Most children, even with wonderful parents, have no real power.  They live in an adult-dominated world and are told what to do and what not to do.  Of course, when we are very young, the parents must protect and guide the child.  But as the child grows older, power is denied them, until they leave school and home.
John Holt raised this issue when he detailed how people can give children power.  A child should be free to choose what their room should look like - if they are lucky enough to have one. If the child shares it with a sibling, it is a golden opportunity to teach a child the meaning of compromise and peaceful co-existence.  The child should also be free to choose their clothes, haircut, and even school.
The child should be part of family decisions when possible and not dismissed as too young and too silly.  Ownership of one's private possessions is very important to children, since they have so few compared to adults.  When I saw Anne Frank's actual diary in Amsterdam, I wept at how small, how precious it looked.  Even Karl Marx conceded that private possessions are one's own, not the state's.


If all this sounds as if I always favour children above parents, I would ask you to look at the real damage done by not giving children power.  It is amazing that we allow children almost no power and then expect them to use power as an adult in a balanced and wise way. The more you give children power to govern their own lives and make their own choices, the better they will handle it later on.  They should be given the freedom to make choices, make mistakes, and learn from them.  People who were severely repressed as children tend to grow up ego-centric and undisciplined, living out their rebellion throughout their troubled lives, abusing their power when they can. The more extreme cases of this often earn a place in the history books as psychopathic mass murderers.
Abraham Lincoln, the most reluctant president the United States of America ever had, said of power:
"The real use of power is in its non-use".