How to Avoid Double Standards

How to Avoid Double Standards 

When I worked as a social worker, parents would come to me with the same demand: My child has a problem, fix it. Another kid was bullying them, distracting them, making school miserable. The parents wanted the teacher or the social worker to step in, to sort it out. I always thought: that’s not how life works. Children need to learn boundaries themselves.

Then my own daughter came to me and said: This kid is bothering me. What should I do? And my first impulse was the same as those parents I used to judge. I thought: maybe I should talk to the teacher. Hand the problem over. Let someone else fix it.

That’s when I realized the double standard. As a social worker, I told parents their children needed to grow stronger. As a father, my instinct was to shield mine. I was about to become the very person I used to shake my head at.

The situation itself was clear enough. My daughter is kind—too kind. A new girl in her class, probably from a strict home, maybe not wealthy, had latched onto her. Not in open cruelty, but in the way someone with unmet needs seizes on the easiest target. She demanded attention, pushed for material favors, insisted on being called “best friend,” wouldn’t leave her alone. My daughter couldn’t bring herself to say no. And that’s the real issue: not the girl, but the absence of boundaries.

This is bigger than schools and children. It’s how society works. We hold others to standards we don’t keep ourselves. We criticize parents for being overprotective, but then we can’t bear to watch our own child struggle. We condemn politicians for being corrupt, but we still cheat on our taxes. We demand honesty while lying to ourselves. We point fingers outward, but when the mirror turns, we look away.

And here’s the truth: our first impulse as humans is always to go around the problem. Find a shortcut. Hand it off. Outsource the hard part. But life doesn’t work that way. The obstacle is the way. Often it is the only way. And when we face it head-on, it isn’t just pain for pain’s sake—it’s the path by which we grow stronger.

So how did I do it? I told my daughter what I tell myself: you have to learn to set boundaries. The word you need is no. We should all say no more often than we say yes. Then I remembered Cato the Elder, who ended every speech with the same line: Carthago delenda est—Carthage must be destroyed. He knew that repetition drills truth into the mind. So I programmed Alexa. Every morning it tells her, like clockwork: Say no to that girl.

Because some battles are not fought once. They are fought every day, until they become who you are.