When I was ten years old, I wanted to be a horsewoman.
My grandpa was exactly the person to teach me. He knew everything there was to know about horses. His stable yard was full of them. He was a gruff man, and yet horses that spooked easily would settle the moment he walked into the barn. They trusted him.
I wanted to learn everything he knew, so one summer morning I showed up at his barn convinced my new life as a cowgirl was about to begin.
He handed me a pitchfork.
The stalls needed cleaning.
So I scooped manure. Then I hauled five-gallon buckets to fill the watering troughs. As a ten-year-old girl, those buckets felt like they were filled with concrete. Then I carried hay to every stall and grain to the racehorses. By the time we finished, I was exhausted and hadn't gone near a saddle.
I worked up the courage to ask, "Grandpa...when are we going to ride?"
His eyes twinkled, but he didn't respond.
The following day looked the same. More stalls. More buckets. More hay. Before I knew it, a week had gone by. Every morning I showed up convinced this would finally be the day. Every morning there was another job waiting for me. If Grandpa was trying to discourage me, it didn't work.
I just kept showing up.
Looking back, I realize Grandpa wasn't trying to find out whether I wanted to ride. He was trying to find out how badly I wanted to become a horsewoman. Those are two very different things.
One morning, Grandpa looked at me and said, "Let's saddle up." From that day on, after the chores were finished, we rode.
Every ride became a lesson. One lesson I have never forgotten is this:
"If you hold the reins too tight, you'll make a horse anxious. You've got to give him his head."
The concept wasn't intuitive. This horse weighed close to a thousand pounds, and I weighed seventy.
Every instinct I had said: Hold on tighter.
Tight reins felt safe, responsible - like what a horsewoman was supposed to do.
You don't throw the reins over a horse's neck and hope for the best. Reins matter. Guidance matters. Boundaries matter. But Grandpa wasn't telling me to stop leading the horse. He was teaching me how to lead it.
So I loosened the reins. Just a little. Almost immediately the horse changed. He became softer, more relaxed, more trusting, more responsive.
At ten years old, I thought Grandpa was teaching me how to ride horses.
It would take me years to realize what he was really teaching me.
I think about my grandfather often. His wisdom has a way of arriving when I need it most. One of those moments was last week during a coaching call with a father who was frustrated by his twelve-year-old son's habit of telling small lies.
He was, by all accounts, a devoted parent. The kind who shows up, pays attention, and cares deeply about doing things right.
"I don't understand," he said. "When I ground him, his behavior improves. When I take away his phone, his attitude changes. He straightens up almost immediately."
He paused, then added, "But he doesn't look me in the eye as much. He makes excuses and he tells lies."
The punishments were working. Just not in the way he thought they were.
This dad wasn't wrong. He was afraid. Afraid his son was becoming dishonest. Afraid that if he didn't intervene quickly, a behavior would harden into character.
I've never met a parent who tightens their grip because they care too little. We tighten it because we care so much.
As we kept talking, my mind drifted to credit cards. Stay with me here. Credit cards are a useful tool. The danger is forgetting the bill is coming. Punishment can feel the same way. The behavior changes. It feels like progress. But the bill may simply arrive later.
A child becomes more careful, not more honest.
More skilled at avoiding consequences, not more capable of taking responsibility.
The behavior adjusts just enough to escape the punishment, while something deeper - something harder to measure - begins to shift beneath it.
This whole conversation reminded me of something I learned years ago in a college course.
The instructor said, "Show me how you're measuring success, and I'll tell you how people will behave."
Reward sales, and people sell. Reward speed, and people hurry. Reward customer satisfaction, and conversations get longer.
Of course they do.
People naturally organize themselves around whatever helps them succeed.
Businesses need scorecards. Families do too. The question isn't whether we should keep score, but whether we're measuring the thing we actually care about.
Imagine a little girl spills her milk. If she's focused on the mess, she reaches for a towel. If she's focused on getting into trouble, she reaches for an excuse. The behavior changes because the goal changes.
Grandpa's horse came back to me.
Hold the reins too tightly, and the horse stops paying attention to the trail. His attention shifts to the rider.
I asked that father, "What do you hope your son learns from all of this?" He didn't hesitate. "I want him to be responsible. I want him to make good choices because they're the right choices. I want him to know I love him."
We sat in silence for a moment, because those weren't the lessons his approach was actually teaching. He was teaching something else entirely.
Not, "I want to become an honest person," but, "I don't want to get in trouble."
Not, "Mistakes are opportunities to learn," but, "Mistakes are dangerous."
The question isn't whether punishment changes behavior. It usually does. The better question is: What is my child learning to optimize for?
Grandpa's wisdom come back to me here.
He wasn't just teaching me how to control an animal. He was showing me the difference between control and influence. Fear can produce compliance. Trust produces something deeper.
Fear travels.
Trust travels.
Every parent eventually has to ask:
What is traveling through my reins?