Dear Scorpio Mom,

Your son is supremely frustrated. He’s a super Capricorn, which means he’s super Cardinal. People with an emphasis on the Cardinal signs - lots of Cap, Cancer, Aries or Libra - need to have some control of their destiny, even if they are ten.

I realize you can’t let him run the family (though I’m sure he’d like it if you did), but I think the more shots you can allow him to call, the happier he will be, and this will result in less acting out.

Now my son is also super Cardinal and very much thinks he’s the boss of everything. He is natural leader, like your son. So here’s what I do, with very good result:

I basically tell him he can run his life (and live with the consequences) to a very large extent, but he will never run mine. Or anyone’s else’s for that matter. After that, I let him.

For example, his sixth birthday is coming up in April. He’s a KID, right? But he doesn’t know that. He thinks he’s a man, and he knows exactly what he wants. To the letter! And he wants too much, so I tell him this. “No. You can have this or that, but you can’t have these other twenty things. So what’s it going to be?” He decides.

Now check how this works:

“Okay. I’m going to buy that for you, online. Do you want to be there when I do?”

He does.

“Okay. Because there are options. Do you want to choose everything, and do the clicking?”

He does.

So I let him. And he felt in control, as he sat in my lap in front of the computer, choosing which games he wanted with his gameboy bundle. And he was happy, because this is his natural state.

So then I told him, his present will be here early, before his birthday. “Do you want me to wrap it? Put it away for your birthday? Or do you want to open it when it gets here?”

He thought about it. Decided he wanted to open it right away.

Fine. I explained he could. He could have it his way, but he would have very little, if anything, to open from his mother on his birthday. “Agreed?”

He agreed.

So there you go. My five-year-old got his birthday present out of me, six weeks early. Am I a fool? I don’t think so. I think I have a happy Cardinal child, with boundaries.

Bottom line, your son wants to be a man. If you give him some authority, I bet he chills right out and makes you very proud. Just figure you have X number of children and one ten year old man. If you can see it like this, you’ll be well on your way. Because your son is a natural leader and will appreciate your vote of confidence.

Good luck.