“Many view this process of negotiation as handing too much power to a child. However, the goal of parenting is to help children increasingly exercise power over their own lives, in line with their growing ability to manage such power. Besides, when you think about it, children are already powerful – and why shouldn’t they be? Why are we so afraid of their strength? Coming from a place of insecurity and inadequacy, perhaps some of us prefer that they stay less empowered so we can hold on to our false feeling of supremacy.”

“…while compromise and sacrifice embody a sense of lack, negotiation rightly understood and practiced is grounded in an infinite sense of possibility.”

As a parent who often gets judged as permissive and weak for negotiating with my children, these words really resonated with me. Most parents do not understand the difference between negotiation, compromise and sacrifice which leads to unnecessary judgments and power struggles, which is also why I really liked the above lines from Dr Tsabary’s ‘Out of Control’.