Taking a step back, teaching dd to make her own decisions

amother

Sun, Jan 14 2024, 10:54 am

My preteen dd has trouble making decisions. I could blame it on her anxious personality, but I blame myself in giving too much direction, Not letting her think. Voicing my approval or disapproval to often.

A while ago we got a family filtered flip phone she came over to me discouraged that she can't figure out how to add contacts, she tried herself first. So I showed it to her. Then she asked if she could add everyone in her class to her contacts so I told her no that's too many. In my head I'm thinking was I suppose to answer that way or tell her make your own decisions. Or what do you think. What will probably happen is if she adds all the contacts in the sibling she shares the phone with will get mad. Then she will respond mom told me I can do whatever I want. Then sibling will come over to me annoyed then I will tell them to figure it out amongst themselves and they wouldn't be able to. So instead I say just the ones you will be calling frequently. She seems to need alot of feedback. She comes to me all the time with positive things she did. Whe. She has good ideas should I give or not give back positive feedback?

When should I guide my children and when di I let them make their own decisions?

mushkamothers

Sun, Jan 14 2024, 11:09 am

You can guide her through the thinking process. Instead of just informing her of the bottom line decision

Why do you want to add all the contacts? Do you anticipate calling every single girl in your class? Remember this is a shared phone, what do you think your siblings might think if it's full of your friends? Can you think of a solution so they don't get annoyed?

(It could have also been that she saves contacts under name like dina friend Sara, dina friend chaya, so it's all alphabetical or under a number like 2 chaya, 2 sara where 2=dd so the siblings can easily scroll past)

You can also encourage her to ask other people for help. Ask your siblings how to add a contact. Hmmm you know, I don't share the phone with you, why don't you discuss with siblings about how many contacts to add?

To your last point, you let them make their own decisions when the end result literally doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how many contacts she adds. She can fight it out with her siblings later. It doesn't matter what she chooses to wear today, eat, which art project to make and how. These are all small everyday decisions that build the decision making muscle.

When there's a social dilemma, where to go for camp, whether to prioritize something or not, then you can step in and lend your higher order thinking skills by modeling or walking her through them so you teach her how to think.

imasinger

Sun, Jan 14 2024, 11:16 am

mushkamothers wrote:

Beautifully said!

amother

Sun, Jan 14 2024, 11:54 am

Chayalle wrote:

Let's say she added all her contacts, and the sibling gets annoyed. That's another place you don't need to get involved. I don't get involved in all of my girls' arguments, etc.....they can work it out themselves. It's prep for life.

It's a family phone. Meaning all the sibling use it but only one other pre-teen sibling also adds contact and shes more organized. Won't want every contact in it. She's looking at it like I'm in charge but really other preteen dd will get annoyed. A third younger daughter told my dd that if she puts in her whole class-list she wants mom to do hers too. She doesn't want the phone clogged either but feels if it clogged anyhow I might as well add mine also. I think deep down dd knows it's not the right. But it's convenient for her

amother

Sun, Jan 14 2024, 12:05 pm

Thank you mushka mothers that good advice. What do I do when she doesn't want to approach the other person because she thinks her mother knows best. Like why cant I go directly to you. I send her to other people when I think they know better. But I feel she need to make her own decision and not take mone or her friends decision. Many times she'll tell me she thought it was a good decision buy since she knows I always have her best interest in mind, she want to run it by me.