Am I Wrong or Right To Hold Firm Boundaries When My Kid Says I’m Unfair?
The plate of half-eaten goldfish crackers was still on the counter from lunch, my coffee had gone cold behind the coffee maker, and my 10-year-old Lila was standing in the kitchen doorway, rain boots still caked with playground mud, yelling that I was the meanest mom in the whole world.
She’d asked for a chocolate chip cookie 40 minutes before we were supposed to eat dinner. I told her no, that our rule was no sweets before dinner, that she could have an apple or carrots with hummus if she was hungry. That’s when the yelling started. She said all of her friends get cookies whenever they want, that I was starving her, that she’d never ask me for anything ever again. Then she turned and stomped up the stairs, slamming her bedroom door so hard the framed photo of our cat fell off the hallway wall.
I leaned against the sink, wiped a smudge of peanut butter off my sleeve, and that question popped into my head, the same one that pops into my head after almost every conflict with Lila: Am I wrong? Or am I right?
I’d seen the debate a hundred times in the mom groups I scroll through while waiting for school pickup. One side says letting kids lead their own hunger cues builds a healthy relationship with food, that enforcing arbitrary rules just leads to eating issues later. The other says if you don’t hold firm on small rules now, kids will never learn to respect boundaries when it matters. I’d read both sides, and I still stood there, twisted up with guilt, wondering which camp I belonged to.
I texted my sister, who’s a 4th grade teacher, because she’s the only person I know who doesn’t give me that fluffy “you’re doing great” nonsense when I spiral. She called me back two minutes later, while Lila was still slamming drawers upstairs. She said something that stuck with me: “Stop asking if you’re right or wrong. Ask what works for your kid, and then stop making the rule mean you don’t care how she feels.”
She reminded me of what we’d talked about before: Lila doesn’t do well with big emotional confrontations when she’s already amped up from a long day at school. If I go up there right now, either I’ll cave because I feel guilty (which led to a 45 minute battle at dinner last week when she filled up on cookie and refused to eat anything else) or I’ll lecture her about why the rule exists, which just makes her more upset and makes the whole thing last an hour.
Instead, she said, do this: Wait 15 minutes to let both of you cool off. Then knock on her door, don’t go in unless she asks you to, and just say one thing: “I know you’re really mad right now, and that sucks. I’m not changing my mind about the cookie, but I get why you’re upset.” That’s it. No lecture, no apology for the rule, just validation.
I did exactly that. I set a timer on my phone, finished washing the lunch dishes, glued the frame of the cat photo back together, and drank my cold coffee. When the timer went off, I walked up the stairs, knocked once on Lila’s door, and said the line exactly like my sister told me. She yelled through the door that she still thought it was unfair. I said “I know you do. When you’re ready to come down, I’ve got apple slices and peanut butter on the counter.” Then I walked back down.
Ten minutes later, she came down. She didn’t apologize, I didn’t make her talk about it. She grabbed the apple, pulled her math homework out on the kitchen table, and complained about her teacher assigning 20 problems instead of 10. By the time dinner was ready, the whole fight was forgotten.
That’s the thing I’ve been turning over lately, when I get stuck on that am I wrong/am I right question. We’re taught to think of every parenting choice as a binary: you’re either permissive or strict, right or wrong. But almost nothing in parenting actually works that way.
I’ve started doing a few small things that help get me out of that loop, instead of spiraling for hours after a fight. First, when I’m questioning a choice, I just think back to the last three times we had this conflict. What happened when I held firm? What happened when I gave in? For the before-dinner cookie rule, holding firm means 20 minutes of upset and then a smooth dinner. Giving in means an hour of fighting at the end of the night. That’s all the answer I need, it doesn’t matter what some random creator on Instagram says.
Second, I separate the boundary from the feelings. I don’t have to change the rule to make my kid feel okay. I can let her be mad, I can tell her her anger makes sense, and still keep the rule. That specific line I use now—“I know you’re really mad, that sucks. I’m not changing my mind, but I get why you’re upset”—takes 10 seconds to say, and it cuts the tension way more than any lecture or apology ever did.
Third, I let myself be wrong sometimes. If I’m not sure, I test it. A few weeks ago, Lila begged to stay up 15 minutes late to finish her graphic novel. I wasn’t sure if I was right to say no, so I told her she could stay up, but if she was tired and grumpy at school the next day, we’d go back to the old bedtime. She was tired the next day, she admitted it, and now she doesn’t even ask most nights. No big fight, no permanent damage either way.
Tonight, Lila asked for a cookie before dinner again. I told her no. She rolled her eyes, grabbed an apple, and sat down to color at the table. No yelling, no slammed door. I still get that little twist of guilt sometimes, wondering if I’m doing this wrong. I don’t have a neat answer that works for every kid or every family. Some days I give in, some days I hold firm. What I do know is that stopping the search for being 100% right all the time has made all of our days a lot easier.
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