Helping Children To Make Better Decisions
December 30, 2008
While it is commonly believed that children learn all the good and bad things from their parent’s actions and mistakes, I would like to present something which is a little different from this widely accepted theory.
Children have the capacity to solve problems, pull through impediments and stand on their own, provided you empower them.
As long as your kids were infants, your authority to make all decisions was justified, but eventually you need to transfer this responsibility and authority on to your kids as they grow up. To begin with you will have to follow the trial and error approach, giving them a chance to make choices and then watch out how good a decision your child makes. Once you are sure of your child’s abilities, you don’t just have to allow them to make certain decisions rather you have to encourage the children to make decisions.
To make this decision making task encouraging and rewarding, you need to acknowledge your child’s feelings, ask pertinent questions and talk your children through the steps to sort out a situation. And all this while let humor and laughter prevail. Keeping the whole affair lighthearted is important to inspire confidence in the child and make you feel safe to express his feelings. You need to learn to acknowledge and respect your child’s thinking, instead of trying to sympathize or correct them or still worse to judge them.
Get your children involved in small tasks such as gardening or grocery shopping, and all the while your task is to educate the child about what you’re doing and why you are doing it. Don’t suggest anything to the child, and let the child decide what the next action has to be. You just have to provide your children with information and the logical reasoning, leaving the important aspect of decision making entirely on to them.
Initially, there may be some blunders but control yourself and do not shout at your child or tell your child that they have done it wrong. Instead just explain logically what has gone wrong; without pointing out straight that the child has taken a wrong decision. If you feel the child is not able to make a decision, breakdown the decision-making task into steps to make it easier for the child to comprehend the situation and arrive at a solution.
Once you promote good decision making in your children, you will surely be proud to see your children standing tall.
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