22
SOLVING PROBLEMS TOGETHER
Why It’s Better to Work as a Team
WHEN YOUR CHILDREN ARE small, you should be the boss. Your
parenting should be a kind of benevolent dictatorship where you make
most of the decisions, you are the judge and jury, and you are gentle
and kind. Your children will not decide each day what they have for
dinner, when they go to bed, or whether or not they show up for
preschool in the morning.
As your little ones get older, however, the setup should gradually
change. When your children are seventeen, the household should be
almost, but not quite, a democracy. Almost a democracy means that
your adolescents have a lot more to say about the rules and policies
that affect them. This notion also means that as the years have gone
by, you have been giving your kids more and more independence.
Ideally, teens should be making their own decisions about homework,
bedtime, choice of friends, clothes and—to a large extent—diet.