Help
Sign In
power
November 2009 
How do you define power?
Posted on Oct 24th, 2009
by 
tinkonthebrink
tinkonthebrink
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for October 24, 2009:
Krissy's niece (does that make her my niece-in-law?) got in a bunch of trouble today. She's 14 and not allowed to "date" yet. Whatever that means, and as if you can prevent any part of that from occurring. So, her mom found these sexually explicit emails from a boy on a myspace account that mom told her she could only have if mom had access to it.
My first thoughts here are, you don't have to show an ID, you just have to say you're 18, so why in the world would you give your parent that kind of power? She seems like a bright girl, am I missing something? Does she actually need a worker?
And then my next thought is, is mom trying to train her to be sneakier and a better liar? Because, really, that is the only option.
I rarely give other people the opportunity to make decisions for me. Even when I was fourteen, I had figured that out. On the other hand, I don't want to make decisions for other people - I'm a control freak about my own life but not anyone else's. Once in a while those boundaries are fuzzy - if someone posts crappy pictures of you, are they yours or theirs? Well, obviously, if they don't like you or care how you feel, that's out of your control zone and you just have to let that go. What about medical care...how much research are you required to do to know what is really happening to you? For me, the answer is, as much as I can possibly do. Not something I'm trusting about.
There is some distinction between power over and empowerment, but basically - for me at least - personal power and empowerment hinges on self-responsibilty. If I screw that up or let it slip through my fingers, that's on me.
My first thoughts here are, you don't have to show an ID, you just have to say you're 18, so why in the world would you give your parent that kind of power? She seems like a bright girl, am I missing something? Does she actually need a worker?
And then my next thought is, is mom trying to train her to be sneakier and a better liar? Because, really, that is the only option.
I rarely give other people the opportunity to make decisions for me. Even when I was fourteen, I had figured that out. On the other hand, I don't want to make decisions for other people - I'm a control freak about my own life but not anyone else's. Once in a while those boundaries are fuzzy - if someone posts crappy pictures of you, are they yours or theirs? Well, obviously, if they don't like you or care how you feel, that's out of your control zone and you just have to let that go. What about medical care...how much research are you required to do to know what is really happening to you? For me, the answer is, as much as I can possibly do. Not something I'm trusting about.
There is some distinction between power over and empowerment, but basically - for me at least - personal power and empowerment hinges on self-responsibilty. If I screw that up or let it slip through my fingers, that's on me.
Access: Public
That's true Tink, and we have to learn somehow. But just to push back a little, what about all those studies about how our prefrontal cortex (or something like that) – the part that grasps consequences, isn't developed until our mid-20s? At 14 you really don't grasp sexual cyber predators and that yes, you really could actually get hurt or even killed – that you are not immortal. I'm thinking about how incredibly niaive I was at 14, even though I had a pretty healthy suspicion barameter. I agree that I think parents are crazy if they don't think their kid could have two MySpace pages, one they show and one they don't, but still, I don't think the impulse to keep tabs on kids in this day and age is too controlling. It's all about how you wield that power I suppose … But I do agree that at a certain moment, if you don't take ownership of your self – your health, your cyber life, your whatever – it is indeed on you and it is you giving your power away, etc. I'm just not sure what that age is and I think it's kind of a sliding target depending on the situation. Thoughtful words, as always Tink.
I don't know what the answers are. I had a child who was relatively conservative by nature and I didn't try to control his behavior much, other than trying to get him to clean his room, which never worked anyway. I was a child who was not at all conservative and somehow survived my own childhood and adolescence. But I'm positive that a fourteen year old kid is capable of deceit (based on my own experience for sure) and I kind of enjoyed flaunting the restrictions that just made it apparent how gullible my parents really were. I did not make all of my best decisions at fourteen - but I went ahead and made them anyway, and I didn't consult my parents because I knew up front they wouldn't trust me. So I think that issue is kind of a non-issue - yes, adolescent kids aren't fully equipped for decision making yet and yes, they will go ahead and make decisions anyway and if you try to squelch their autonomy they will make sure you don't know what they're doing. And I guess that's a choice - maybe some people really don't want to know and would rather just be able to say “it wasn't my fault, I made a rule against that and I was lied to” if something bad happens.
I am just a complete control freak about my own life. I have trouble sometimes where my life overlaps someone else's - I play well with others generally but I can only give over control if it's in the game plan, like a job. In relationships, including with kids, I expect everyone to be responsible for themselves as much as possible and to let me have my own life, my own choices, my own mistakes. Bear in mind here, I work with an eleven year old girl with autism and I apply this with her as well - and I think it's one of the reasons I'm one of the few people who can work with her. I do not boss her around but I do tell her how stuff works (to the best of my understanding) and unless she's going to jump off a cliff she gets to make her own choices. She used to want to jump into bodies of water because she thought it would be like donkey kong swimming or something so, rather than fight it, I took her to swimming lessons. Once she found out that water wasn't the way she thought she lost the desire to jump in - and kind of learned to swim a little. I like work-arounds and opportunities rather than fear and saying no all the time.
I think maybe as a parent it's also about how you feel about your child and about yourself in the role of guide and how much you really want them to become independent. Telling kids that they aren't “allowed” to do the things they're going to do anyway is not a way to protect them, I don't think, or to offer them information and feedback. It's just training deceit. Which can be a useful skill…
Hey Tink, I found your second post here the most compelling. You hit more clearly on an important point I found in your original post: attempting to shield our young ones is not a good approach. I agree with your premise that denying them permission to do what they're going to do anyway is a way to teach them deceit.
As the mother of a 12-year old, I'm facing these questions right now. My daughter has an online networking account that she happily shares access to (And I'll humbly take that openness as long as she'll give it). The parental controls stuff was so aggravating on Hotmail after 2 years, that we finally bagged it and said she was an adult and got her a new email account. We came to the same conclusion: either support her desire to be on line when she's still young enough to want to include us, or tell her “NO” and have her lie about it one day in the future.
Today's youth are bombarded with Internet safety rules the way I was bombarded with drug safety rules at her age. She can rattle off every cautious approach to safe Net use you'd ever want to hear, but because of her age, it doesn't impact her like it does a parent. So what's new? She's approaching her teen years. I was exactly the same at her age. We all grew up knowing what was wrong, and pushing boundaries that meant something to us… just because that's what young people do.
My hope is that I can provide her with tools to take care of herself when she chooses to, because I do not want to “protect” her from living a life of exploration. She's smart, and she'll get through it. She will make mistakes, and that's perfectly natural.