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8 Negotiating at Home THE PARADOXES OF PARENTING Parenting is one long process of being bombarded with warnings, advice, and best practices to make sure that you are raising healthy, capable, happy kids. Unfortunately, the advice that circles around us has a ten- dency to simultaneously recommend polar opposite approaches. For ex- ample, we are told: • Kids need to have space to make mistakes on their own, to figure things out, and to learn to rely on their own sense of judgment. Yet, at the same time, kids need the guidance of parents, some- times need to be told what to do, and need discipline to turn into respectful and civilized adults. • They need to be encouraged to try their best, and not be overly praised for mediocre efforts, but they should simultaneously never be so pressured to improve or perform that they become resentful or too stressed out. • They should be exposed to as many different things—music, art, various sports, languages—as early as possible, but they should also have plenty of time for “just being a kid” and playing without a class or formal activity. • They should be fully literate with technology, and perhaps even master basic coding at a young age, but they should not spend too large a chunk of time in front of screens. • Children of all ages need consistency in the rules and in the pat- terns of their lives, but we should remember to also be spontan- eous and show that it’s not healthy to get dogmatic about rules every single minute of the day. The basic tension here boils down to walking the fine line between struc- ture and freedom. The paradox of parenting is that parents are supposed to be able to provide effective structure, opportunities, and discipline without hindering the child’s freedom to explore and discover both indi- vidual passions and an understanding of cause-and-effect in the world. These same tensions present themselves in the negotiations we have with our children. Should we just overrule them and abide by the “because I said so” logic? Or should we give them a chance to participate in craft- ing solutions that account for their wishes? In general, how much control should we be handing over, and when? A parallel set of ideas has taken shape in the study of leadership. Through a concept aptly named paradoxical leadership, scholars have iden- tified the tensions inherent in attempting to both satisfy employees and meet the needs of the organization simultaneously. Like parents, managers