When the kids are running the house

Parents·September 4, 2026

We have all been there. The children turn our lives upside down and we run on their schedule, around their needs and wants. I have done my share of it, dress-up included, plus having what is left of my hair brushed and the occasional application of lip gloss. That is what parents do.

It is entirely appropriate to give children a measure of autonomy so they can pretend, dream and imagine. It builds creative thinking and the early pieces of independence, and as they get older that expanding autonomy becomes essential, particularly through adolescence. But the expansion does not always go smoothly, and sometimes it goes far enough to change how a family actually functions.

My mother used to say, "What's cute at three is not cute at ten." Her point was that the things we find endearing in a small child stay endearing for a finite period, and then become something else. And in some families what looked cute at three or five turns into a real problem: children so controlling within the family that the parents are effectively held hostage. It is difficult to watch.

What it looks like

In these households children restrict how their parents move. They decide what can be said and how it can be said. It reaches menus, vacations, spending — sometimes even affection between the two adults. The structure has flipped: the children are functioning as the parents, and the parents as the children.

Naming a pattern helps, because a thing with a name is a thing you can talk about and work on rather than a vague sense that something is off. So let me name this one.

Parentification

Parentification is what happens when a child takes on an adult role, and it tends to show up in families where a parent is too depleted, or too unwell, to hold the line. The child starts managing household matters, making decisions, sometimes providing emotional support to the parent. The child becomes the de facto authority while the parent stays passive, or simply unable to enforce anything.

What is missing is consistent structure, and the cost lands on the child. They are carrying adult weight their development has not caught up to, and it distorts things. Children in this position often struggle later with anxiety, with confusion about who they are, and with forming healthy relationships of their own. It also has a way of repeating itself down the generations, because the child was pushed into a caretaking role they were never equipped to hold.

What I described at the top — kids running the show — is in my view an offshoot of this. When a child assumes the parent's role, usually because the parent has stepped back from it for reasons of their own, it produces dysfunction, tension, and a family system knocked off its axis. At the extreme it produces co-dependency, resentment, and sometimes outright alienation between people who love each other.

Not letting it start

Prevention is fairly straightforward, which is not the same as easy. Parents have to keep their roles clearly defined: hold healthy boundaries, carry the responsibilities that are theirs, and leave the children room to be children.

Leaning on friends and family through a hard stretch matters more than it sounds like it should — hard stretches are exactly when this pattern takes root. When other adults are involved, in whatever capacity, children are much less likely to get pulled into filling an adult gap. And as with everything else between people, honest conversation is the foundation the rest of it stands on.

Getting it back

So what happens when it has already happened — when the roles have blurred, the children are dictating and the house feels chaotic? Reclaiming the family system takes deliberate effort and a willingness to recalibrate who does what. The parents have to lead it, which means rebuilding boundaries and modeling the behavior they want to see rather than requesting it.

First, recognize it. This is usually the hardest step, because it requires admitting how the dynamic got here in the first place. It can come from your own self-awareness or from someone outside the family who can see it.

Second, apologize to your children. When parents own past mistakes and make it clear to their children that none of this was their fault, trust starts to come back. Children crave structure and stability. A role reversal is almost never something a child engineered; it grows out of the adults' difficulty setting and holding a boundary. Saying so out loud gives a child back the security of knowing which one of you is steering.

Third — and this is the one that matters most — put the roles back. It is gradual. It is a realignment, in which children come to understand again where their role starts and stops. Alongside it, the parents demonstrate what a stable, healthy relationship looks like day to day, because that is what a child was missing.

Good coaching helps with this, and I would say so even if I were not obviously partial. What it helps with is the relational habits on both sides: the parent learning to hold a line without a fight, the child unlearning the patterns that formed while they were carrying too much. If a child is carrying a genuine wound or trauma from this, that is not coaching's work and it is not mine — that belongs with a licensed professional, and it is worth getting the right one.

The shape of the work

Underneath all three steps is the same movement I keep coming back to in the method. A parent trying to control a child's behavior is in a losing position, and a parent who has fused with a child — who needs the child not to be upset in order to be okay themselves — has no line left to hold. The move is from control to influence, and from fusion to a self steady enough that a child's displeasure is survivable.

Parenting is hard. It arrives without a manual and it makes most of us doubt ourselves regularly. When boundaries blur and roles reverse, children end up carrying pressure beyond what they are built for, and parents end up feeling disempowered and unsure. Reclaiming your authority through clear, consistent boundaries is what puts that right.

Parenting is not about getting it perfect. It is about facing the difficult parts with some courage. When we redefine the roles with structure that is rooted in love, we get a family where children can grow and parents can lead with some confidence.

A version of this piece first appeared at The Times of Israel.