14 October 2025 · Eric Richfield
Commercial Director · Father of four
Rethinking What It Means to Have “Bossy” Children
A child directs a game. Assigns everyone a role. Explains the rules twice. Moves the furniture to suit. One adult sees a leader. Another says bossy. Same behaviour. The label is doing work that has little to do with the child.
Erica is nine and has been running the household since about her second birthday. I've heard her called both words, sometimes in the same afternoon. The pattern of who reaches for which has been educational.
Who gets called it
Not an evenly distributed word. The same directing behaviour is far more often called bossy in a girl and leadership in a boy. There are campaigns to retire the term for exactly that reason.
Notice which word turns up in your own mouth, and whether it would have turned up for a different child. I didn't enjoy the answer when I tried it.
The word also has a moral charge the behaviour rarely deserves. Bossy implies a flaw in character. What's usually going on is a skill arriving before its supporting skills. I think. Erica may have another view.
What the behaviour is
Strip the label off and look at what she's doing. Three or four things at once. None of them a defect.
She's organising. Holding a plan in her head and coordinating other people around it. That's demanding and well that deserves having. She's certain how the thing ought to go, without yet having the tools to negotiate when someone disagrees. And her verbal fluency has arrived years ahead of her social calibration. She can articulate a detailed plan long before she can read whether anyone wants it.
Sometimes there's a need for predictability underneath. Directing the game guarantees it won't turn into something alarming. Occasionally it's anxiety. Control over small things becomes a way of managing a world that feels unpredictable elsewhere.
Around the same ground
Keep the drive, add the missing parts
The aim is a child who keeps the initiative and acquires the three things she's missing. Consent. Negotiation. Reading the room. A quieter child would be a poor trade.
Teach asking. "Would you like to be the shopkeeper?" keeps the whole plan and removes the imposition. A very small edit for the difference it makes. Teach noticing. "Look at Maya's face. Does she look like she's enjoying this?" Directing children often haven't looked. That's a different problem from not caring.
Practise taking turns with ideas. Whole games, not compromises inside one. Your game, then her game. Rehearse refusal at home through play, including how it feels when someone says no to a plan you were proud of. Give the drive somewhere legitimate to go. A real job. A task with responsibility. Explaining a game to a younger sibling. We have twins, so Erica has a permanent audience of two. Channelling that has done more than any amount of correction.
What not to do
Most of this is about not flattening the drive while you teach the missing part.
Don't use the word in front of her. Labels get internalised. "I'm bossy" is a lot harder to shed later than "I need to ask first". Don't tell her to stop taking charge. That's asking her to be less of something that deserves being.
Resist stepping into every exchange. Children negotiate this between themselves with surprising competence when adults leave a gap. Never compare her to a more compliant sibling. That teaches, efficiently, that compliance is what you value.
When it deserves a closer look
Rarely. Still, a few patterns deserve raising with someone, because shaping them at home won't be enough.
Other children consistently avoiding her, which is different from occasionally objecting. Real distress when things don't go to plan, well beyond ordinary frustration. The need for control spreading into routines, food or clothing and starting to cause her difficulty.
Those three are about her comfort. Worth a conversation with a teacher or a doctor. Intimidation is separate. Behaviour aimed at the other child, not at the game. That one needs a direct response from you.
The long view
Underneath directing behaviour sit initiative, planning, and a willingness to say out loud what should happen next. Most adults spend their thirties paying someone to help them develop those. I say that as a man whose whole career is commercial negotiation.
A child who has them at five isn't a problem to correct. She needs to learn to bring people with her. That's an ordinary, teachable gap.
This guide is general information, written to help you understand a topic and ask better questions. It is not medical advice and does not replace your own doctor, midwife or paediatrician. Anything that worries you about your baby belongs with them.