Asking a child, "What do you want to wear today?" is so open-ended a question that it may invite a child to make a choice that is clearly inappropriate and has to be overruled.

Instead, it may be more helpful to offer limited choices such as, "Would you like to wear your red sweater or your blue one, your brown pants or your green ones?" That way, a child is presented with realistic alternatives where there is no question of "right" or "wrong." When parents help their children learn that there are such things as limited realistic choices, they're also giving them an approach to choice-making that will be valuable throughout life.

Choices Give a Child Some Control

By avoiding situations that confront a child with right-wrong decision making, parents can help their children learn to make choices with confidence and with the knowledge that although some choices will work out better than others, there will always be new ones to make.

But why not avoid all these problems by making our own, grown-up decisions for our children until they're grown-up enough to make them for themselves? For some parents, that might seem the easier path to take. But a child is more likely to become a realistic and optimistic choice-making adult having grown through manageable choices offered by loving caregivers. We all have a deep-seated need to feel we have some control over what happens in our lives.

Confidence from Making Choices

Part of feeling good about ourselves is feeling that we have the chance to do what we want to do and to be what we want to be. As we grow older, we'll find out more about what's realistic for us and what isn't.

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