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Let your kid be smarter
A Forbes article decades ago profiled a psychiatrist said to be the only one with an office on Wall Street. His patients, all men, had problems inversely proportional to the support they got from their fathers. At a recent dinner, one guest remarked that a man's father had treated him like hell and that he never wanted to be that father.
Howard Marks always let his son Andrew be smarter than him in some things and gave him full support in what he wanted to do. The rule he follows: if a kid wants to do something and it isn't going to be injurious, let the kid do it.
When his daughter finished lower school, she applied to the two good schools in Los Angeles and got into both. Her parents had a sense of which one they preferred, but they could be wrong, and neither choice was a bad one, so she chose. A child who makes the choice gets experience at choosing, and maybe at choosing wrong, which is very important.
How does choosing help children develop?
Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan developed self-determination theory at the University of Rochester beginning in the 1980s. It holds that people have a basic need for autonomy, along with needs for competence and relatedness. In their studies, people given choices showed more intrinsic motivation than people controlled by rewards or pressure. The theory has since been tested in classrooms, workplaces, and sports teams in many countries.
How do parenting styles differ on independence?
Developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind described three parenting styles in the 1960s at the University of California, Berkeley: authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative. Authoritative parents combine warmth and clear expectations with room for the child's own decisions, and in her studies their children tended to show the strongest self-reliance and social skills. Authoritarian parents emphasize obedience and leave little room for choice. Eleanor Maccoby and John Martin added a fourth style, neglectful, in 1983.
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