We’re so afraid of damaging our children (or we’re afraid of looking like we’re harsh parents to our peers), that we subconsciously tiptoe around our kids. Don’t believe me? Here’s an experiment… Start paying attention to the parents around you, and watch how many of them give instructions, and then follow it up with “Okay???”. This is one of my biggest parenting pet peeves. I hear it daily, and I see what it does. Parents think they are being firm and assertive, but then they undermine their own authority.

Asking “okay”, while making you feel like you’re a much nicer parent than the dictator who raised you, actually dis-empowers you, because it is, in fact, a request for approval. If you say “okay?”, you are inviting a response. And over and over again, I see kids fight back, because sometimes the answer to “Okay??” is “NO!”. And it’s the adult’s fault for suggesting that the child had a choice in the matter.

I was painting faces at a company picnic the other day, and we had a specific board with simple designs, in order to reach a larger number of children. Everyone in line had ample time to study the designs and know what they wanted before getting in the chair. A four year old boy climbed in the chair, and I handed him the sheet and said “point to the picture you want”. He turned away with a harrumph. His mom, embarrassed, covered and said, “He’s Shy!” (Another pet peeve of mine, but I digress.) “No problem”, I said, and I asked the question again. He didn’t answer. She said, “He wants a dump truck”, a design which is NOT on the board. I said, “Sorry, bud. We don’t have any dump trucks today. But I can do a Batman, spider, snake or something else on the board.” Mom said to him, “See? You can’t have a dump truck, OKAY???? Don’t be upset, okay? We have to pick from these pictures, okay???” And now this boy is in full-throttle melt-down, because to each “Okay?” he has said “NO!” and so it appears that she is not listening to him.

Please know that my own children are not being raised by authoritarians. I honor my children’s opinions, in the appropriate time and place. Children whose parents understand and execute their authority reasonably will ultimately raise children to have confidence in their parents’ wisdom and experience, because the parents have confidence in themselves. How I know these principles are effective and haven’t broken or damaged my children is that they are now working with children, and my kids often echo what they have intuitively learned. After spending hours twisting balloons at a company picnic (and watching the best & worst that parenting has to offer), my 16 year old (without any teacher or parenting training) came home and expressed shock at how many parents act like their kids are in charge and are afraid of what will happen if they say no.

When my oldest child was 8 years old, I was working on a parenting manual for a workshop (based on my experience working with children with special needs and others). She asked if she could write a chapter.  The title of the page was “What your child hopes you never learn”. And she wrote a three paragraph essay about how children don’t really want everything they ask for. In her 8 year old voice, she even said that it makes children feel loved when their parents are firm and say no. I promise that we didn’t tell her to think or say that. She just knew.