Parenting Tips

September / October 2007

Building Blocks for Better Choices

By Pamela Wiggins

     “If I have said it once I have said it a thousand times”, “clean up your room”, “take out the trash”, “empty the dishwasher” ,“I am not speaking just to hear myself talk.” What are we really expecting our children to say?  “Yes mother, I see the errors of my ways and I want to thank-you for pointing them out to me and I will never do them again.” No self-respecting kid would make such a statement. If a child could articulate his feelings, he would say, “At this moment nothing you have asked me to do is appealing to me, so since I do not see the benefit of doing it I won’t!”

     And so the battle begins. The next stage of this scenario sometimes goes into overdrive; parents begin to yell louder and make threats. They make statements like, “I would think, you would be tired of hearing me yell!” Are we giving our children the building blocks to better decision making or teaching them how to react to fear and coercion? Children learn their decision-making skills by the modeling and teaching of their parents. The beginning of a child’s education begins with the primary building blocks below.

Parent with courage and strength not fear and coercion. There is an old saying, “The only thing that children wear out faster than shoes are parents and teachers.” Children came into the world with a job description; their primary goal, to get their needs met. Children have attributes when they are born such as a strong will, unbridled desires, and multiple demands.  The child’s objective is to use any means necessary to get their goal met. The challenge of parenting is to teach children how to channel these qualities and develop their child into mature responsible adults relating to the world around them in a positive manner. Parenting requires thought out deliberate actions backed by courage and strength.

Teach with questions not with a command. Helping children make better choices can also benefit the parent by making better choices in how to parent? Using thought-provoking age appropriate questions can help your child make better choices with more successful outcomes. “Have you had fun playing with your brother while you were both yelling at each other?” “How can playing with the ball let both of you have fun?” Helping children make small successful decisions with positive outcomes will help build the foundation to make more complicated serious decisions when they get older.

Give your child choices as well as options.  Pat Holt, in Choices are not child’s play: Helping your children to make wise decisions (1990), suggests that a child’s poor choices are the results of impulsiveness and a lack of self-control. Often we could miss a teachable moment by asserting parental authority and showing “who’s the boss.”  It is the parents’ responsibility to take a moment to show the child how his behavior is affecting everyone around him.  By giving the child a choice such as “either we can do ……. or we can do ……….” allows the child to make a choice between two positive options. In our guiding children through simple yet positive solutions, we help build our child’s confidence in their decision-making skills.

     We first begin teaching positive decision-making by making positive decisions as parents. Through courage and skill we teach our children how to make responsible positive decisions in the world around them through questions and choices. My question to parents is, “Are we teaching positive decisions or modeling poor choices?” 

Pamela Wiggins is currently in practice with her husband at Integrity Counseling and Coaching located in Largo, Florida. Both are licensed mental health counselors having over 20 years experience working with families.

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