So much to do. So little time. But do you ever make your children choose? And could making them choose under the pressure of “not enough time for it all” backfire?
It’s easy to want to avoid making our kids choose between activities. We don’t want them to miss out. We don’t want to shortchange them the chance to start young in developing an ability.
Yet signing them up for every extracurricular we can squeeze in robs them of the skill of making tough decisions. Because if not now, then someday they will run into a situation where it is either/or. Not both. They will have to choose.
And unfortunately, if we wait until scarcity (of time, money, carpooling resources) forces a choice, we run the risk of our children making poorer decisions.
As a recent Psychology Today article notes, “a growing body of research is illuminating a surprising factor in poor decision-making: feeling that you don’t have enough.”
Participants in the studies cited performed worse (that is, their decisions had more negative consequences) when they were placed in a position of having too few resources. In our modern culture, with the profusion of options available, the issue in making wise choices isn’t as much that there is too much to select from, as it is that there is not enough time to do all that we would like. Our weekly free time is meager compared to all we (or our kids) may want to do.
So what can you do as a parent to overcome the apparent scarcity of time that threatens our children’s decision-making skills?
Present them with a much greater quantity of time: ask your children to think across the potential months and years of their entire life (instead of the crunched time of the present) and choose what they hope to learn, see, be, and do. Give them the project of making a life list or “bucket list.”
Not only will you be training them in decision making and prioritizing, you’ll also be providing them a wider context for short-term choices. When having to decide between baseball and swim team next summer, you can remind your child that this won’t be the only summer (scarcity), but that there are still x number of summers to come (wealth). You also have the opportunity to point out where each option fits under the priorities your child has listed on his bucket list and can help him adjust his long-term list, if necessary.
So if you want to train your child to make good decisions, set him up for greater success by going through the fun exercise of creating a bucket list. Buy a copy of Family Bucket Lists and begin using the age-appropriate questions to encourage your child to think through how they want to spend their free time today, next year, and well into the future. And since such a list is organic and is meant to flex as your child matures, you’ll be able to continue training him in decision making as he reviews and thinks through new sets of questions at various ages. As he matures he will be able to see how his bucket list has positively shaped his ability to select between the many options available in the short-term to build toward the life he’s hoping for in the long run.
Offer your children a shift in thinking about the time available to them by asking them to think in broad terms about life beyond this season or even this year before making a choice. That “wealth” could lead to better decision making all around.
