High Agency Parenting

Shreyas Doshi noticed something about the product managers who exceeded expectations: it wasn't their credentials, their experience, or their resources. It was high agency - 'finding a way to get what you want without waiting for conditions to be perfect or otherwise blaming the circumstances.'

Three components make up high agency: ownership (it's my responsibility), creative execution (I'll figure out a way), and resilience (I'll bounce back from setbacks).

Parenting is the ultimate high-agency challenge. Conditions are never perfect. You're always under-resourced, under-slept, under-prepared. The easy path is to blame circumstances: 'If only I had more help.' 'If only we could afford...' 'If only the school was better.'

High-agency parents push through adverse conditions or - even better - reverse them. The kid who won't eat vegetables becomes a project to solve creatively, not a permanent limitation to accept. The bedtime battles become a system to redesign, not a nightly inevitability.

Your child is watching. They're learning whether problems are things that stop you or things you solve. High agency isn't just how you parent better - it's what you're modeling for them about how to approach life.