is appealing because it’s so cut-and-dry, and feels objectively fairer than case-by-case decisions. Yet, if we lean too hard on addressing fairness by using family rules, we may be at a loss when we encounter the situations, as we undoubtedly will, where we either don’t have any rules or our rules don’t apply.
Stories from Home: In our house, we have rules for how and when to share things when both kids want the same toy at the same time—we take two-minute turns. My son was fine with our rules, but got so upset at a playdate when our neighbors didn’t do things the same way. There, his friend told him he couldn’t play with a prized toy. He asked for my help and I tried to explain that he couldn’t play with the toy until his friend was done because in their house the rule was that whoever had it first could keep it as long as they wanted it, but it wasn’t easy.
This parent had clearly established rules for sharing at home, yet the rule proved unreliable when it smacked up against a different rule at a friend’s home. Granted, it’s hard to foresee how a rule may fall short, and it’s even harder for kids (especially younger kids) to appreciate the nuances of when and where rules work or don’t work. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have rules, but we should recognize their limitations.
Finally, the third strategy is focused on insight or the “why.” Just as thinking through your “why” and your child’s possible “why” is part of effective preparation, using these lines of thought can also help us find a path forward. We can learn a lot by trying to understand and communicate the underlying rationale for something. Yet, we also face real obstacles in terms of the significant amount of time that delving into these explanations can take, and we might limit our children’s ability to just get on with it when necessary.
Stories from Home: My six-year-old niece was jumping on the couch, and my instinct was to just tell her “no.” But my sister handles these things in a different way. While she was still jumping, my sister started by explaining, “I know you just want to be free and move around” and then continued with asking, “Why do you think you need to jump? Is there something different about jumping on the couch instead of jumping on the floor? I’m concerned because this really isn’t a safe space to be jumping.” She always has these big discussions with her kids when I think it’s so much clearer just to make a rule and stick to it!
This parent was a rule-maker and found herself reacting to her sister’s tendency to search for insight and understanding. The rule-maker was dumbfounded by the amount of time it was taking to get the child to stop jumping on the furniture. While this approach might have been ill-timed, the insight-seeker may get to a better long-term solution by not only getting her child to stop jumping on the couch (eventually), but also allowing her to understand why she shouldn’t be doing this at all, leading to a change in behavior both in the short and long term.
Ultimately, there will always be trade-offs in your choice of approach. Additionally, in real time, the use of any one of these tactics is not always so clean, and we can end up jumping from thing to thing as we act and react to the moment.
We don’t hold all the power. Even infants have power—as any sleep-deprived parent can attest to—and the tenacity of our children produces their own power. Further, at some point our children may be bigger, or more stubborn, or more knowledgeable about something than we are, giving them additional power. So, although many parents feel entitled to make the decisions in their families, this is not always perfectly straightforward. We shouldn’t forget that our children have aces up their own sleeves.
Stories from Home: When my son grew past me in height at age twelve, it was a shocking thing. First he was looking me in the eye, and now he’s over eight inches taller than me! If I wanted to put a hat on his head at this point, I would need a step stool. Even though I still technically have the same power I did when he was smaller than me, it certainly doesn’t feel the same.
Power does change over time. If a two-year-old child is misbehaving at the playground, a parent can physically lift the child up and leave. A ten-year-old may be reliant on a parent for rides, and a fifteen-year-old may want to be paid for doing additional chores. Each of these gives you power through the ability to control situations, privileges, and resources. At all ages, most children will seek their parents’ approval, which allows for another source of power.
In the midst of an argument with a child it’s very tempting to resort to the use of power. “But I’m the parent, and my word is law!” is a pleasing idea. “Indeed,” the logic proceeds, “shouldn’t my children learn to respect my authority no matter what? Isn’t it better if they learn how to just do as they’re told? They’ll have teachers and bosses and other authority figures in their lives—not everything is up for negotiation. This is not a democracy!” Of course these ideas have merit. There are things in your household that are not up for discussion, nor should they be.
Sometimes power is exactly the right tool. Certainly, when safety is at stake, your decision should be set in stone. Other times we may resort to power because their behavior is unacceptable (imagine them trying to do a headstand on an airplane seat) and we need to make them stop immediately, or they’re embarrassing us in front of other people. We also use power as a way to signal that something is very important to us, such as when a child is breaking the family’s dress code rules. In these cases, the use of power (followed up with threats, ultimatums, or by limiting access to resources) allows the parent to coerce the child to do something, and sometimes this is both appropriate and necessary.
Stories from Home: When my kids talk back disrespectfully I will resort to using my mom power, and then I’m no longer interested in what they think or want. I just decide things for myself. In Spanish, we say “who do you think gave you your size,” which alludes to the fact that they exist because I made them, so it’s my decision in the end, even if they don’t like it.
Other times we reach for power even when we don’t mean to, such as when we simply run out of patience because we’re tired and they have asked “why” so many times that we can’t see straight anymore. It’s also exhausting to constantly have to keep saying things like, “Because I said so!” or the “Do this OR ELSE!”
Stories from Home: At some point, I felt like I spent all day threatening my kids with the loss of their screen time or their activities if they didn’t comply with whatever thing I was asking them to do at that moment. It was both demoralizing and ineffective, and I finally realized that because there were too many threats, they just stopped working.
Using power also opens you up to the possibility that this same situation will happen all over again. While you may have reached a solution, you didn’t necessarily get to the heart of why this was an issue for you and your child in the first place, and now you’ve potentially added hurt feelings into the mix. The use of power can end up being like a temporary patch on a growing hole.
In more extreme situations, the use of power and threats can escalate to levels where the interchange becomes frightening, and the execution of the threats would be very consequential.
Stories from Home: My daughter was pushing my last button. I lost my temper and threatened to kick her out of the house. She spit right back at me that she would be calling child protective services.
This story is not one in which we would like to find ourselves, but it makes the point that choosing the power strategy often happens out of fear. Parents and children alike reach for power or threats because they’re afraid of losing control of the situation. Due to the strong tendency to reciprocate threats and ultimatums in kind, this can lead to a potentially dangerous escalation, clouded by negative emotion.
Key Point: If you have to reciprocate a threat to your child, change the slant of your comments to indicate a willingness to understand the reasons this seems to mean so much to them, such as, “If you do X I will be forced to do Y in response, but I’d much rather talk about why this situation is getting so out of hand.” It is possible to be both firm and understanding at the same time.
Power should be thought of as the “ace up your sleeve.” Yes, you can exert it when you really need to, or if previous agreements are not being adhered to. But like the phrase “ace up your sleeve” implies, there are not limitless aces in a deck of cards. You only get so many times to use them, so choose them with care. When you have decided that a situation is that important, it makes sense to step in and force the outcome.
Stories from Home: When nothing worked to get my child to put down the laptop, I learned how to install parental controls and then had the ability to shut down the system or block specific websites myself. It’s not the way I would have preferred to handle it, but it needed to be done.
Power can be easy to reach for, even when it’s not the most effective tool. Imagine you ask your child nicely to finish up their homework. You explain that you’re asking this now so that you can all watch TV together later, and ask if that’s possible. This is an attempt to approach the conversation from the perspective of offering and asking for insights. But maybe you’ve caught your child in a mood, and the answer you get is something along the lines of “No, I don’t feel like it.” You could return to the insight strategy, but it’s much more tempting at this point to refer back to the rules, such as, “Remember, no games/phone/TV until the homework is done!” This might work, or maybe your child is particularly stubborn at that moment and shouts, “I’m just not doing it now, no matter what. You can’t make me!” Do you have it in you to ignore this power-based statement entirely, or might you instead find yourself saying, “OK, that’s it. No dessert/phone/whatever tonight!” This may feel satisfying in the moment, but ends with more tension and without attainment of the original goal of a nice night with the family. As this example illustrates, we can end up using power as a reaction to what’s happening, and not necessarily as something we’re choosing for ourselves. Once we start down the path, it can be easy to slip further and further into a power-based argument, but it’s not always the best choice. Sometimes you need to step away before being able to break out of the power cycle.
Key Point: Give yourself an audit to see how many interactions with your kids revolve around you using your power, and whether you got there by choice or by reaction. If the frequency feels too high, consider changing the pattern by introducing more rule-based solutions or insight-based discussions.
Rules are grounded in your family’s values, standards, and expectations of each other. This is where considerations of what has happened before (precedent), typical actions (what’s appropriate in your family), and established formal rules are used to guide behavior and decisions. You probably already use a lot of rules in your house, and for good reason. They let you be consistent in your decisions, and they let everyone know what to expect. They provide a shortcut in day-to-day situations because each individual circumstance now doesn’t need to be thought through from scratch.
Stories from Home: I’ve noticed that there are three types of rules in our house:
1.Detailed rules like clean up after yourself and no electronics after bedtime;
2.Big-picture rules like be respectful to the family and be responsible with money; and
3.Rules you never thought you’d need to make like no wiping hands on the furniture, or don’t run around the house naked when people are over!
Unfortunately, even the most well-thought-out rules don’t cover every situation nor do they head off every possible conflict—not by a long shot. It’s neither possible nor desirable to have a rule for every circumstance in life. Practicality aside, it’s not even the goal—very few people would want to live in a family where every single interaction and behavior had already been predecided with a set of rules. Nor would this prepare your kids for the real world in which situations need to be navigated without hard and fast rules to guide all behaviors. As both our kids themselves and our relationships with them evolve, rules also need to be adapted over time. But a well-placed set of rules can head off some deep and recurring issues.
Stories from Home: I’m a big fan of making contracts for my kids. When a situation seems like it keeps going badly, it’s time for a new set of rules. Like the homework contract I made for my daughter, who was regularly having meltdowns when she didn’t understand something and yelling at us when we tried to help her. The contract required her to run around the block once before starting her homework, and stated that yelling would result in the loss of getting any help at all at home. It worked. Homework time got less crazy, and after a while, we didn’t even need the rules anymore.
Rules are not perfect, though, and there are several potential pitfalls in their use. The most obvious one is that the rules need to be obeyed, which isn’t always as easy as it should be. Imagine that you made a deal with your kids like, “We can finish this TV show now, but only if you will go straight to bed with no fuss afterwards.” Or, “You can get out of bed if you need to, but you will have to put yourself back to bed later, instead of being tucked in again.” Kids can be all yesses and smiles while they’re getting what they want, but then when it actually comes to them fulfilling their part of the bargain, it can be an entirely different story. Here, the rules need their own rule such as, “If you can’t consistently follow through on our rules and deals, I won’t be able to offer you any more.”
The second pitfall is the possibility of getting stuck on the specific language used to create the rules. Some kids are especially prone to following only the letter of the law, and not the intention behind it, and need to be reminded that the spirit of the rule is as important as the wording.
Stories from Home: We call our son Mr. Loophole. No matter how you announce a rule, he will find a way to interpret it in a way that suits his needs and isn’t at all what we meant by it. For example, the other day he was bugging his sister by asking her the same question over and over, and I said, “You may not speak to your sister at all right now.” So, he went and wrote the question on a piece of paper and shoved it in her face instead.
Key Point: Rules can help avoid a lot of struggles, but they are limited (you can’t have a rule for everything, and no matter what language you choose, it can be misinterpreted), and they can need refreshing over time. However, if you notice a recurring issue in your family, identifying a rule (ideally, one that feels fair to everyone) can settle the issue.
Kids are great at sniffing out unfairness. The common “It’s not fair!” refrain is sometimes a knee-jerk reaction to not getting their way, but other times the injustice of a situation is indeed as bitter a pill as the outcome itself. Kids can spot (perceived) unfairness from a mile away, and can dredge up an example of a time when the opposite decision was made (or when a different decision was made for one sibling versus another) even from years ago, or so it seems!
Fairness does need to be consistent over time, because feeling fairly treated one minute and unfairly treated the next is incredibly uncomfortable for people. A study of managers’ treatment of employees showed that people who were consistently unfairly treated were actually more satisfied than those who were sometimes treated fairly and sometimes treated unfairly.2 Inconsistency in approach was worse than unjust treatment. Creating and sticking to rules to ensure fairness can help with this issue of consistency.
Stories from Home: Our whole life was filled with “it’s not fair!” and fights about who got the better plate, more macaroni and cheese, the better bath toys … until we came up with the system of having each child be in charge for certain days of the week. The kids love knowing there is a fair system behind it all, and will even correct me if I accidentally ask the wrong kid to pick that night’s TV show by saying things like “No, it’s not my turn until tomorrow.”
Language such as “This is fair because …” or “This is what we always do” can be powerful because it makes it clear to your kids that you recognize their need for things to be fair. But fairness is not always an objective thing, and can be open to interpretation. Different points of comparison can lead to different conclusions about what’s fair.
Stories from Home: Our second child announced that he should get to walk to town alone to meet his friends at the same time as our first child had. However, it turned out he had a different definition of “the same time” than we did. We said, “Yes, you can walk by yourself at the end of sixth grade, like your sister did.” He said, “I can go after my 12th birthday, like my sister did” (which in his case was only halfway through sixth grade instead of at the end of the year like hers was)!
Although fairness matters as a general concept, the nuances of what is considered fair and what isn’t are much more complex. The research on feelings of justice tells us that people judge fairness based on three completely different systems, with each resting on a different idea about what fairness means.
Distributive Justice and the Equality Logic
This is the fairness of the outcome itself, or the “Did I get what I think I should have gotten, and the same as what everyone else got?” judgment. This tends to be the most vivid and accessible form of fairness for children, and the idea that “everyone should get an equal amount” is the cornerstone of this approach. Every parent knows that if you’re splitting a cookie between two children, it’s wise to make sure the two pieces are exactly the same size.
Stories from Home: The begging for dessert in our house was really just too much. We tried the “eat a certain number of vegetables to earn dessert” rule that seemed to work so well for other families, but it just caused misery and more fighting in our house about who ate how many bites, and whose bites were bigger. Finally, I just decided that weekend nights were dessert nights and no other night was. It worked and took away all of the whining because it was always the same rule for everyone, no matter what.
Procedural Justice and the Equity Logic
This is the judgment about whether the decision was made in a fair way, such as “Did you have all the facts? Did I get a chance to tell you my side of the story? Are the rules themselves fair? Or do you tend to side with one person over the other?” The idea that people should get something proportional to what each person deserves is also a form of fairness, but it’s different from the “everyone should get exactly the same amount” kind.
Children can accept that if allowance is based on chores completed, for instance, those who do more chores should get more money. Or, a babysitter who can drive kids around may understandably earn more than one who can’t. As long as everyone is clear on what the rules are, and that they are based on something reasonable, it should not feel unfair to give out different amounts to different people under this system. However, if one babysitter learns that they are getting a lower rate than another without a good explanation for the difference, they may try to adjust this imbalance by either asking for a raise or by working less hard on the job.
Stories from Home: My kids always leave the TV on, and when I yelled at them about it, they said that I do it, too. I told them, “When you start paying the bills, you can make these decisions. Until then, it’s my money and my decision, and you report to me. Turn off the TV.”
Interactional Justice and the Need-Based Logic
This is the sense of whether someone feels treated in a respectful manner as a person, such as “Were you understanding and nice to me about it even if I didn’t get my way? Were you honest with me?” If this kind of justice is violated, it’s really damaging, as people must feel like these basic needs are being met to feel safe.
Stories from Home: It took me a long time to get this right, but the sentence “I understand why this feels unfair to you” has become one of the cornerstones of my parenting. Even if the eventual decision doesn’t go their way after this point, they are much more even-keeled and open-minded once they know that I listened to them and understood their side of things.
However, different people’s needs may sometimes come into conflict with each other, leading to moments that require us to prioritize the allocation of resources (such as attention). Imagine a parent of three children, who typically tries to spend one-on-one time with each child in approximately equal measure. This is fair and all are satisfied with the solution, until one child breaks their leg and needs a lot more time and attention, both because they need help moving around and because of low spirits. Is it fair that the parent now spends a disproportionate amount of time with this child during these weeks of recovery? A sibling might say no, but a parent would probably agree that the needs of one child, for the moment, make helping them more of a priority. This is another kind of fairness.
Stories from Home: Growing up, my mother had a strict rule that bedtime was exactly the same for my sister and me, but I’m a morning person and was tired by bedtime and my sister, a natural night-owl, wasn’t anywhere near ready for bed yet. She’d just wait in the dark until our mother went to sleep and then turn her light back on and read. We needed different things.
Kids generally have an easier time with judgments of equality (everything should be exactly the same) than with judgments of equity (the proportional solution) or need (making sure the resources go where they will do the most good). Siblings, like the ones in the story about walking to town, heavily rely on the power of the equality rule. “But she got more!” or “He got to do it when he was this age!” are both examples of this train of thought. It is less intuitive to them to understand that unequal can still be fair.
Stories from Home: My son was incredibly angry that he was not given an equal vote in our family about all decisions—things like where we go, what we do, and what the rules are. He thought each person in the family, kids and grown-ups alike, should have an equal voice, and he felt strongly “unfaired” (a word we created) when he didn’t get an equal say in our household. I told him that as parents, we work to earn the money, we’re in charge of everyone’s safety and health, we cook, we drive, and we pay for their activities. We need to do these things reliably whether we feel like it or not on any given day. Since we put in more work, it was fair that we also got more say in how everything was done. We also had to make sure everyone got what they needed from us—some kids need more attention, or different kinds of attention, than others—and this was information we had that he did not. Explaining the idea that fairness wasn’t based on being a person in the house but was tied to the work and responsibility elements didn’t make the whole thing go away completely for him, but it helped.
It can be challenging, especially in the earlier years, to explain the “it’s not equal but it is fair” logic to a child, but getting that idea across can avoid a lot of hurt feelings. Adding the reasoning of why something would or wouldn’t be fair into your conversations as much as possible can give you the chance to identify the different kinds of fairness rules as they arise in context.
Stories from Home: I feel like we’re trained as parents to tell our kids that we love them all exactly the same amount, but that didn’t make sense to me. Not that I don’t love all my kids tons and tons, but the idea of forcing it to all be the same didn’t feel right. So, whenever this arose in our family, I would say, “You’re my one and only you, and I love you absolutely for who you are.”
Key Point: Use the language of fairness often, and make sure you describe why something may be fair, even if it’s not based on an equal split. Getting your thoughts on fairness expressed first in the conversation can make that view become the dominant one and avoid hurt feelings over unfairness.
THE GO-TO FAIR SOLUTION: “LET’S JUST SPLIT IT”
Imagine that you want your child to do an hour’s worth of cleaning up. Your child insists that a half hour is more than enough. Since neither of you wants to just concede entirely, you decide to split the difference and agree to a forty-five-minute work requirement. Splitting the difference is the most commonly used rule of thumb for making a fair-feeling agreement, and generally makes everyone feel good about the fairness of the solution. Nobody got all of what they wanted, and everybody took an equal share of the need to compromise.
Though this could be a perfectly reasonable solution, it could also be a mistake. The truth is, we are splitting the difference between two end points that, themselves, may not have been fairly arrived at. We’re assuming that when you said that you wanted your child to do an hour of housework, that was your real true desire. Instead, imagine that before saying anything, you had thought something along the lines of, “There’s at least two hours of housework to be done here, and it’s more than reasonable to expect them to do this much since they took the last two weekends off entirely. But, that seems like a really demanding thing to ask, especially since I know how much homework they have, so I’ll just ask for one hour instead.” In this case, the difference that was split was one offer of an hour that had already been adjusted once, albeit without fanfare, and the other offer of a half-hour. On the other side, maybe the child was actually willing to do the whole hour’s work, but started with an offer of a half-hour just to see if it would work. So now, instead of splitting the difference between the actual goals of the two sides, which would be a half-hour and two hours, we’re splitting the difference between one person’s goal and the other person’s concession. Is that still fair? Maybe, but not as much.
For the splitting-the-difference rule to be truly fair, both sides need to have started in the same spot, relative to their wishes, and if concessions were already made, they need to have been made in (proportionally) the same amounts. Those conditions are not always met, and so the outcome might more strongly favor one side or the other.
However, the split-the-difference rule has one major advantage, which is the appearance of true fairness, regardless of whether it ends up being the objectively fairest solution. Sometimes, you might care more about just getting to the end of the discussion than about who gets exactly how much of their way. Or, sometimes it’s worth it just to make things feel fair to appease the other side, whether or not true fairness was something that you either desired or achieved.
Key Point: Even if it isn’t always objectively fair, splitting the difference can be a useful tactic because it’s quick and easy and sounds fair to everyone.
Imagine a teenager requesting that a 10 pm curfew be extended to 11 pm for next Saturday night. Asking for this extra hour is the “what” being discussed. The parents now have a choice in how to respond: they can go straight to power and say, “No, and that’s my final decision. Be home by 10 pm.” Or, they can rely on rules and fairness instead, and say, “The curfew in this house has always been 10 pm—it was like this for your siblings before you and so this is how it is.” Both of these are ways to end the discussion, but neither has gotten to the “why” of the situation. Neither have the parents explained their true concerns, nor have they sought to find out why the child is asking in the first place. If you’re using a rules- or power-based approach, you’re relying on your own interpretation of the facts. Your child may have a different version.
Imagine that the parents in this example offered their own explanation first: “The curfew in this house is set to 10 pm because if you come home later than that and don’t get enough sleep, you’ll be grumpy and useless the whole next day. But before we make a final decision, we’d like to know why you’re asking for this.” Perhaps the teenager would reply, “We want to go to a movie and it won’t even be over by 10 pm. I want to go, but I understand that I need to hold it together the next day if I ever want to be allowed to ask for this again.” This focus on the “why” has shifted the conversation from being about extending the curfew (yes or no) to an understanding of the goals, constraints, and true needs of both sides.
Stories from Home: When my daughter brought a carton of ice cream outside into the backyard one afternoon to ask me if she could have some, I said no. I reminded her of our rule about not having dessert before dinner, only to have both child and ice cream melting down before my eyes! I asked her why this was so important to her, and was floored when she said that she really wanted to be outside on this beautiful sunny day. The ice cream wasn’t as important as the experience was. Our solution was to take some drinks to the park, followed by dinner (and ice cream) outside to be able to keep enjoying the day.
If you find yourself stuck in the rules- and power-based approaches and want to move back to the discussion of interests, there are a few strategies you can choose from:
•Don’t reciprocate with rules or power, even if that’s what is being thrown at you from the other side. It’s easy to counter an ultimatum with another ultimatum and assert the righteousness of your point of view, but it’s not usually helpful. It takes a lot of presence of mind to pull out of this spiral and instead switch to explanations and questions, but it can change the track of the conversation. This doesn’t always work, of course. Stubborn or angry negotiators (and children can definitely be both) might just continue to respond with threats or close-ended statements about fairness. But repeated attempts to move the discussion to explanations and goals can eventually get through, even to the most closed-off or obstinate negotiator, and become the norm of how these discussions go. (How many children remembered to say “please” and “thank you” after being told to do so just once?)
•Reciprocate, but add an explanation-based question or proposal. Even if you feel that you need to respond to a threat with a counterthreat, you can still follow-up with an interest-based question or a proposal. In other words, if you’ve already threatened to take away your teen’s phone, you could follow it up and say something like, “But let’s not let it get that far. Why don’t we switch gears and talk about what the issue really is, and which parts are making you so mad. Then we’ll see if we can come up with some workable solutions.”
•Label their approach and offer an alternative. Imagine a co-worker or child threatening you with an ultimatum. Instead of reacting, you can change the direction of the conversation: “We can discuss your threat or we can try to move past this and begin considering real options for a solution,” or “You can throw a temper tantrum or we can try to talk about why you’re feeling this way. Tell me when you’re ready.” Recognize the tactic for what it is and then signal that you prefer to work together to find a solution.
Stories from Home: We were having a power struggle with our son about whether he should take advanced math classes (our preference, and a strength of his) or advanced English literature (his preference) in high school. We thought he would have a better chance of getting into college with a stronger math record. He argued that we don’t care about what he wants, and it was getting ugly. Finally, instead of yelling back or even threatening to not pay for college, I said “let’s get more information about the different majors available in college, and what they can lead to down the road for careers.” In doing this, it came out that our son really wants to be a journalist, so we spent more time exploring colleges that had that major, and learned that you needed both strong math and strong English courses in high school to get in. He agreed to take both.
Here, the parents recognized that using power was not going to lead to a good solution for either side. Instead, they opened the door for further discussion by seeking additional information about the assumptions made by both sides. In doing so, they changed the conversation enough to be able to unlock the true interests of their son and realize that they were both lacking knowledge about the college admission process.
Key Point: You can always return to using power and rules if you choose, so give yourself the chance to explore the interests of both sides first. Even if you’ve already made a decision and asserted your power, that doesn’t mean it’s too late to still have a conversation to understand your child’s needs.
FIVE BIG IDEAS ABOUT CHOOSING A STRATEGY
•Find a balance among strategies. Creating rules, using your power, and having insight-based discussions with your kids are all necessary tools. While we do have the power to make decisions and rules, we need to be mindful of the reasons behind the issues from our kids’ perspective, even if it can take multiple attempts to get them to lower the walls and have an insight-based discussion.
•When you use power, make sure it’s a choice. Power is both tempting to reach for and hard to step back from. It’s easy to slip into the use of power, especially if you’re reacting to the strong emotions in the moment. Since you can’t use power for every situation, choose your moments with care. And once you’re in it, you might need a break or a reboot before being able to transition to a more insight-based perspective.
•Rules need revisiting over time as ages and circumstances change. Make sure that neither you nor your kids get hung up on the specific wording, but instead stay true to the general intent.
•Fairness doesn’t always rest on equality. Fairness is sometimes based on who needs something more at that moment, and sometimes it’s reflective of what people have earned. “Your idea wouldn’t be fair because …” or “Of course fairness is very important, so I think it would be fair if …” These are the kinds of phrases that help head off the “it’s not fair” reaction right from the start.
•The three approaches (power, rules, and insight) don’t stay isolated in real time. In one interaction, you may find yourselves jumping very quickly from one strategy to another, especially since people automatically tend to mimic the approaches taken by others (when someone shouts at you, you tend to want to shout back). By paying attention, you can do more to shape the direction of the conversation by choosing the strategy that you think best fits the moment.
NOTES
1. Ury, W. L., Brett, J. M., & Goldberg, S. B. (1993). Getting disputes resolved. Cambridge, MA: Program on Negotiation.
2. Matta, F. K., Scott, B. A., Colquitt, J. A., Koopman, J., & Passantino, L. G. (2017). Is consistently unfair better than sporadically fair? An investigation of justice variability. Academy of Management Journal, 60(2), 743–770. doi: 10.5465/amj.2014.0455