why Do Parents Think They Know Everything
Why Do Parents Think They Know Everything
Parents often believe they know what’s best for their children in every situation. This confidence stems from various factors, including life experience, desire to protect, and influence of societal norms. While positive in intent, this “all-knowing” parenting approach risks overlooking nuances as children mature.
The Role of Life Experience
As the saying goes, “with age comes wisdom.” Many parents rely on lessons from their own upbringing to guide child-rearing decisions.
Having “been there before” emboldens parents to think they can preemptively solve problems for their kids. Some examples:
- Struggling in a particular school subject
- Dealing with a friendship challenge
- Choosing an extracurricular activity
Parents often assume that since they navigated similar issues growing up, they know “the right way” for their children to handle them now. Their richer life experience grants confidence to make unilateral decisions on their children’s behalf across situations.
However, this logic overlooks context. Each child and scenario differs—solutions that worked decades ago may not neatly apply today. As cultural norms and societal landscapes shift over time, parents can unintentionally provide outdated or irrelevant advice by relying purely on their own upbringing.
Still, through the lens of hindsight bias, parents tend to view their own solutions as foolproof. Their personal success confirms that their approach is best, diminishing openness to alternate perspectives. This perpetuates an “I know best” mentality stemming from greater life experience.
An Innate Desire to Protect
Another key driver of all-knowing parenting is an innate desire to protect children from harm. Parents are hardwired to keep offspring safe. So when children face new scenarios, parents instinctively swoop in to direct outcomes and minimize risks.
This “protection reflex” propels parents to handle situations preemptively on their children’s behalf. Common examples include:
- Selecting “approved” friend groups
- Dictating appropriate media exposure
- Monitoring all activities and relationships
Research shows that this helicoptering stems from hardwired neurobiology. A parent’s amygdala activates when offspring encounter threats, triggering fight-or-flight instincts to immediately protect them from danger.
The amygdala responds to perceived rather than actual risks. So even in mundane situations, parents may experience acute distress, propelling them to intervene “for the child’s own good.” By handling circumstances themselves, parents reduce their own anxiety.
The Influence of Societal Norms
Finally, societal conventions around “good” parenting also promote an all-knowing stance. Cultural messaging suggests that part of a parent’s duty is to be all-wise—capable of smoothing over life’s problems to create a seamless, happy childhood.
Pop culture imagery routinely depicts parents swooping in to rescue children from hardship. Meanwhile, parenting resources are rife with tips for expertly navigating kids through life’s challenges. This collective messaging implies that parents can and should play captain, averting “storms” that children face.
Furthermore, social norms tend to celebrate parental omniscience over understanding. For example:
- The phrase “father knows best” carries positive connotations of wisdom
- Peers admire ability to “handle” difficult children with ease
- Counselors emphasize parental authority in family hierarchies
This cultural signaling suggests that “all-knowing” parents are good parents. It inflates expectations that mothers and fathers can pinpoint perfect solutions for their child in any scenario. Rather than empowering children to handle situations themselves, society’s messaging encourages parents to adopt an expert stance where they seamlessly direct outcomes on their offspring’s behalf.
The Risks of All-Knowing Parenting
Despite positive intentions, this all-knowing parenting approach has consequences. Children miss opportunities for growth when parents persistently intervene and make unilateral decisions well into adolescence or young adulthood. Key downsides include:
Diminished Self-Efficacy
When parents continually swoop in with directives in various contexts, children don’t develop situational competence. By handling issues themselves, parents rob children of opportunities to build critical life skills. This fosters overreliance on parents versus cultivating self-efficacy.
Furthermore, youth don’t learn how to make constructive decisions for themselves when parents dictate outcomes well into maturity. By continually positioning themselves as experts on their children’s needs, parents risk hindering development of critical thinking, judgment, and self-advocacy abilities.
As adults, these children often struggle with independent living because basic life skills around problem-solving, responsibility, and self-direction lag from too much parental intervention over time.
Loss of Personal Agency
Similarly, children lose a sense of personal agency when parents make unilateral choices into the late teenage years and young adulthood. Despite evolving interests, values, and preferences as they mature, children lack pathways to honor this identity development when parents still wholly dictate major life decisions.
Research suggests that this sustained loss of control over one’s outcomes actively thwarts psychological well-being over time. All humans have a fundamental need for autonomy; overriding this into maturity risks damaging mental health and self concept.
At more extreme levels, attempting to rigidly control life path and personal decisions of adult children may even damage relationships. Children who lack space to explore individuality often feel resentment at being pressured to adhere to parental preferences indefinitely.
Outdated Knowledge
Finally, as the decades pass, even the most well-intentioned parental advice can become outdated or irrelevant. Social dynamics, cultural contexts, and societal norms change continuously between generations. The solutions that served parents 30 years ago may no longer apply.
Of course, core values like kindness remain evergreen. However parents must thoughtfully discern where liberally applying their own childhood experiences still serves versus stifles children in the modern day. Navigating evolving socio-cultural landscapes around technology, social connection, work environments and more requires fluency in today’s contexts that parents may lack.
By relying primarily on the parental playbook from their youth, mothers and fathers risk offering advice that ranges from ineffective to socially offensive over time. This compromises authentic support and connection.
In conclusion, the innate desire to both protect and prepare children for adulthood fuels an all-knowing parental mindset. Yet over-dependency on one’s own outdated or irrelevant experiences can hinder critical development in children as contexts continually evolve. Finding balance requires humility on parents’ part — resisting the urge to automatically charge in with directives allows children to organically grow situational competence muscles while still feeling secure under the watchful wing of parental guidance. With emotional intelligence and patience on both sides, families can thoughtfully calibrate that optimal balance point together.
Moving From All-Knowing to All-Growing
When parents act as all-knowing experts well into their children’s maturity, negative emotional and developmental implications result on both sides. Families thrive most when supporting growth versus issuing directives is the priority.
How can mothers and fathers evolve from an all-knowing to all-growing mindset when relating to their maturing kids? A few ideas:
Emphasize Curiosity Over Certainty
Parents can be curious versus certain. When children encounter novel scenarios, parents can adopt a stance of joint investigation rather than immediately solving the issue. Some open-ended questions that foster collaborative critical thinking include:
- Help me understand how you see this situation…
- What potential paths forward have you considered so far?
- What do you feel is the wisest approach, and why?
This frames the parent as an inquisitive ally rather than an absolute authority. It empowers children’s agency in situational decision-making while allowing parents to gently share relevant experience.
Check Personal Biases
Before diving into directive mode, parents can pause and check personal biases. It’s natural to default to what worked personally in the past. But first reflect — does my strong reaction stem from the situation itself, or my own insecurities/projections?
Slowing down cognition defuses the amygdala and creates space for more clear-headed guidance aligned with the child’s developmental stage — not the parent’s past issues. This also allows parents to consider if generational differences warrant a fresh approach.
Honor Evolving Autonomy
As they mature, young people crave increasing autonomy to make personal decisions and direct their own life trajectories. Parents can intentionally shift from manager to mentor roles over time, guiding growth rather than dictating steps. Where possible, identify opportunities to let children choose their own path forward, even if it differs from the parental preference.
Giving advice while also validating freedom of choice acknowledges evolving developmental needs. It keeps connection intact since children feel heard and respected rather than preached at and controlled indefinitely.
In today’s rapidly evolving modern climate, the parental playbook from decades past has an evolving relevance at best and potential harm at worst. While difficult to resist defaulting to personal experience for guidance, parents serve children best by emphasizing curiosity over certainty about definitive solutions. With an all-growing mindset built on joint investigation, guidance on demand but not control indefinitely, parents can thoughtfully calibrate their stance over time to foster increasing independence on the path to capable adulthood.