As far as I can tell, kids are called bossy when they behave in a dictatorial and domineering fashion. They’re called bossy when they try to order people around and refuse to listen to authority figures. Here’s a suggestion: instead of telling us not to refer to them as bossy, why don’t we teach them not to be bossy? We concentrate so much on eradicating negative words while forgetting to address the behavior that the words describe.

Banning the word bossy doesn’t promote anything, especially leadership. In fact, it would actually show that being bossy works. We don’t need to ban the word bossy, we need to get rid of bossiness. The best way to do that? Be a real leader. How poetic.