Q: Is pleasing their parents the right motivation for children? Aren't they going to spend the rest of their lives trying to please others?

A: The parenting style of presenting children with choices has come into vogue during the past 20 years. The assumption that young children know what's best for themselves is quite humorous when you think about how little experience and perspective they have. Remember yourself at that young age. Let's hope you are much wiser now.

Only pleasing parents will not be sufficient for children to become independent as they mature. Individuating or finding one's personal identity begins during early adolescence, continues into young adulthood and takes quite a long time. I like to describe the developmental process of matching freedom, power and choices with responsibilities as a "V of Love." Here's a description of that important developmental concept:

Visualize the letter V as a model for guiding the extent of choices, power and freedom given to your children. When your children are very young, they begin at the bottom of the V, with limited freedom and power and only a few choices. As they grow in maturity and are able to handle more responsibility, the limiting walls of the V spread out, giving them gradually increasing choice, freedom and power matched with increasing responsibility. During adolescence, as your children move toward the top of the V, they become capable of considerably more independent decision-making and judgment. They feel trusted and continue to respect guidance from their parents and teachers. Thus, they are more competent and have more confidence for moving out of the V and into adult independence and personal decision-making.

In some families, the V is reversed, with the point at the top. Children who start at the base of this figure are given too much freedom and power and too many choices when they can't handle responsibilities. They become accustomed to having power and making decisions before they have the wisdom to handle their freedom responsibly. As these children move toward adolescence, their parents observe them making poor choices and worry about the dangers that arise among teenagers. Their teens may choose not to do homework or study and instead become involved with a negative peer group. Tobacco, alcohol, other drugs and promiscuous sex are serious threats from which their parents try to protect them. Thus, parents begin to make demands on their children. They set limits and take freedoms away. Adolescents who had too much control as children now feel over-controlled by parents. They believe they know more than their parents and teachers. Their angry statements reflect their feelings of restriction. "My parents are controlling me. They expect too much of me. They used to treat me like an adult, and now they treat me like a child," these adolescents complain. They rebel, feel increasingly angry or are depressed. They fight not only their parents and teachers but also learning.

These worried parents over-punish and narrow limits further, resulting in even more anger and rebellion. The oppositional adolescents turn formerly happy homes into armed camps in which underachievement is only one part of the problem. Relative to the power and control these teens once had, they feel powerless.

Once freedom is given, it isn't easily taken away. The resulting adversarial mode may force adolescents to rebel too stubbornly, parents to respond too negatively and both to lose the positive home atmosphere that can be so valuable in educating children. Children brought up with the inverted V of Love expend their energies protecting the power they believe they should have. This pattern of protection only causes them to build defense mechanisms.

The V-shaped love encourages children to develop their talents, freedom and power. Developmental empowerment is much smoother and more comfortable for adolescents and parents alike and provides the appropriate atmosphere in which children can be inspired to learn.

Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or [email protected]. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.