When is your child old enough to make decisions on her own? At restaurants, it’s not uncommon to see a parent asking a very young child to decide what she wants to eat. What amazes me more, is when I see parents asking their child what they want to eat for dinner at home. I sometimes wonder how these mothers have the time and money to operate a free restaurant out of their home with children as customers. I very much appreciate the parenting notion that children should be given the opportunity to make decisions and not have everything dictated to them (such as the authoritarian parenting style of the past). However, there is a lot of security in having a parent who is gracefully in control and doesn’t expect their child to make decisions before they are ready.
Think about how much stress decision-making causes us as adults. Early childhood should be as stress-free as possible. Ideally, a rhythmic flow operates throughout the young child’s day — from waking up, to getting dressed, eating breakfast, and so on. If this flow is constantly punctuated with, “Which shirt do you want to wear today?” or “What do you want for breakfast?” or other such decisions, that beautiful, rhythmical flow is lost. This can lead to behavioral issues. If the child perceives that the parent isn’t wise enough to pick out clothing or decide what’s for breakfast, how can the parent be trusted with bigger decisions?Imperceptibly, the child loses respect for the parent, and can begin to question the parent’s every move, becoming defiant. This can become a negative loop, where the parent asks even more decisions of the child to avoid getting in a battle of the wills over simple decisions. There are other emotional and behavioral implications for children when they are asked to be decisions-makers at too young an age. They can develop nervous tendencies, become over-active, or dis-attentive.
I’m not suggesting parents be domineering. But consider that young children are very different than adults. As adults, we don’t want someone deciding what our every move is, but for a child there is security in predictability and strong parenting. Ideally, when our children are babies (and therefore, can’t communicate their desires with words), we can sense when they need to eat, take a bath, or go to sleep. Even after our children have words, they still depend on the parent to have that sixth sense — knowing what the child needs before the child himself knows. That’s the ultimate in love and security.
It makes sense for children to begin making decisons when they are old enough to learn from mistakes. Before the age of seven, however, the child has a limited capacity to learn from his own poor judgement.  Reliable cause-and-effect reasoning develops later on. By seven, the child is ready to start making a few decisions on his own. By nine, even more so…and by age 12, he’s capable of understanding the hard lessons from the natural consequences of poor decisions.   Adulthood –where the privilege to make decisions comes with other responsibilities– will come soon enough. For now, allowing your young child to bask in the security of your wise parenting is a privilege he is fortunate to have.
