“I cannot roughshod over my child’s preferences, control his every bite, dictate what he watches and then expect everything to be ok just because I’m doing it for his own good.”
– Roshan Ali
When people ask me if my child is ‘allowed’ to eat this or ‘allowed’ do that a shudder goes through my body. Is he my slave? Is he a subject in my kingdom and I the king? Is he a dog?
What totalitarian relationship is this? How can I completely control another human being; control to such an extent that I dictate even what goes in their mouth? Even North Korean citizens have more freedom than that.
Who gave me this god-like power to draw absolute walls around the tiny life of my beloved child?
And how can I expect these walls to not affect him? Restricting, dictating, controlling—completely, absolutely: then saying ‘I love you’ when he’s really upset. How can I expect this perverse moral inversion to not affect him? How can I expect him not to act out and be angry?
As Saul Bellow said, “Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing you hold down the adjoining.”1
I cannot roughshod over my child’s preferences, control his every bite, dictate what he watches and then expect everything to be ok just because I’m doing it for his own good.
I’ll end with a favourite quote from C.S. Lewis:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
– C. S. Lewis, 1985, First and Second Things, Chapter 14: The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment, p. 103
No. I will not put my son through this passive-aggressive torment. He is free to do as he sees fit. He is a person after all just like me, just like you. We make mistakes and we depend on our loved ones to help us out—and I want to be his most trusted, most spontaneous, most fun loved one.
Notes
1. Saul Bellow, 1954, The Adventures of Augie March, Chapter 1. p. 3 in 2001 Penguin edition
See also:
Roshan Ali, 2025, ‘Sincere tyrannies’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/sincere-tyrannies