My wife and I are raising two kids—one boy and one girl. Beyond the basics of keeping them alive and healthy, our chief responsibility is to prepare them to care for themselves. Because one day, they will leave the structured freedom we provide and enter the environment of full freedom. Adults like to call it the real world.
Every day between now and that day is a slow, steady transition from structured to full freedom. The younger they are, the tighter the structure we provide. We loosen the structure and extend the freedom as they mature and prove they can handle it.
What do I mean by structured freedom transitioning to full freedom?
Structured freedom is the guardrails we provide as parents to prevent irrecoverable damage to our kids. The guardrails exist in, you guessed it, the two halves of freedom we’ve been discussing this week. We limit their freedom of choice and their freedom to experience consequences. We don’t remove either freedom. We structure them.
We give our kids enough freedom of choice that they get tons of reps thinking and choosing for themselves. This strengthens their self-awareness of their own power. We also provide enough freedom to experience consequences so they learn the reality of cause & effect. We try not to interfere with the pleasurable consequences of disciplined decisions or the painful consequences of undisciplined decisions.
If the hand isn’t burned, the lesson isn’t learned.
If we allow them to make the choice, we allow them to feel the consequence. Exceptions exist, but we work hard to make them exceptions. If we are unwilling to let them experience the result, we do not let them make that decision.
We do not give our daughter complete freedom to choose what she eats for breakfast, when she goes to bed, or how she talks to her older brother when he’s pestering her. We give her options. We may give her freedom up to a point. We encourage her to make her own choices, but not full freedom. We structure her freedom, and she gets to choose within that structure. Sometimes, that structure only has one option, which is not her choice. Sometimes, the structure only appears once she crosses the line of specific standards we set as parents.
Why do we do it this way?
Because our kids will not stay kids. They will not live within circumstances of artificial freedom we structure for them. They will become adults with complete freedom like the rest of us. We cannot provide guardrails for them forever, nor would it be appropriate if we could.
We see our responsibility as parents to prepare our kids for success when they enter full freedom. We want our kids to consider the consequences of their thoughts, decisions, and actions. We want them to experience consequences and recognize their thoughts, decisions, and actions that produced them.
Kids learn from what they experience most and strongest. It is our responsibility as parents to give our kids an experience of cause & effect that matches the reality they will one day enter as adults. We scale the experience to match the stage of their development but always stretch them a little bit further.
Structured freedom for kids maintains freedom’s integrity (choice —> consequence) while slowly and steadily transitioning them to full freedom as they mature.
Doing this with and for my kids is my greatest responsibility and joy. Maybe one day, they will look back and be thankful. Perhaps they won’t. But I don’t do it to get thanked. I do it because I believe their lives depend on using freedom with integrity, responsibility, and discipline. And the lives of their children, my grandchildren, will depend on the same.
Like you. Like me.
Brick by brick. Do the work.
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