Are We Giving Children the Right Kinds of Choices?

Are we giving children the right kinds of choices? 

One of the most challenging things I see on social media is advice around managing tricky situations by giving children more choices. This advice is presented while simultaneously talking about how children don’t have a fully formed prefrontal cortex and struggle to navigate things like executive functioning (planning, decision making, emotional regulation, etc). This is rather contradictory advice.

Ultimately, what’s at the root of this strategy is that it is an effective way to avoid power struggles with your child. Spoiler alert. Any time you avoid something, you aren’t building skills and when you’re not building skills it tends to come back to bite you. Cue a lot of the phone calls I get. I’ve been doing xyz and I’m exhausted and constantly losing my cool, my child is now physically too strong for me, my child has started refusing to go to school, my child won’t eat anything so I’m making 3 separate meals for dinner, …

The solution to power struggles is not more choices, it's fostering an understanding of when children can make choices and when adults make choices and why those two things are distinct.

At its core, the concept of giving children choices is a good one, the advice around execution is what's problematic. Are we giving children age appropriate choices or, are we giving them a multitude of choices because we live in a highly consumer driven society where we have so many choices it actually bogs down most adults?

You don't have to look far to realize that children have a lot of options in every part of their daily routines. Things like… different coloured plates/cups, multiple shoes, clothing with sparkles and flippy sequins, hair clips for every season, macaroni or spaghetti, strawberries or raspberries, bagels or toast …. The options are endless.

"... the research shows that with more choice, people actually become more frustrated with the decision-making process, less inclined to follow through with a decision, and less satisfied with the choice they finally opt for." Zehra Kamani  - Today's Parent

This research applies to adults, imagine how it's playing out for children who don't have fully formed brain capacity for making decisions.

Consumerism has complicated the idea of giving children choices and it's making your life harder.

I would argue most of the choices we give children are not age appropriate and are a by-product of the consumerist culture we live in versus being developmentally appropriate options. There’s a big trend right now around “be the parent you needed as a child." I see this playing out regularly with the families I work with. I didn’t have choices as a child, I’m not going to do that to my child. In some cases the reason you weren’t given choices is because there weren’t choices to be given. Owning multiple pairs of shoes and a plethora of shirts is a product of fast fashion and has nothing to do with the choices people had as children. Underlying a lot of the advice out there is that people can afford to give their children choices. This highlights for me that we are likely not giving children age appropriate choices because our ability to buy multiple choices or options should not be a factor in child development.

What can you do? 

Now you might be asking, what do I do because I don’t want to be an authoritarian parent. The key is to stick to age appropriate (developmentally appropriate) choices and build them up slowly. Instead of giving multiple choices a day, start small and build up as children grow. The idea is to avoid children thinking they have choices about everything because this is where things start to get really problematic. This is where the root of power struggles about snow suits, what to eat or what to wear to school are sown. The issue isn't about being authoritarian, it's about understanding that children can't make that many or type of decisions, they don't have the skills for it. They quite literally need you to help them.

One way to tackle this is by aiming to provide balance in our approach. To do this, it can be helpful to think of ourselves as guides (or teachers) with experience and knowledge (and fully developed pre-frontal cortexes). Therefore, it's our job to slowly build our children's decision-making skills in age-appropriate ways. You can still validate children while also supporting the idea that children do not have the same level of knowledge, experience or problem solving skills required to make decisions about a lot of things. This is also an example of where picking and choosing when brain science applies is problematic. 

What might age-appropriate choices look like:

When you are thinking about how to foster age appropriate choices, think about things that you wouldn’t typically need to have a say in or things that don’t impact the health, well-being, physical safety etc of your child. Essentially, think of things you wound't need to say 'NO' to because decision making doesn't need your input. If it it requires you to redirect it or have input, it's not really a decision they are making. This is a clue that the choice you're giving them probably isn't age-appropriate.

Things like:

• What crayon to use
• What toy to play with
• What book to read
• What song to sing/listen to

How do you build this skill? 

Let's use clothing as an example. Be intentional about the language you use and the amount of options you provide. For example, consider giving a choice between two weather appropriate tops or bottoms versus the entire drawer or closet. Use language to support why you chose those tops to build knowledge about why you provided those choices. “Today you can choose between the pink sweatshirt or the blue sweater because it’s chilly, which one would you like?” If this language is too much, that’s a clue that you child isn’t developmentally ready to pick their clothes. This is an example of how to build a foundation with your child for decision making skills when it comes to clothing. The idea that there is more to picking clothing than how it looks or feels.

What about the power struggles?

One, there will be less when you get consistent with your messaging around choices. Two, power struggles over choices are often a sign that our children (and sometimes us) can’t handle uncomfortable feelings like disappointment or frustration. This is where giving more choices doesn’t solve the underlying problem. If the reason we gave choices was to avoid a power struggle, we didn’t build skills for navigating uncomfortable feelings and as our children grow, those feelings only get harder to navigate.

Balance is the key

There doesn’t have to be an either or, you can give your child choices and also choose things for your child until they are developmentally ready to handle more choices. I know that last part is the hardest. When will my child be developmentally ready? There’s a lot of layers there and it's much older than a lot of us realize. This is something I have learned first-hand as a parent. One of my clues, does my solution require me to buy something or own more then is needed? If the answer is yes, this is likely not something developmentally appropriate and is driven by consumerism.