Owning Decisions

What does it even mean to own your decisions? Owning your decision is really two-fold. First you must be able to make a decision. Indecisiveness comes from fear or doubt about making the wrong decision. Second, one must then accept the consequences, good or bad, of the decision that was made.

Everyone in my own household suffers from indecisiveness. I'm not sure if this is due to a lack of self-confidence or just having too many choices. Most of the time this occurs when the stakes are low such as what we will eat for dinner. Making choices happens all day long and can me straining on the brain to constantly be deciding from so many different avenues. It may also be that we want two of the opposite things. What matters most, is just making that decision and living with it.

Making decisions is an important process in children growing up. When they are younger, you can give them choices of what clothes to wear, what snack to eat, and what toys they want to play with. As they get older, they must choose their friends, decide how much they need to study, and what they need to do to contribute to the household. When all decisions are made for a child, it can hold them back from practicing making good decisions and keep them from becoming independent.

Six ways to Teach decision making:

  1. Help your child determine what it is they want. Set goals to achieve that are realistic, achievable, and measurable. Having your child state that they will study more does not provide a specific goal. It needs to be more precise such as how they will study, when they will study, and where they will study.

  2. To help your child, ask them questions to get them to be more specific. Then offer advice if they are willing to take it. Let them be aware, that they are ultimately responsible for making the decision and owning up to the consequences of that decision.

  3. Help them to listen to their intuition or their gut. Ask them what the best decision would be or the right thing to do for them. Practicing this helps them to think before they act.

  4. It's important that your child has the right frame of mind to make a decision. If your child has not had proper sleep, food, or mental stamina, it may not be the right time to be making difficult decisions.

  5. Your child will need to learn to trust themselves. This mean they need to have the self-confidence and encouraging words to believe in themselves and be BRAVE enough to feel like they know how to make a decision.

  6. Allowing your child to practice making decisions is the best method. Allow them to have failures and make wrong decisions. This does not mean to belittle them or tell them they don't know what they are doing. It is always about mindset and asking them questions so they can learn for themselves the consequences of their mistakes.