Parents: Don’t Forget That You’re the Boss

Does your kid not like it when they have to clean their room?

Do they hate eating anything that’s too smooth or too crunchy?

Do they want to watch a show or play a video game during dinner?

Do they want you to buy them things like clothes and video games as if money tumbles from trees like acorns?

Guess what? Too bad for them. You’re the boss.

I work in a high school where I frequently meet with students and their parents. A common theme that still surprises me is that in many households, the kids are the boss.

The kids call the shots and make the rules. They throw fits or make threats and their parents cower in fear. The parents throw their hands up and say they don’t know what to do.

These are real examples of things I hear parents say:

• I know he’s tired in the mornings, but he just won’t stop playing video games at night!
• We could never take her phone, she’d get too angry!
• She gets too upset when I try to ask her about her homework.
• He’s 15, so there isn’t much I can do his behavior at this point.
• He texted me from class and said his belly hurt, so I left work and picked him up (see my thoughts about this here).

When I hear parents say these things, it’s an immediate red flag to me that they live in a house that is run by the kids. And I believe that these parents really love their kids a lot.

But they have lost sight of the fact that children come to us almost completely unformed. And they need structure and boundaries in order to grow into fully formed, functional adults.

Parents, it’s time to take back control!

You know the saying:

The squeaky wheel gets to be the boss and call all of the shots.

Wait…that’s not the saying, is it? No, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Grease is the parenting equivalent if attention and care, not the absence of rules or expectations. If your kid is squeaky — upset, anxious, angry, troubled — you do need to pay attention.

You need to talk to them, listen to them, set guidelines or rules for them and if that doesn’t work, find help for them in the form of a counselor or therapist or even an extracurricular activity as an outlet for their energy. And then you need to follow through on whatever plan you set up to help your wheel stop squeaking.

It is really hard to make your kid angry or upset. I’m more than just a hard-charging teacher — I also have two kids of my own. And it just about destroys me when I have to be the hammer and take away the things that they love or bring them to tears by making them finish the food on their plates.

I do these things though, because I am the mom. I am the one with decades of experience living life, not them. If there is a benefit to the hard times and struggles that I am now on the other side of, it’s that I can appreciate how they shaped me and made me into a tougher, stronger version of myself. This is what gives me the courage to see my kids upset or angry at me and to not cave or bend to their pitiful cries.

Don’t get me wrong, I love making my kids happy and I would love to be the yes-man that grants them wishes like a year-round Santa Claus, but I know that those short-term pleasures lead to long-term troubles.

And hopefully, when you got into this parenting game, you realized it was more of a long-term thing. My husband and I signed a 30-year mortgage the same year our daughter was born. I hope most of my parenting is done by the time the house is paid off, but I’m well aware that there are no guarantees.

The good news is that you can be the boss and still love your kid so much that you would gladly toss your arm to a grizzly bear before you would let harm come to them. Show your kids that you love them with your words and your actions, not the things you buy them or the bad behaviors you let them get away with.

Explain that you are making them eat vegetables because you love them and you want them to be healthy and strong for a long time.

Tell them that you are taking their phone away because you love them and you don’t want their screen time to take them away from you both physically and emotionally.

Make their bedroom a quiet, dark place where they can get a good night’s sleep because you love them and you want to have a nice morning together the next day.

Don’t pick them up at school at the drop of a hat because you love them and you want them to get a good education so they can have a wonderful life.

And when you do these things, they will get angry at you. They will try to beg you and manipulate you into changing your mind. And you will want to.

But don’t give in. Stay strong. An imagine that distant day when you see your well adjusted, smart, healthy, happy adult child and think: I did that!