There’s a particular moment most parents know. Your child has done something wrong, hurt a sibling, told a lie, or slammed a door hard enough to leave it trembling. And out it comes, maybe louder than intended: “You knew better!” It’s not just an accusation. It’s a plea. A mix of anger, disappointment, and fear, tangled into five words we think should be self-explanatory.
But what if they didn’t know better? Or what if they did, but the knowing wasn’t strong enough to override whatever force was pulling harder beneath it?
That’s one of the quiet questions Daniel E. Ansel’s Dual Realities: The Illusion and Reality of Free Will asks us to sit with, especially those of us raising children, teaching them, or simply trying to guide them through this increasingly complex world.
At its surface, the book is an exploration of free will: what it means, whether we have it, and how the idea of choice plays out in everything from neuroscience to justice systems. But underneath the theory and research lies something more intimate, a thoughtful inquiry into how we hold one another responsible while still acknowledging how deeply we are shaped.
Ansel introduces a model of agency as a continuum, ranging from reactive choices (impulsive, emotional, and automatic) to reflective ones (those that require conscious awareness) to strategic free will, which emerges from sustained insight. It’s a concept that sounds academic until you apply it to your child, the one who seems to know exactly how to push every button, even while struggling to articulate their own needs.
Or maybe it applies to yourself in the role of parent, teacher, or caregiver. The one who said the right thing too late, snapped when patience was needed, or set a consequence that felt more like control than guidance.
We often discuss teaching children about “consequences.” And, of course, consequences matter. But Dual Realities invites a deeper, harder question: What kind of consequence cultivates reflection rather than just fear or compliance?
There’s a line in the book that quietly landed with me: “True responsibility begins where understanding does.” It stayed with me because it mirrored something I’ve felt but struggled to explain, especially in parenting moments when the gap between behavior and intention feels impossibly wide. What Ansel suggests is that autonomy, real, ethical autonomy, isn’t a default state. It’s a learned skill. A practice. Something we grow into with help.
And that means it’s also something we can help others grow into.
This reframes discipline in a fundamental way. Instead of viewing it as punishment for a wrong choice, it becomes an opportunity to examine what shaped the choice to begin with, and what might make a different one possible next time.
But that kind of parenting, or teaching, or mentoring is slow work. It doesn’t deliver the satisfaction of immediate obedience. It doesn’t always result in a child turning around to say, “You’re right, I understand now.” It requires trust in a process where you may not see results right away. Or ever.
Still, it matters.
Ansel doesn’t make it sentimental. He’s seen too much for that. He writes from a lifetime of working with individuals and families caught in cycles, addiction, incarceration, reactive violence, and abandonment. He’s not romantic about what it takes to change a pattern. But he is honest about what makes it harder: shame, rigid labels, systems that confuse punishment with rehabilitation.
What he offers instead is a kind of patient clarity. A reminder that growth requires conditions. And often, those conditions start in childhood.
One chapter of the book touches lightly on early attachment, on how a child learns what to expect from others and from themselves. That framework has been explored in other places, but Ansel brings something new: the idea that early patterns aren’t just emotional, they’re neurological pathways that either reinforce or inhibit access to self-reflection.
Translated into parenting terms, this means that what looks like defiance might actually be an overwhelmed system trying to regain control. What we call “poor choices” might be the only available option at the moment for a child whose insight hasn’t fully developed, or whose nervous system is still stuck in protective mode.
Again, this doesn’t mean abandoning structure. Ansel never argues for permissiveness. What he offers is a different kind of scaffolding, discipline as guided reflection, not just a reactive consequence. Conversation overcorrection. And yes, consequences when needed, but not as retribution, as part of the process of insight.
I found myself thinking about my own upbringing while reading Dual Realities. About the way mistakes were handled. About how quickly I learned to fear doing something “wrong,” not because of what it taught me but because of what it seemed to say about who I was. And how much of my adult life has been spent trying to untangle the difference between accountability and shame.
So when I discipline my own child now, I try to pause. Not always, but often. I try to ask what’s really happening beneath the surface. What story they’re telling themselves. Whether they feel seen or just cornered, sometimes I get it right. Sometimes I don’t.
And maybe that’s the other gift of Dual Realities. It reminds us that the people doing the shaping, parents, teachers, and mentors, are also in the process. We are not fully self-possessed or fully wise. We react. We carry inherited scripts. We fail, sometimes, in the very ways we swore we never would.
But we, too, can move along the continuum. We, too, can pause. Can notice. Can choose again.
There’s a humility to that. But also a kind of quiet hope.
One that makes space for messy growth. For repair. For narratives that evolve.
In one of the book’s later sections, Ansel writes about how systems of justice tend to demand immediate reform without always allowing the conditions for it. He speaks broadly about prisons, mental health institutions, and public schools. But the parallel to parenting is there if you look closely.
Too often, we demand maturity from children before we’ve taught them self-awareness. We expect reflection before the groundwork for reflection has been laid. And when they fail, we treat it as proof of their character, not as evidence of what they still need.
Dual Realities doesn’t make that mistake. It allows for need. It allows for growth. And perhaps most importantly, it reminds us that the ability to choose wisely is not something we’re born with. It’s something we build.
With help. With context. With time.
And when we recognise that, the words we speak in those tense moments, those “you knew better” moments, can shift. Maybe they become softer. Maybe they become questions. Maybe they sound like, “Help me understand what happened.”
Because maybe, just maybe, that understanding is the beginning of something freer.
