Children Love Making Choices

It’s not going to haunt you to let the two year old choose what story to read first or what direction to go when taking a walk around the neighborhood. You can let your four year old decide whats for dinner or what shoes to wear to school.
The older the children get the bigger the decisions you allow them to make may become. If you’ve raised your child with making a choice between two or three different options they are given then once they are teens they may even be wise and responsible enough to decide what time their curfew should be, or what they should spend their weekend doing. Think about it- if they learn to make good choices then once peer pressure arises and they get old enough to choose friends and whether or not to smoke, do drugs, drink, etc. They will be much more confident in themselves and in their abilities to stand for the right and wise choice and take that road and not the other.
It’s about teaching children responsibility when they are young. So they will become responsible adults.

While teaching and encouraging them to make the correct decisions you may offer inquisitive questions that challenges them to think about the decision they are about to make and teaches them how to think through the process to ensure they make the right decision.

Now please remember- letting the child make decisions doesn’t mean they make these at free will. The choices they are allowed to make must be framed by firm limits. Without limits the process of teaching them to make wise decisions will be painful, bring conflict, tantrums, and hardship.

Withing firm limits, allowing children to make decisions will make them more mature teens and adults and save their parents much heart ache and worry. Boundaries don’t start when they are teens- they start when they are anywhere around 18 months old!