Giving Your Kids The Extra Nudge and Knowing When To Insist

The other day I was speaking with a mom about our summer programs. She found us the best possible way: through a friend who was an alum. That friend couldn’t stop talking about how meaningful their experience had been. The mom was energized. Hopeful. She wanted the same thing for her son.

Her goal was simple and deeply familiar: I just want to get him off the couch this summer and into something that matters.

But then she paused.

She had given her son a choice: stay home for the summer, or go on one of our trips. He chose home. And now she was stuck. She didn’t know how to move him once the choice had been made.

I’ve been thinking about that conversation ever since.

Somewhere in the last twenty years, we parents decided that giving our kids more choice was always better. More autonomy. More voice. More control. And in many ways, that shift came from good intentions, we didn’t want to be authoritarian, dismissive, or disconnected.

But I wonder if, in the process, we stopped doing something essential.

We stopped pushing.

Let’s be honest, most kids, given a clean slate, will choose home over the unknown every single time. Home is comfortable. Home is predictable. Home has snacks, screens, and zero social risk. Home doesn’t require meeting new people, failing publicly, or feeling awkward around peers.

Challenge, discomfort, and growth don’t sound like “fun” when you’re thirteen.

The problem is this: kids are not wired to evaluate long-term value. They don’t yet have the perspective, or the prefrontal cortex, to connect temporary discomfort with lasting growth. That’s not a character flaw. That’s development.

Which is exactly why they need us.

When I was a kid, there were plenty of things I didn’t want to do, but did anyway because an adult knew better. Eat your vegetables. Do your chores. Show up even when you don’t feel like it.

I still remember one dinner where my brother sat at the table for six hours because he refused to eat his peas. Six hours. No Nintendo. No Nerf guns. No whiffle ball. No negotiation. Just peas and principle.

That era feels almost mythical now.

Those same parents pushed me to continue to play baseball. I did not want to. I hated it. But I am so grateful that they prodded me to do so. Years later, as my daughter played varsity basketball on a team that could not find a way to win, we often had conversations about how she may want to opt out. We prodded her on. The team finally got a victory, and she now has a defining story of grit from her childhood. Now as a college freshman, she knows how much she can accomplish because she stuck it out. 

Today, we hesitate. We negotiate. We crowdsource decisions to kids who simply don’t have the life experience to make them well. And when they say no, we often accept it as final, afraid that pushing might damage the relationship or override their autonomy.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: our kids don’t just need our permission. They need our wisdom. Our insight. Our prodding.

They need us to say, “I know this feels uncomfortable, but I also know what’s on the other side of it.”

Some of the most formative experiences of my life, and of the thousands of young people I’ve worked with, began with reluctance. Homesickness. Resistance. A strong desire to quit. And almost without exception, those same experiences are later described as life-changing.

Not because they were easy.
But because they weren’t.

Growth has always required friction. Confidence comes from doing hard things and surviving them. Independence is built by being pushed beyond what feels safe, not by staying within it.

So maybe the question isn’t, “How do I change my child’s mind?”

Maybe the question is, “When did I decide it was my child’s job to see what I already know?”

Parenting has never been about outsourcing every decision. It’s about stewardship. About occasionally saying, I hear you, and we’re doing this anyway.

Not forever. Not for everything. But for the things that matter.

Because someday, our kids will thank us. Not for the choices we gave them, but for the moments we believed in them enough to give the extra nudge and insist.