Isn't that literally the job of a parent? Knowing better than the child what is best for them?
Obviously that should include letting the young person stretch, learn and exercise their own judgement, but within bounds set by the parent and with the parent there to help with any consequences.
I was a full-time parent (homemaker) for a lot of years. I always operated as much as possible on the assumption that my kids had a great deal of local knowledge about their life that I would never know and when they were little they were incapable of articulating it but still knew it.
An event that helped cement my commitment to respecting their boundaries as much as possible is where I made my son eat lunch because he wasn't eating and he tended to be skinny and I worried that I would end up charged with neglect for not feeding him enough. About thirty minutes later, he threw up all over my jacket which I actively encouraged to keep it off the cloth truck seat.
After that, I doubled down on trying to make sure there was food available that he liked and that I felt was sufficiently healthy, but I left it up to him to decide to eat.
He likely has two conditions that can each lead to requiring hospitalization to treat aversion to eating by mouth. He's never developed any such issues.
So, unbeknownst to me, I had some serious challenges to deal with. Respecting his boundaries paid off.
Kids like mine frequently end up seriously abused because the parents just keep increasing their attempts to control the kid and force the kid to do as they are told rather than coming at the issue from another angle as I chose to do.
I am on my third parenting blog, still trying to figure out how to talk at folks about such things in a way that is helpful and doesn't sound too accusatory. The intent is to offer options, not criticism per se, for people dealing with challenging children.
You can respect their boundaries while still knowing better than them.
You would stop them running into the road, as an extreme example. Good parents know well enough to communicate with their child, and provide an environment in which they can learn and grow, and also when to intervene because there is danger.
It's overly simplistic to say that parents don't have "know better" as part of the job description.
No. The job of a parent is to raise a child so they can know what's best for themselves and be able to handle problems without you. Most adults think with little evidence that they know what's best for their child. I've talked to many adults who think that their child should go to Harvard, or should go into a trade school, or shouldn't hang out with risk-taking friends, or shouldn't be gay, or should go to church. Outside of the very obvious situations where immediate safety is at risk, I don't see the evidence that most parents know what's best for their child. It's just arrogance. You should be trying to raise a capable adult rather than be protecting a foolish child for 18 years.
I remember reading somewhere that job of a parent is to teach the kid how to swim. It is a terrifying proposition since I am not always sure I know how to.
I mostly agree with you. But I also know there is a blurry line there. For example, I did some stupid stuff as a kid and it is a good things parents were there to intervene. I would not call their concern for my risk taking in that instance to be arrogant today.
But that is my perception of my individual upbringing. I have no real knowledge how parenting looks 'on average'. I know I was lucky in some ways; unlucky in others.
This is where it gets complicated, because the advice we get for parenting is a generic advice for a typically specific issue.
I am writing this as an expecting parent so take my musings as just that.
Especially young children aren't always able to explain.
Like a kid will come and say "I need a stick", and the parent is "what, you'll just hit someone", and refuse it. And the kid will cry.
Later you discover the kid needs to make a school project, with a stick, and without the stick they simply did not do the project, and failed.
And they were just not able to explain this to you.
(This isn't a real story, but it's similar to the kind of thing that happens.)
You also get "I need a dollar", and you give it to them, and later discover they had some kind of bet going with another kid (which you would have never approved of), and needed the dollar to pay the other kid.
Upshot: You have to ask the kid what's up, there is a lot of knowledge they have that you don't.
Obviously that should include letting the young person stretch, learn and exercise their own judgement, but within bounds set by the parent and with the parent there to help with any consequences.