The Control/Maturity Model: The 2-Page Reference for How Much Control to Give Your Kids
A free 2-page visual reference, built from more than 30 years working with families: the exact model I use to help parents get their kids to listen without yelling.
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Would you like to get your kids to listen without yelling?
Would you like more peace in your home? Would you like to feel more confident as a parent? Here's where I always start. Your job as a parent is to love your child no matter what and even if. Once you have that settled, the next question is a practical one: how much control do you hand your child, and when?
Most of the power struggles I see in families come down to one mismatch. A parent is either holding on to more control than the child's maturity has earned, or handing over more than the child is ready to carry. Either way, it turns into a fight. This model fixes that. It is a quick visual reference for taking the right amount of control based on the maturity of your kids, so you are not guessing and they are not testing you every single day.
What the model shows you:
This is 2 pages, not a workbook. Print it, put it somewhere you will actually see it, and start naming the stage out loud in your home. That is the whole design.
- Where control actually sits.
- Control runs from 0 to 100. Most kids don't have all of it, but they want all of it, and that gap is where the fights live.
- What maturity really means for a child.
- Not age. Not size. How much responsibility they can actually carry right now.
- The 3 stages, side by side.
- So you can spot, in one glance, which stage a given moment of pushback is coming from. A Stage 1 kid answers “do the dishes” with an argument. A Stage 3 kid has already done them.
- How to move control in step with maturity.
- The plain rule for when to hand over more, and when to gently pull it back.
I'm Dr. Paul Jenkins.
I've spent more than 30 years in clinical practice working with families, and this is the same model I still hand parents in my own coaching today. It's what I've seen work firsthand, with the families who applied it.
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