The Goal Is Not Obedience
One of the first disappointments of childhood is discovering that your parents do not know nearly as much as you once believed. For a time, parents appear almost omniscient. They know where everything is, how things work, and what to do when problems arise. To a young child, they seem remarkably certain about the world.
Eventually, however, the illusion begins to crack. Children notice that adults disagree with one another. They discover that their parents make mistakes. They realize that many decisions are made without certainty and that much of adulthood consists of navigating situations for which there are no obvious answers. What looked like wisdom often turns out to be a mixture of experience, judgment, guesswork, and luck.
At that point, parents face a choice. Some attempt to preserve the illusion. They conceal uncertainty, present judgments as facts, and maintain an appearance of confidence even when they are unsure themselves. I have generally chosen a different approach.
This is not because I believe children should be burdened with adult concerns. Quite the opposite. Children should not become therapists for their parents, nor should they be asked to carry emotional burdens that belong to adults. There is, however, an important distinction between sharing one's burdens and sharing one's reasoning.
What I try to make visible to my daughter is not every detail of my inner life but the process by which I arrive at conclusions. If I make a decision, I often explain why. If I change my mind, I say so. If I make a mistake, I admit it. If I am uncertain, I do not pretend otherwise. I want her to understand that decisions are not acts of magic. Most of the time they emerge from weighing competing considerations, making judgments under imperfect conditions, and accepting that complete certainty is rarely available.
In that sense, I am less interested in teaching conclusions than in teaching judgment.
A small incident recently reminded me why.
My daughter grew up speaking English. We now live in Switzerland, which means that German is not simply another school subject. It is the language of everyday life, education, work, and citizenship. Whether she likes it or not, becoming comfortable in German will open doors for her.
We had agreed that some of the videos she watches online would therefore be in German rather than English. When I reminded her of this arrangement, she responded with the perfectly reasonable logic of a twelve-year-old:
"It's the last week of school before the summer holidays."
The remark was not entirely without merit. One could easily imagine the discussion turning into a familiar debate about rules, agreements, and obligations. Instead, I asked a different question.
"Do you want to improve your German or not?"
The conversation ended with my daughter saying three words: "You are right."
What struck me afterward was that the discussion had never really been about German. It was about ownership. As long as learning German remained my project, it was something she could negotiate with. Once it became her project, the argument largely disappeared. The rule and the goal suddenly pointed in the same direction. She was not yielding to authority so much as acknowledging a goal that she herself had already accepted.
Experiences like this have made me increasingly skeptical of parenting that relies primarily on compliance. Compliance certainly has its place. Children need boundaries, structure, and guidance. No family can function through endless negotiations. Yet compliance is not, at least in my view, the ultimate objective.
The real objective is judgment.
One day I will not be there to remind her to study, to think carefully, or to consider the consequences of her decisions. At some point she will be entirely on her own. When that day comes, my opinions will matter far less than her ability to reason through situations independently.
This is why I try to explain not only what I think but how I think. Not because my reasoning is always correct, and certainly not because I expect her to agree with every conclusion. Rather, I want her to see that most important decisions involve uncertainty. Life rarely presents itself as a list of clear rules. More often it requires balancing competing priorities, acting with incomplete information, making mistakes, and adjusting course when necessary.
What is true in parenting is equally true elsewhere. The same principle appears in leadership, teaching, social work, and even friendship. People are often more willing to accept difficult decisions when they understand how those decisions were reached. They may still disagree, but they are less likely to experience them as arbitrary. Understanding the reasoning behind a decision does not eliminate disagreement, but it often creates respect where simple authority cannot.
Perhaps that is ultimately what I am trying to communicate to my daughter. Not that I am always right. Not that she should always agree with me. And certainly not that adults possess some secret wisdom unavailable to children. What I hope she sees instead is an ordinary person attempting to think carefully about difficult questions, someone who occasionally gets things wrong, changes his mind, and tries again.
That strikes me as a more useful model than certainty. Whether it turns out to be good parenting, I honestly do not know. I suppose she will tell me in twenty years.