Telling kids to “make good choices” vs. cultivating wise choices
Have you ever told your child to “make good choices”?
Or, perhaps you let them know that what they did was not a good choice.
You’re wanting to see your child be kind, respectful, and responsible.
Unintentionally, you may be sending them a completely different message.
I recently explored this parenting topic in an Instagram live. We had a great conversation there, which you can watch the replay of below.
Or, if you prefer reading, I wrote it out just for you.
I can’t wait to hear what sparks for you!
–Dr. Cline
We’re all human here.
I’m a parenting educator and teacher educator, as well as a mom to my 7 ½ year old son, CJ.
My professional roles and personal roles have really been colliding over the past few years and they’ve made me incredibly fascinated by how we can support our children as developing human beings while we are ourselves a mere human. And I don’t know about you, but I’m still working on all the same stuff as my son (e.g., picking up after myself, regulating my emotions when I’m really upset, and doing what other people want me to do 😉).
So, as we get into this conversation today I want to be clear that I assume we are human beings raising other human beings and that no one is a robot who can be programmed to perfection.
I’m fascinated by the beautiful messiness of navigating relationships that we care so deeply about and yet they bring about a lot of conflict or tension in our everyday interactions with each other.
This is because we are all unique individuals with different needs, expectations, and feelings which can contradict each other and create conflict.
What do we mean by “make good choices”?
I now see that conflict with our kids is one of the most powerful opportunities for connection and growth, and yet…
I want to help myself and other parents as much as possible within this context because its really freaking hard to try to connect with our child and respond in a way that supports their development all while we are really really frustrated or angry or overwhelmed or annoyed or embarrassed or stressed.
We often feel like this when we see our kids behave in ways that, to us, feel like a not so good choice. Or a bad choice. What are those choices for your kid(s)?
What do you see your kids doing that you wish they did differently?
Part of the reason we can think about this is because our kids make and are capable of making good choices, too.
What good choice have you seen them make recently?
My guess is these “good choices” reflect characteristics like kindness, respect, and responsibility. These are common desires for parents, but feel free to add any other dispositions you desire for your kids.
Let’s do a quick check in with ourselves as well.
What percentage of the time do you live your life in ways that you would deem kind, respectful, and responsible?
To be clear, this is to others and to ourselves. How often are you kind and respectful to others and to yourself? How often do you make choices that are responsive to others needs and your own?
How we teach kids to “make good choices.”
We’ve established what we mean when we talk about supporting children’s development regardless of whether it's a good choice or wise choice.
And we’ve been real with ourselves about how we are still working on these things as well.
Now let’s talk about how we typically try to teach our children to make those good choices.
It’s like we’re at the airport. When you see something, say something.
We see our kid making a “not-so-good choice” and we point it out to them in the moment.
CJ, stop throwing your towel on the floor. How many times have I told you to set it up on the counter? CJ, let go of your friend. He has to go home now.
We might even take it further and either ask them why they did that or what they were thinking or we might go into a long explanation of what we want them to do.
Anyone relate to this? Are you seeing your own life in this description?
Let me know in the comments.
Then, we start warning them ahead of time to make a good choice. We’ve told them what we expect them to do and then we remind them to make a good choice.
In other words, “do what I told you to do.”
Have you said this to your kids? Or some version of this?
I have.
Two things are happening here that I want to dig into today:
One. even though our request or expectation seems very reasonable to us or logical or obvious, our request is coming from our perspective, not theirs.
Two. When we tell them in such a direct way, we are not engaging their perspective, which means its really hard for them to integrate our expectation into their reaction system – those default thoughts and instincts that prompt the choice they make in the moment.
If you work with me, you know that I believe perception is primary. In other words, our perspective guides our interpretation and reaction. But often we jump ahead to the reaction and focus on intervening there. We skip over all those pieces inside of us, inside of our kids brains and bodies that prompt how they interpret the situation and react to it.
Our request is coming from our perspective, not theirs.
Let’s dig into this first piece first.
Even though our request or expectation seems very reasonable to us or logical or obvious, it’s still coming from our perspective, not theirs.
We’re seeing the situation in a different way and we have a different set of needs, desires, expectations, habits and feelings – all of which inform how we see the situation and how we expect them or anyone to respond.
You might be in the same book (talking about the same situation), but you’re on page 300 and they’re on page 3.
It’s very hard to connect when we’re not on the same page.
Telling isn’t teaching.
When you think about it, we want to teach out kids to respond as we would respond. To act as we would want them to act. What that looks like is unique to you, your child, and each situation. I can’t speak to what is an appropriate request or not, but actually, the process I share below to prompt wise decision-making helps you determine that.
What we usually do is use our words to tell them what to do or stop doing or to tell them to make good choices which is a shortcut reminder of “remember what I told you.”
When we do this, we’re only engaging a very small piece of their brain, and mostly it’s short term memory that gets forgotten. This is why it can seem like your message is going in one ear and out the other. There’s no place for the message to stick to.
When we’re telling them our expectation we have a lot of meaning behind what we say. There’s a reason for what we’re saying, there are feelings behind what we say, there are memories and experiences informing what we say.
Our expectation or perspective is fully integrated in us.
But when we just tell our kids what we want to them to know and do, they don’t have a chance to make sense of it in a meaningful way that helps them make an intentional choice in the future.
Unfortunately, they are creating stories around these repeated interactions, but it’s probably not one that supports your child’s wisdom or the quality of your relationship. I think the best way we can relate to this is to think about our own experience.
Just for a moment, think about your life outside of parenting. Perhaps you have a boss, or have had a boss in the past. Or, maybe you remember being in school or being a part of an organization or a community where there were rules and expectation put on you by someone else. How about your family-or-origin?
Are there people in your life who have an expectation about what a “good choice” would be for you to make?
As adults we start recognizing that a lot of these good choices are those obligations, those “shoulds” that we are working really hard to break free from so that we can find that very quiet voice inside of us that is our own. The one that we lost track of because the noise of all the good choices we’re supposed to make has been so loud for so long.
Let me know in the comments, how you relate to this.
Here’s a quick recap of what we’ve covered so far:
Our expectations come from our perspective, not theirs.
When we tell kids what to do from our perspective, they aren’t engaged in a way that helps them remember in a meaningful way that will help guide their future decisions.
Except, they might comply out of obligation or fear or some motivation outside of themselves, which does not contribute to the relationship you want to have with them (or the relationship they are building with themselves).
Cultivating Wise Decisions
This is where we begin to talk about cultivating our children’s capacity for wise decision-making.
My work for nearly 20 years has been based on this notion that wisdom can’t be told. The original statement was published in the Harvard Business Review back in 1940 by a professor named Charles Gragg. This was his way of making sense of something that so many others have said. Galileo is quoted with saying “We cannot teach people anything. We can only help them discover it within themselves.” And Socrates said “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”
The point is that simply telling people what you want them to know or do, doesn’t set them up to be able to apply that knowledge or skill in their lives. And that’s because the information given wasn’t integrated into their way of thinking. In other words, there is very little transfer of learning.
To cultivate this integration, or transfer of learning, we need them to be present and engaged through multiple senses or parts of their brain and body (e.g., engaging visual and emotional centers of the brain supports memory and recall).
We also want the new knowledge to be meaningful to them.
When this happens, it becomes a part of their decision making process instead of something they were supposed to remember to do. This ownership generates motivation or desire to take action in this direction rather than their previous “not-so-good” choice.
How in the world do we do this as parents?
The core of what is needed is an opportunity to engage their perspective, so that they can make sense of what is being asked of them. So that it has meaning for them. And so that it fits within their perspective.
In order to do this we need to understand their perspective and we need to help them understand their own perspective – because they may have never even thought about it. They also need a chance to be able to step back and look at their current perspective and choices and consider the impact of those choices on them, on you, on others.
Essentially, they need an engaging opportunity to expand their self-awareness, perspective-taking, and empathy.
While that’s happening for our child, we need to be able to see from their perspective so that we can help them bridge the gap between their perspective and choice and our perspective and choice. Remember, they’re on page 3 and we’re on page 300. Neither of those pages are working for us. So, what page does work right now, for both of us?
Just talking about this makes my head spin because it’s complex social-emotional development.
There are plenty of ways, but I have found that a lot of them require me to be different than the human I am. They require me to be more regulated than I am currently capable of being while really stressed or frustrated. I’m still working on this. I’m learning to mediate and breathe and separate my emotions from my thoughts. But, I’m still practicing, and usually under peaceful circumstances – not stressful conflict.
I need something that can help me help my kid to learn how to make wise choices for himself because I’m not a robot or a monk.
That’s why I find the Hourglass Problem solving chart to be such a lifesaver for me as a parent.
On the surface, this chart is just a simple piece of paper with an hourglass in the middle and a list of questions with space around the outside to write in.
But, these questions are specifically designed to do what socrates talks about, to help people think. They begin at the top of the hourglass where it’s nice and wide and there is room for you to speak form page 300 and for your child to speak from page 3. Then they help us notice and become more aware of specific things like our thoughts, actions, feelings, and motivations. Yours and theirs. Finally, the questions helps us step back and look at the specifics from a different angle, to gain perspective on them so we can consider the impact on each of us, our actual needs and desires, and our relationship.
As you go through this process together, it helps you both get into a more engaged space with your mind and body. So when you step back and look at the situation you can consider different perspectives.
This is core to empathy.
You see the situation from a different angle, which helps you find the page where you both can meet. Your page is going to be different than mine. It’s all very unique to you and to your child. But, the Hourglass Problem Solving chart helps you discover what that is.
It helps your child make sense of what you’re asking of them, and in the process it helps you both figure out what kind of expectation works for you both.
This leads you naturally to find a developmentally appropriate expectation.
The visual aspect of simply writing down these pieces of the conversation is incredibly powerful. I’ll do a future live conversation to get into the power of the visual. But for now, just know that it is helps you and your kid remember what you talked about. It helps your child remember their wise decision next time. It also leads you to shared language that you can use to prompt them back to this meaningful conversation instead of a general expectation, like “make a good choice” that doesn’t have any meaning for them. You can see my son speaking to all of this, in his own words, at the end of my post about problem-solving through a power struggle (it’s the challenge that prompted me to create this chart!).
Hourglass Problem Solving helps cultivate wise decisions-making in your child, and yourself.
It’s been a game changer for my family and I can’t wait to hear how it supports you.
