A huge part of my parenting philosophy is understanding that children literally do not have the cognition of adults. And I think a lot of parents lose their fucking minds because they forget that. They expect a 4 year old to think through a situation the way a 35 year old would. They assume that because a child technically “knows” a rule, they should be able to remember it in the moment, override an impulse, regulate their emotions, think about the future consequence, and then make the rational choice. That is a lot of cognition. And little kiddos simply do not have all of that online yet. So parents start assigning adult motives to developmentally immature behavior. They call it disrespectful, manipulative, selfish, lazy, defiant, or whatever. Sometimes it is just a tiny person with poor impulse control doing exactly what tiny people with poor impulse control do. Your child is not a miniature adult who is inexplicably bad at being an adult. They literally do not have the capacity to do adult thinking yet. And I’m not saying kids should have no boundaries or consequences. Obviously not. I’m probably stricter than a lot of people in that regard. But there is a massive difference between teaching a child the skills they are developing and becoming enraged because they do not already possess them. The other major part of my parenting philosophy is that we cannot control other human beings. That includes our children. We can guide them. We can teach them. We can set boundaries. We can create consequences. We can tell them what behavior is acceptable in our home and what is not. We can remove ourselves, remove privileges, or change the environment when a boundary is crossed. What we cannot do is make another human being obey us. And I think a lot of really ugly parenting comes from refusing to accept that fact. The parent decides the child must comply, and once compliance becomes the goal at all costs, coercion starts getting justified. Yelling, humiliation, intimidation, hitting, fear, whatever it takes to force the behavior they want. I fundamentally reject that. I do not think having more power than another human gives you the right to harm them into submission. And being their parent does not somehow make that less true. My job is to raise a person who can eventually govern himself, not a person who behaves only because someone bigger than him might punish him. Children need structure. They need limits. They need parents who are willing to say no and mean it. But they are still separate human beings with their own minds, temperaments, emotions, and eventually their own values. I can influence that. I can shape the environment. I can teach. I can model. I can hold boundaries. I cannot own another person’s will. And I think parenting gets a lot healthier once you stop confusing guidance with control.