“From where can your authority and license as a parent come from, when you who are old, do worse things?” (Juvenal)

Ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age in the 19th century, we started losing the ancient practice of mastery. With assembly lines and factories replacing artisans and workshops, gone is the age of the master and his/her apprentice.

Except with parenting. We may not realize it, but parenting is still about masters leading individual apprentices into their practice. Instead of cobbling and carpentry, however, parenting is about the craft of adulthood. Like it or not, we parents are each the Master Adults under which our children study. And that means parenting cannot just be about control and protection—we are apprenticing the next generation of innovative, impactful adults.

Thus, our kids are not just watching us in all our behaviors, they are studying them.