I’m asking as a dad of two biological kids and one adopted child (though the concept of adoption differs between the West and the Arab world), ranging in age from 13 to 17. I was raised with a traditional Arab boss-subordinate dynamic between parent and child, but with my kids I went the opposite way and tried to cultivate a best-friend, mentor, and guide relationship, while still maintaining my role as an authority figure.
I think probably the biggest thing my parents did with me and by siblings, was humble themselves in front of us. They never tried to maintain infallibility or some illusion of omnipotence. I’ve seen some parents try to fight tooth and nail to maintain that well into their kids adulthood, and far beyond the point the kid has come to know better.
If our parents lost their temper, or made a mistake that affected us in some way, they’d apologize. To us. And that goes as far back as I remember. No privately apologizing to themselves because we wouldn’t remember anyway. But to us.
One of my core memories, is an argument I had with my mother, about how I needed her to be kinder with her choice of words sometimes. She was saying that I can’t let every word people say to me affect me like that, to which I made the point that I don’t. That the only reason I was asking, is because she’s my mother. And that what she says goes straight into my heart, and even when I know she doesn’t mean it, I literally can’t stop it.
It took her about ten seconds of silence to process that point, after which she apologized and promised to try.
That’s not to say we were raised the “free range” style. Our parents were strict, but they didn’t try to make their authority out to be absolute on matters where it wasn’t. Instead, we obeyed because of the simple fact that they had wisdom and experience we didn’t. And they in turn openly acknowledged that that didn’t mean that we had zero. As we grew up, they’d go our of their way to let us defer to our own judgements more and more on more and more matters. Mistakes and all.