View from the Control Tower

It's always been a dirty word in my family.

Control.

As in "Don't be so controlling." "What is she, a control freak?" "Well, you know how she likes to control things."

As a clan, we condemn such behavior — but we also embody it. I come from a matriarchal flock of females who ... let's just say, we're all really comfortable with our hands on the tiller. In my family, you're either calling the shots and being chided for it, or you're resentfully carrying out someone else's capricious edicts and making snarky comments about her intolerable bossiness.

Control-or-be-controlled! Steer-or-be-steered! It's the way we Roshells roll, and I don't much mind it. The truth is I'm happy sitting in the saddle and I can't really help it if the world works better when I've got the reins, now can I?

When it unnerves me, though — when my admittedly despotic disposition seems more exacting than endearing — is when it flops over onto my parenting. Rather, ahem, when my kids call me on it.

I recently put the kibosh on a family outing because my progeny were behaving like orangutans on espresso. Warnings didn't work. Pleadings didn't work. So I nixed our plans and picked up a magazine instead, settling into the sofa for the night. I wasn't trying to punish my adorable little barbarians; I just couldn't conceive of strapping myself into a compact car with them for any duration whatsoever.

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