5 Ways to Improve Young Children’s Decision-Making

Decision making is a part of our daily life, we have many decisions to make every single day for example: Deciding what to eat for breakfast, what are we going to wear today, deciding what to eat for lunch, if we are going to hang out with friends, do we need to buy some things, or even if we should complete the chores for the day. So basically, we have to decide and make a decision about everything we do or do not do in our life and hence the skill of decision making is very important.

Before we get started let us understand why it is important to let children make decisions from an early age. Giving children the choices and the opportunities to make decisions, makes them feel empowered and in control of the things they do, it is a step forward towards growing up. One cannot plan everything for children and hence making good choices is a skill that every child will use for the rest of their lives.

Here are some great tips for parents to help improve decision making skills:

1. Problem-solving: is a way kids learn how to deal with challenges they encounter, instead of giving up on things easily or getting frustrated over repeated situations, kids learn to manage problem-solving skills and work on their emotions, it also helps them to think creatively to be able to persist until they find a solution. All these abilities naturally go hand-in-hand with the development and growth mindset for children.
2. Leadership: this skill helps children to have control of their lives, it gives them the ability to make things happen. Leadership instills confidence in a child and again helps to solve problems creatively. It teaches kids to work in a group or in a team, and work collaboratively with others. It gives children the opportunity to develop and be responsible for their own actions.
3. Logical reasoning: is essential to aid problem-solving skills, which is a stepping stone to success for kids and anyone else. Initiating the development of logical reasoning in children as early as possible is necessary because it improves brain activity, resulting in higher levels of cognitive skills and an increased capability to solve intellectual problems.
4. Intuition: also known as the sixth sense. This may be more important in a child’s life than many people may realize. Intuition helps to alert a child of danger, it provides guidance in making decisions and helps in solving problems. It enables youngsters to get to a solution quickly.
5. Teamwork: this improves a child’s ability to communicate with others, it increases their social skills and self-confidence, when a kid is a part of a team it helps them to develop better abilities and become happier adults as they grow because they tend to get an extended support system. Teamwork also teaches kids other important skills and life lessons.

The following are 5 practical tips for parents on how to improve decision making skills for kids:

1. Encourage goal setting. In doing so you will prepare your child for life’s tough decisions to come in the future.
2. Teaching kids to set smart goals, when you teach kids to do so from a very young age, it helps to instil self-awareness and confidence in children.
3. Include children in the budgeting decisions. When you make children a part of the budget and expenses for the house, they learn one of life’s greatest lessons, which is to respect what they have and make the wisest decisions going forward.
4. Give children choices to make. Letting children make independent choices from a young age makes them more self-reliant and responsible for their own actions.
5. Practice age-appropriate decision-making skills. Since we allow kids to make choices for themselves it is necessary for us as parents and elders to ensure children are a part of constant conversations that are appropriate to their age.

To improve decision making it is crucial that we talk to kids with respect so that they learn to do the same with others. It is necessary to affirm that a child’s idea and their thoughts are genuinely valued, this process is the key to engage children in decision-making. It is mandatory to seek out and have these conversations with children so that they grow with these skills embedded in them. All of this mentioned above will help kids to be able to participate in increasingly complex decision-making in their life.

Decision making as said earlier should come naturally but we must learn to perfect this skill because it is known to be one of the toughest processes of making choices. One must be able to identify a problem by gathering information and assessing alternative resolutions to come to a decent decision.