One of my friends used to say kids should prepare to be 18 in fractions. Like, a 12-year-old should have 12/18 the autonomy and the knowledge they’ll need to be 18. It’s obviously very rough, but the idea that kids should gain these things slowly rather than abruptly seems right.

It seems obvious that a major reason for teenage "behavioral issues" is that the arbitrariness of the system becomes increasingly clear to kids, since when they reach the magic age of 18 they'll be free, but until then they're subject to a bunch of rules that are only designed to control them.

Exactly. And we all understand this with regards to things like, kids dressing and feeding and washing themselves! A baby should not be expected to dress themselves! A father that dresses their 16 year old daughter is super sus! (Unless there’s a reason the child can’t do it.)

From the start I've told my kids that a ) they're junior members of the family and are expected to contribute accordingly and b ) my job as a parent is to train them to be good adults. It seems to be working so far!

This It's on parents to do this, to prepare kids for the point they don't rely on parents anymore They can't just switch from kid to adult overnight because of a birthday

learning to make big decisions by making smaller ones - but they do need to be real choices not "do you want to do it my way or be punished?"

Hands down the best thing my parents did was raise us to be independent, which I didn't fully appreciate until college. They wouldn't force me to do my homework, but if my grades fell, I had to drop some extracurriculars, etc. So much easier to learn with a net to stop a crash landing.