Duncan Gill  •  October 8, 2026

Avoid Adversarial Dynamics

One of the themes I return to frequently in parenting is the importance of leaving children alone. We should allow them to explore, make decisions, make mistakes, and experience failure. Parents often interfere too much, and one of the goals of good parenting is learning when not to step in.

But there are times when a parent needs to intervene. I’ve written previously about what I call “train track moments”—situations in which there is a genuine safety issue and a parent needs to act decisively. There is another important reason to intervene: to protect the culture of the larger group.

This is something I think gets neglected in many conversations about parenting. It is easy to focus entirely on the relationship between a parent and a child, almost as though that relationship exists in a vacuum. It doesn’t. Your child is part of a family, and you have responsibilities not only to that child but also to your spouse or partner, your other children, and yourself.

Every family has limited resources. We have limited money, time, attention, and energy. Those resources have to be distributed among the people and responsibilities in our lives. It isn’t realistic—or healthy—to devote all of them to the family member who happens to demand the most.

This applies to single-parent families as well. Even if there are only two people in the household, the parent is still one of them. Your own needs, relationships, work, interests, and well-being do not cease to matter simply because you have a child.

Being part of a group therefore means sometimes not getting what you want. There may not be enough money to buy your son the car he wants while still meeting your daughter’s needs. There are only so many hours in the day. There may even be a limited number of cookies in the kitchen, and Johnny doesn’t get all of them simply because he wants them.

That sounds obvious when we talk about cookies. It becomes considerably harder when the stakes are higher.

Imagine a four-year-old having a tantrum during family dinner. You may not be able to prevent the tantrum. Four-year-olds have tantrums. But how you respond to it matters. If possible, you might remove the child from the situation and allow everyone else to continue eating. What you don’t want is for one person’s behavior routinely to determine what happens to the entire family.

The same principle can become much more serious with an older child. Imagine an 18- or 19-year-old living at home who has a significant alcohol or drug problem. His behavior may consume enormous amounts of his parents’ time and energy. It may affect younger siblings. It may expose other people in the household to substance use, conflict, or unsafe behavior. Parents can become so understandably focused on saving the child who is struggling that everyone else’s needs gradually disappear from consideration.

Sometimes protecting the family may even mean telling that young adult that he can no longer live in the home. That is an extraordinarily difficult decision. It may nevertheless be the right one. A parent’s responsibility is not exclusively to whichever family member is having the greatest difficulty. A leader has a responsibility to the group as a whole. 

There is another reason this matters. Children need to learn how to be members of groups.

Babies are naturally and appropriately self-centered. When a baby is hungry, she cries. She has very little capacity to think about whether Mom is tired, Dad is on the phone, or her brother is trying to do his homework. The world largely does revolve around her needs, and that’s exactly as it should be.

But part of development is gradually discovering that the world does not revolve around you.

A child has to learn that other people have wants and needs too. Sometimes you have to wait. Sometimes somebody else gets to choose. Sometimes you help with something you would rather not do. Sometimes another person’s needs take precedence over your own. And sometimes you simply don’t get what you want.

If we continually reorganize the family around one child’s preferences, we interfere with that learning. We may believe we’re being loving because we’re making the child’s life easier. But we’re also preparing that child for a world that doesn’t exist.

The adult world is filled with groups. Families are groups. Friendships require reciprocity. Workplaces require cooperation. Marriages require compromise. Communities require us to tolerate inconvenience and occasionally sacrifice something we want because other people matter too.

A child who reaches adulthood expecting everyone else to accommodate him is likely to have a difficult time. Other people may find him unpleasant to be around. His relationships may suffer. And he may be genuinely unhappy when he discovers that employers, friends, partners, and the rest of society aren’t going to respond to his wants the way his parents did.

This is one reason I like children to participate in household responsibilities. A family has work that needs to be done, and ideally everyone contributes according to his or her abilities. Chores aren’t merely a way for parents to get help cleaning the house. They communicate something much more important: you are a member of this group, and membership comes with both benefits and responsibilities.

The same principle applies to the parent who routinely sends a spouse out of the bed because a child wants to sleep there. There are certainly circumstances when having a child sleep with a parent makes sense—a sick or frightened child is an obvious example. But making another family member’s needs secondary by default communicates something very different.

Protecting the culture of the larger group doesn’t mean disregarding an individual child’s needs. Nor does it mean insisting on rigid equality between family members. Different people need different things at different times. A child who is sick, struggling, or in crisis may appropriately receive far more of the family’s resources for a period of time.

The point is that everyone continues to matter.

One of our most important jobs as parents is preparing children for adulthood. Part of that preparation is helping them understand that they are important without teaching them that they are the only person who is important. They should learn that their needs matter, and so do everyone else’s.

Sometimes good leadership means supporting your child. Sometimes it means leaving your child alone. And sometimes it means stepping in because one person’s behavior is beginning to damage the larger group.

That isn’t putting your child second. It’s teaching your child how to become part of something larger than themselves.