Achieving Legitimacy as a Parent
I recently finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s recent David and Goliath. One facet of the book centered on the limits of authority and how the efficacy of authoritarianism is not as high as many people think.
In past experiences with parents of campers at our girls-only and boys-only summer camps, I’ve witnessed how certain children—when freed of the expectations and restrictions sometimes placed on them by well-meaning parents—can surpass those limitations. Often, it can be how campers, inspired by great role counselor role models, try to be their best selves for the counselors. Often, it can be a response to a difference in how our expectations of how our campers are supposed to act is managed. We have a check in system for everything at camp, whenever people need help resolving whatever issue might surface. It is us working together to find a solution. It is not a top-down authoritarian system where those in “power” are always right and those lacking power are always wrong.
The following words from Gladwell’s book cogently express why we feel our systems work well, and if modeled by parents, teachers, or other adults with important stakes in child development, would make for more empowered children (and less frustrated adults).
“We often think of authority as a response to disobedience: a child acts up, so a teacher cracks down. Stella’s classroom, however, suggests something quite different: disobedience can also be a response to authority. If the teacher doesn’t do her job properly, then the child will become disobedient.” (Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath (Little, Brown and Company, 2013, p. 206)
“When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters—first and foremost—how they behave. This is called the “principle of legitimacy,” and legitimacy is based on three things. First of all, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice—that if they speak up, they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the authority has to be fair. It can’t treat one group differently from another. All good parents understand these three principles implicitly. If you want to stop little Johnnie from hitting his sister, you can’t look away one time and scream at him another. You can’t treat his sister differently when she hits him. And if he says he really didn’t hit his sister, you have to give him a chance to explain himself. How you punish is as important as the act of punishing itself.” (Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath (Little, Brown and Company, 2013, p. 207-208).