Parents want the best for their kids. In fact their desire for their child’s happiness can be so strong that they’re willing to make the child absolutely miserable in order to ensure it. A few examples will illustrate:

“My daughter gravitates toward the wrong kinds of kids. She’s begging to go to XYZ high school so she can be with her friends. There’s no way we’re going to send her there! She will go to ABC school with girls who are good for her.”

“My son is weak in learning. We’ve arranged for tutoring every day after school to help bring him along. He complains about it nonstop but he’ll thank us one day.”

“My children are picky eaters but I do not indulge them. I make them eat a balanced dinner no matter what. I don’t care if they gag on it or sit and cry through it. They need to learn to eat a wide range of foods.”

In all of these cases loving parents are trying to do the very best for their children. But what’s it like to be on the receiving end of these well-intentioned interventions when they happen repeatedly? Let’s ask the children as I do when I meet with them in my counseling practice:

“My parents don’t care how I feel.”

“My parents want me to be someone I’m not.”

“I don’t relate to my parents and they don’t relate to me. We’re sort of like strangers.”

“I hate my parents.”

Parental Prerogative

Let me be clear: parents have the right and the need to make unilateral parenting decisions that their children don’t approve of. In fact parents must lead the way permitting and forbidding choosing and excluding and doing whatever else they need to do to guide the development of their youngsters. Moreover they don’t have to take their children’s feelings into account when making decisions on their behalf. In fact sometimes they will have to make a decision knowing full well that it will cause the child great distress.

As long as this occurs on relatively rare occasions in the context of a strong positive bond between parent and child the parent-child relationship will be unharmed. The child will still trust and love the parent despite experiencing occasional frustration or disappointment.

However abusing that privilege is an entirely different matter. The consistent repetitive abuse of parental privilege can seriously impair the quality of the parent-child relationship and possibly cause developmental injury.

Parental privilege — the right of the parent to be in charge of a child’s life — is expressed in many different styles. There is the “good manager” style in which parents use strategies to elicit the cooperation of their workers (youngsters). There is the “voted-in official” style in which the person in charge makes decisions taking into account the expressed needs and wishes of his constituents (children). And there is the “authoritarian dictator” style in which the needs and wishes of the masses (children) are considered to be irrelevant.

When parents adopt an authoritarian style they fail to take their child’s feelings into serious consideration because they feel they don’t have to. They don’t try to work out compromises that the child can live with because they know that they know best. They may even think that a child’s feelings coming as they do from immature impulses are silly and inconsequential. And they may completely fail to understand the enormous significance of human emotions leaving them shocked and dumbfounded when their children withdraw from meaningful contact with them. They’ll have no idea of where they went wrong.

Emotionally Intelligent Parenting

When parents consistently try to take their child’s wishes and feelings into account they help the child to become more confident and emotionally intelligent. Their unspoken message is “Your feelings make sense and they are important.” They also communicate that “We care about you; we want you to feel happy with our decisions.” This attitude helps strengthen the parent-child bond which in turn helps children to become more reasonable and cooperative vis-à-vis their parents.

The simple question “How do you feel about this?” can open important dialogue. It must be followed with something like “Is there some way that we can both feel satisfied in this situation? Let’s come up with a creative compromise.” The parent aims to leave the child feeling as happy as possible even though it will not always be possible to please the youngster. The parent understands the importance of working with the child and the potentially serious negative consequences of failing to do so. Knowing what’s best is not the only factor to take into consideration. Rather building a close and loving relationship through good-feeling communications empowers parents to give over the best of what they have to offer.