A conclusion I've been reaching as I've grown older is that motivation is one of the most difficult and important things for any individual to learn. Once you h

A conclusion I've been reaching as I've grown older is that motivation is one of the most difficult and important things for any individual to learn. Once you have a clear objective, achieving things isn't so problematic -- having clear, realistic, well thought out things you want to achieve is much harder. Even failure is much more tolerable to me when I've failed knowing I were pursuing the right thing; failing when you don't even know what you want is much more painful. That's why taste is probably one of the best skills to develop in your child, letting him make decisions for himself and assessing the consequence of those for himself (instead of mandating anything -- although every now and then kids need stimuli or being slightly forced to try new things). So high-involvement parenting to me is only good insofar as it helps those things, not if it sets everything you must do and how to do it. Taste is not something you can't teach either, imo. There isn't anything necessarily more right or wrong about your tastes than the tastes children would pick up from friends and teachers. But I think you should make sure to clarify and expose your tastes instead of mandating (or even hiding) them; and understand your child is unique and your tastes may not fit her in every way. All this of course lines up pretty well with the definition of "authoritative parenting" in the article, which is valuing 'adaptability, problem-solving and independence'. "He who has a why can bear almost any how"...