Helping Your Child Make Decisions
By Juliana Lewellen
Decision-making skills are an important aspect of a child’s development. Sometimes, parents struggle with how exactly to support their child in making choices, and when to allow it.
It can be a difficult balance to find. As a parent, you want your child to find that space of autonomy and independence, but you also don’t want to just tell your kid that anything goes.
Here are some ways to find that balance of letting your child make some choices for themselves.
Encourage it early, and start small. Yes, even toddlers can make choices! Appropriate choices, though, of course. For instance, start with letting them have two options. Hold up the Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol shirts and let your 2 year old point to which one they want to wear. Let her choose between two different toys to play with. Easy and harmless! At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter which they choose but just that they were included in the choice. As they get older, they will be able to make bigger decisions, and most importantly they will learn from you that structured, appropriate choices are healthy.
Walk through it with them. When your child gets older, they may come to you with a choice they need to make. Explain to them what decision making skills are and discuss what you personally do when you are faced with a decision. Teach them what a pro and con list is. Model for them what it looks like to consider how each option may affect them or their peers.
Consider when it would be a good time to step back. This one is really hard, guys! Parents never want to step back and allow their child to make a mistake, but it is a normal and important part of growing and learning. At the end of the day, you are going to have to allow your child to make a choice and see what happens. As long as they aren’t in any physical danger, give your kid the space to mess up sometimes. Maybe they had two friend’s birthday parties in one day, and after you talked to them about it, they did not decide to go to both. Now their friend is upset, and they feel bad. Talk about this experience with them, ask them how it makes them feel, and discuss what they learned from it so that next time, they may make a different choice. This lesson can be a lot more valuable than if you just simply told them how they may be affected from the start.