Forcing is anti-criticism
When you force children to do things you think are good (or to not do things you think are bad), that means that any irrationalities you have will be passed on to them (because they can't properly try out dissenting ideas).
If you're wrong, and you force the child to do whatever it is regardless, it will be hard for either of you to find out, and so it will be hard for the child to make progress beyond your current ideas. Not just that, but it will be hard for either of you to find out whether you were right, too.
For example, in economics, if we make something government-funded before trying it out on the market, we won't know whether it would have been a success or not. Maybe it was a great product and it would have sold a lot. Maybe it was a terrible idea and would have flopped. If we just subsidise it, we can't tell either way.
Ideas have consequences. The idea that you shouldn't force kids to do stuff means you shouldn't force them to: brush their teeth, go to school, not play with fire, be social, not play on the roof, do chores, not watch TV, go outside, go to bed, learn to read, eating 'healthy', sharing toys, exercise, etc., etc. This means that if they want to do these things, they should be allowed to.
What you should do is offer advice. If your reasons for doing or not doing whatever it is are good, the child will want to follow the advice. If the child still doesn't, that means he has unanswered criticism. Forcing children to do stuff they don't want to do is an anti-criticism approach (which is very bad, because criticism of flawed ideas is the only way to make progress to less flawed ideas).
Related link:
* Don't expect people to disagree
If you're wrong, and you force the child to do whatever it is regardless, it will be hard for either of you to find out, and so it will be hard for the child to make progress beyond your current ideas. Not just that, but it will be hard for either of you to find out whether you were right, too.
For example, in economics, if we make something government-funded before trying it out on the market, we won't know whether it would have been a success or not. Maybe it was a great product and it would have sold a lot. Maybe it was a terrible idea and would have flopped. If we just subsidise it, we can't tell either way.
Ideas have consequences. The idea that you shouldn't force kids to do stuff means you shouldn't force them to: brush their teeth, go to school, not play with fire, be social, not play on the roof, do chores, not watch TV, go outside, go to bed, learn to read, eating 'healthy', sharing toys, exercise, etc., etc. This means that if they want to do these things, they should be allowed to.
What you should do is offer advice. If your reasons for doing or not doing whatever it is are good, the child will want to follow the advice. If the child still doesn't, that means he has unanswered criticism. Forcing children to do stuff they don't want to do is an anti-criticism approach (which is very bad, because criticism of flawed ideas is the only way to make progress to less flawed ideas).
Related link:
* Don't expect people to disagree