Helping kids make decisions: the forced choice approach

May 7, 2018 | Nurture

By guest blogger Tara Miller

Often in life, we are faced with choices between two—or more—good options, but we don’t have the time, energy or money to do all of them. We have to choose. It’s especially difficult to choose when both options seem quite good.

When the person making the choice is a child or teenager, it can be particularly tempting to simply tell them what you think they should choose. After all, you have experience and insight that they don’t. However, if you want them to truly commit to their own decision, they’ll need to take ownership of it themselves.

The “forced choice” approach

Here’s a coaching-based exercise you can use called the “forced choice” approach. In this case, I used it with my 18-year-old daughter who was choosing a college this spring, but it could be applied to any situation where there’s a choice to be made between options.

Knock-out factors

My daughter had first narrowed down her choices using some “knock-out factors.” These are criteria that would make her decide against a school outright. For a serious student athlete, a knock-out factor might be a school not having a good basketball team. My daughter had two knock-out factors: she wanted a school that was out-of-state and she wanted one where the campus felt like a positive fit on an intuitive level. One school looked perfect for her on paper, but when she went to visit it failed the knock-out test. It quickly fell off her list and she didn’t apply there.

After the narrowing process, she was left with two colleges. Both of them seemed to be equally good choices, she had been accepted to both, and she could picture herself attending either school rather easily. So how should she make this decision?

Think through the reasons

I started by asking the opening question: “What are you seeking to accomplish by going to college?” This question was designed to help her think through her reasons for going at all and to consider what she most wanted from the experience. She responded that she wanted to get a degree so she could go on to graduate school; she wanted the opportunity to make friends and live away on her own, and she wanted what she called, “the college experience.”

Criteria to evaluate

Then I asked her, given that processing, what criteria she wanted to use for evaluating a college. Here are the options she generated in no particular order:

good opportunities to make friends
professors who are engaged and available
good preparation for graduate school
good financial package/pricing
opportunities for fun off campus
good study abroad program
an acapella group

Compare options: Which is more important?

Then came the forced choice part. I asked her to compare each option with each other option and ask, “Which is more important?” No ties or passing, and sometimes she found the choices very difficult, such as when I asked, “Which is more important—a good financial package or a good study abroad program?” Whichever option she deemed more important got a tally mark, which created rankings.

So she made 21 choices– comparing each item with each other item. Here are the rankings she came up with. The tally marks at the end of each item reflect how many times that item was chosen over other items, resulting in a weighting of how important each item was to her.

good financial package/pricing (6)
good study abroad program (5)
good opportunities to make friends (3)
professors who are engaged an available (3)
good preparation for graduate school (3)
opportunities for off-campus fun (1)
acapella group (0)

Some takeaways

The financial package held a lot of weight for her as she was concerned about going into debt. She really, really wants to study abroad– even more so than she had thought. An acapella group is just a nice-to-have, not an essential. Off-campus fun doesn’t mean as much to her as opportunities to make friends on campus.

She can now use these criteria—weighted by importance—in order to decide between colleges. And if two schools come out basically the same even when compared, there’s always the coin flip test: toss a coin in the air, call it, and when it lands gauge your level of disappointment or excitement.

What are some choices the kids in your life are currently facing? How might you use this exercise to help them make decisions that are most in line with what they value?

Tweetable: Is your son or daughter processing an important decision? One mom shares a coaching exercise she used that helped her daughter choose which university to attend. Click to Tweet

Deciding which choice to try builds a child’s willpower

Jun 16, 2016 | Direction

choice We’re at the midway point of the C.H.O.O.S.E tool, which builds willpower and gives children a sound decision-making process they can carry throughout their lifetime.

C = Claim the problem
H = How many choices can I find?
O = Own and follow your moral compass
O = One choice to try

Deciding what to do–one choice to TRY

This is the point at which the child settles on one good option to TRY in the situation.

After working through the previous steps of the C.H.O.O.S.E. tool, the only options on the child’s list are the wise ones. Sometimes the best option emerges very quickly, and other times it takes a while and the child may have to try a few different options before one works.

At times, children may not want to try any of their options. Why not?

Fear of failure
Need for approval from parents or others (e.g. people-pleasing)
Disconnection from their source of guidance

For example, if you believe they are afraid to fail, see if they want to revisit the brainstorming process until the child convinces himself he does indeed have enough information to make a choice.

Maybe the child can’t decide because she wants to choose an option she thinks will not please you. You can assure her you see her point of view and you are supportive of her choice no matter what the outcome.

Remember, the list contains only positive choices in the sense that unsafe choices or those with consequences that can’t be undone have already been deleted. Furthermore, you will be there to help the kids identify what they are learning from the choice and what they might want to do differently next time. This builds willpower.

Getting it right is not the point.

Rather, by taking time with the child to carefully think about each possibility, children can be increasingly confident of making the best choice they can–and move on.

The goal is the child’s growth in the ability to make a good choice based on careful evaluation of all the options.

Tweetable:

When a child is confused about making an important choice, take a closer look at these 3 hindrances. Click to Tweet
Here’s some practical guidance when a child procrastinates in making a decision. Click to Tweet

Here’s a fun decision-making process for kids

May 16, 2016 | Direction

donuts Will I get up now or hit the snooze button one more time (and probably be late for work)? Will I stop the kids from fighting now or wait until they draw blood? Will I take time to eat breakfast or eat a donut at coffee break (and feel guilty about the calories the rest of the day)? A friend just called to tell me my child beat up his child after school today. How will I deal with my child?

We all have our own way of dealing with choices.

Often our dilemma is how to make the “best” choice. How do I know something is not going to be a bad choice?

In this series we will discover a decision-making process we can use with the important children in our lives.

Through their small and weighty decisions, they will develop their own style. If the end result is their growth, we have done well.

Examples of growth results would be to….

Learn something new that increases the child’s ability to advance the common good
Heal relationships, bringing out greater cooperation and harmony
Strengthen character traits like integrity or patience

Unwise choices are often the ones we end up wishing we hadn’t made.

We can think of examples of these choices in our lives, our political, religious, business leaders’ lives and our children’s lives. We tend to make these choices….

for short-term pleasure
to look out only for our own interests
to relieve emotional pain or stress
without thought for the consequences

With so many variables in our lives, making a good choice may seem, at times, an overwhelming task.

Maybe that’s why so many people try to turn to God for guidance: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”

4 preparation questions for adults before we guide children

Before we begin guiding children, we can first take a deeper look at our own decision-making processes. Use the questions below to think through your own personal history.

Which of the following best represents your decision-making style at the present time? Impulsive, logical, avoidance, emotional, imagining the worst, victim of circumstances/people, others:_______, _______.
What decision can you remember making as a child that changed the course of your life?
As an adult, what’s a decision you made that hurt you? Helped you? Greatly affected someone else?
Describe a decision you are facing today that is of concern to you.

Stay tuned for the rest of this series as we look at how to teach children good decision-making processes, one part at a time.

(My friend Linda Sibley designed the CHOOSE tool and she is excited I’m sharing it here. This entry is part of a series.)

Tweetable:

Unwise choices are often the ones we end up wishing we hadn’t made. Guide kids toward better choices. Click to Tweet
Do you know kids who have trouble making decisions? Good, wise decisions? Break it down for them here. Click to Tweet