A good chart speaks to me. I have a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Human Development and Family Science. I saw many charts while earning those degrees. But the simple chart below still wins the award for being one of the most useful charts of my personal parenting experience. I originally saw it in the book Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp and recreated it below. I believe this line graph could help you too. I hope it relieves a little pressure parents experience today by simplifying and clearly defining your role at different stages of your parenting journey. Specifically, I believe it could help parents of young children feel a little more comfortable about their role and responsibility to be authority figures in their child’s life and give insight into how to guide older children as they navigate increasingly complex decisions.
My Favorite Parenting Line Graph
This line graph describes parenting as a continuum of two inversely related concepts: influence and authority. I know a lot of people cringe at the word authority in the context of parenting. But hear me out. I think it’s pretty hard to argue against what I’m about to describe. Let’s break down both concepts:
- Authority: Authority in this context describes who has the agency. A newborn can cry, but they really can’t exert much agency to change the circumstances around them. This is partially because they lack the capacity to physically walk over to what they want and get it. And it’s partially because even if they had the physical capacity to do so, they still lack the logic and inferential knowledge required to get from point A to point B. So the adults in the room have all the agency. They are the only ones in the hospital birthing room who can execute their will. As a parent of a newborn, you have pretty much all of the authority– or the agency/capacity to make things happen. It slowly diminishes over time while, conversely, your influence increases.
- Influence: Influence in this context describes our child’s willingness to defer to our preferences. I tell my 6’2” 18-year-old son to come home at midnight (or call me to let me know where he is). He is bigger and stronger than me. He paid for his truck with his own money. I’m grateful to see his car lights pulling into our driveway at midnight. But he doesn’t do it because I can physically make him do it. If he told me no, let’s be honest, what could I do? I couldn’t physically pick him up and carry him to our house. I can’t even take his car away. It’s his. I have no real authority or agency. I only have influence at his age. He does what I ask because of influence–not authority.
The inverse nature of this relationship
When children are newborns, we have all authority and no influence. We can’t persuade our infants to form good habits. We have to craft the world around them to reinforce the habits we want them to have. By the time they move out of our homes, this pattern has completely switched: guidance, encouragement, and instruction are the main tools at our disposal. Our authority diminishes every year while our influence (ideally) grows.
In my work with families, I find many people have this relationship swapped. They try to influence, persuade, and coax their young children into following basic household rules and courtesies. But then panic and put their older teenagers on total lockdown when their actions have the potential to result in actual danger. It’s challenging to initiate a sense of parental authority in the teen years. By this age, they should have an innate sense of respect for you. Without it, it will be challenging to keep them in safe territory. It’s so much easier to build this when children are young and you naturally have agency/authority in their lives.
A Practical Example
When our kids were little our house rule was that everyone stop what they are doing when dinner was served to sit at the table. You had to stay at the table and be part of the conversation until we all finished. It became the centerpiece of our family’s cultural experience, but had to be routinized before it was joyful. When my daughter was 9 months-old, I exercised my authority by physically seating her in her high chair. I did it gently and with love, but the decision was mine.
When she was in the 2nd grade, I directed her to come sit at the table and simultaneously closed off all other options. She could have said no, but she knew there would be predictable and reasonable consequences if she did (authority). She also respected our household routine (influence). It was a combination of both authority and influence that got my 2nd-grade child to the table.
Three of my kids are college students now. I set the table and they just magnetically move to it. I can’t imagine what consequences I would dole out to my 21-year-old if she didn’t come. She sits and eats with us because she cares about our preferences and has internalized our value system about where we eat. It’s all influence and no authority. And it’s almost entirely unconsciously done at this point.
Why does this matter?
This little line graph really helped me conceptualize my role as a parent in each stage of my kids’ lives. It’s helped me understand when I should give guidance and encouragement (influence) and when I should give a directive (authority)–and when I should do a little of both.
It empowers us to be strong and safe authority figures
Understanding this helped me lean in and engage my role as a responsible authority figure in the season of my kids’ life when it was most natural for them to recognize it. There’s a lot of noise around parental authority in our culture. It’s been that way for a while. But it seems to have gotten worse even since my kids were babies. This has made parenting unnecessarily complicated. Parents question whether it’s selfish, stifling, or even harmful to shape their child’s behavior. Not only is it appropriate for you to do so, it’s your loving responsibility.
When my kids were younger, it wasn’t completely out of character for them to jump in my face and try to get my attention when I was mid-conversation with someone else. I want my children to be polite and considerate of others. So when this happened, I would say “stop”. And I would say it with the conviction of a mother who understood she was in the authority stage of parenting. That conviction translated to them. I didn’t need to yell. I also didn’t need to win them over to my side or help them understand the metaphysical implications of their distracting behavior. In those moments, all my kids needed from me was an explanation of my expectations in the most lucid manner possible. “Stop” usually did the trick.
An alternate way parents might deal with this is to say something like, “That really hurts mommy when you act that way.” This statement assumes mommy has influence and can motivate her kids to change on the basis of what she feels. When in fact, influence is something that’s in very short supply with her 3-year-old. This is actually a better strategy for a child who is 11 or 12 and needs to be able to articulate the impact of their actions on others. At that age, it comes in the form of a discussion–not a plea to change their behavior.
It empowers us to be positive influences
This line graph also helped me gradually release both freedom and responsibility to my children as they grew up. It empowered me to give them space to take on new responsibilities and hobbies. I knew when I could trust them to do what I told them to do when I was there, I could probably trust them when I wasn’t there. And little by little, as they were respectful to close friends’ parents, they earned the trust to join a sports team, to get a job, and eventually to move out of our house altogether. I gradually released my authority over them and embraced my role as influencer.
This kept me from “consequencing” things that should be discussed when they were teenagers. This resulted in many meaningful conversations. One of the great joys of my parenting experience has been in offering solicited advice about relationships, career decisions, and postsecondary options to my young adult children. We’ve had the opportunity to share stories about our decisions and values to teenagers who leaned in to hear our input. I hear a lot of people talk about the teen years negatively. It’s complex for sure, but I’m actually a fan of the teen years. I’m also not wrestling to get my teenagers to respect me. I did most of that work when they were preschoolers.
Why am I writing about this?
It’s harder to be a new parent today than it used to be. Even in the 22 years since I brought my first newborn home, the world has changed. The prevalence of 30- to 60-second hot tips on social media certainly doesn’t make it easier. These platforms have given a voice to thousands of people who understand very little about child development. The origin of this advice is often in the perceived deficiencies of the content creator’s own childhood experiences. Deficiency is never a healthy starting point. We should be very deliberate about the vision we have of our families and build toward those goals rather than building away from a void we may have experienced.
I don’t want to add another reel to the cacophony of voices on the internet. At the same time, I feel like the voice of ancient wisdom is being drowned out by cultural trends that will eventually be reevaluated with contempt. Meanwhile, well-intentioned parents trying to provide the best possible foundation for their children are exhausted by trying to live up to overwhelming expectations that they partner with their child’s limited executive capacity to make both important and routine decisions.
I want to be a voice cheering you on to just make the best decision for your toddler without worrying about whether they should have had more buy-in, involvement, or understanding. They shouldn’t. They can’t. Not for a while anyway. If you’re raising children under 5, the best thing you can do for them is make responsible decisions in support of their welfare. You are in the authority season of life. It goes without saying this has to be coupled with visible demonstrations of love and joy. But if you’re reading an article about your role as a parent, I assume you know that already.
Seeing their parents operate in certainty teaches young children that their world is under control and the hard decisions like how to interact with others and when to go to bed are being handled by a power higher than them. Whether they protest or not, those consistently enforced boundaries teach children that the world is a safe, predictable place. When parents embrace their role as an authority figure in their young child’s life, they also benefit from the certainty that comes with it. And you’re going to need that certainty when the little precious is protesting about the pajamas you picked out. You’re not controlling. You’re not harsh. You’re a consistent parent. And that’s all they need you to be right now.
That certainty and consistency builds trust and respect over time. And as your child moves into the “influence” stage of life, you’ll be grateful you earned their trust and respect by sticking to your bedtime routine–even after they asked to get that 4th cup of water.
My wife and I are new parents and this perspective is incredibly valuable. We see a lot of “influence” parenting attempts by other parents our age to their toddlers. Glad this information is here for people to find.
Thank you so much. It’s always god to hear that the articles on here are helpful!
Beautifully said. I wish I had that idea when I was younger. That and Love and Logic.