The Importance of Letting Your Child Make Their Own Decisions
As you know, parenting brings a unique set of joys and challenges. From trying to find the right school, therapy, and support, we often find it all chaotic (maybe that’s just me).
One aspect of parenting that can sometimes be overlooked, I’ve made this mistake myself, is the importance of allowing our children to make their own decisions, particularly from a young age. In doing so, we embrace their abilities, give our children independence, and self-confidence.
This is something I actually didn’t think about when David was young. I just assumed that because of his different medical conditions, I was the one to make choices for him!! (stupid, I know.) I just forgot to stop and ask David to choose for himself.
I thought I was doing good in just making the right decisions for David, but looking back I should have encouraged him to make the choices himself, rather than just David saying NO all the time.
A psychotherapist once gave me a great idea in that I should always give David two things to choose. At first I thought it was ridiculous but she was correct in that David needed that kind of support to help him make decisions.
To this day, David loves making his own choices. Some of the things he likes to choose…. he can’t put all his clothes on but feels good about choosing what he wants to wear every day.
He loves to make plans with his friends to go out (he then gives me the phone to clarify the arrangements to bring and collect him). He chooses his own TV programs and has NOW tv on his iPad, so he watches mostly matches and he enjoys this.
From a young age, David compiled his own folder with his favourite dinners and chooses this from time to time as to what he likes to eat. Now as he is getting older, he goes shopping with me or his helper for the ingredients for his dinner and his lunches.
Ok, so it’s not all healthy, but are most of us?
Writing this article reminds me to encourage David to make a new choice and decision for himself every day (well, we will see how it goes).
I think when parents let kids make decisions, it helps them see that they can do things on their own and makes them feel good about themselves.