This article was prepared for Namaste , a co-sponsor of this edition. Ideally children will be granted control over their choices in increasing amounts as they grow older. When control gradually increases over time, most children learn responsibility and feel satisfaction. Some children are given a degree of control that is too much or too little for their age. These children are hard to be around.
Control is power and, having had a drink from that fountain, they always want more.
Other children, often including adopted children, may have experienced life as out of their control in too many ways, and struggle with adults in order to regain a sense of power and control. This can make the bonding process with the adoptive parents difficult at best. Parents who battle to take away all control from their children will lose, as they literally invite their children to fight back. The result is incessant power struggling. The solution to the struggle for control is to offer the child choices that give them a sense of control on our terms.