Households are typically not democracies. Parents are despots, tyrants, or, at best, benevolent dictators. And so it goes. The world is run by adults.
But, then, where’s the line? When do kids learn to make choices? For fear of being lambasted on Gawker as one of those permissive Park Slope moms, I say offering up limited choices early is best. Practice makes perfect, and kids need to learn their own mind while still under the watchful eye of parents.
Recently, my baby (at 9, he is still that to me,) went to get glasses. The salesgirl rifled through the drawers pulling out pair after pair, metal and plastic, dark and serious, bright and silly, and somewhere in between.
“Which ones do you like?” she asked him.
He tried them on and stared at his newly framed eyes in the mirror.
Squinting through the glass, since it didn’t yet carry his prescription, he moved his mouth from side to side.
“Maybe…” he said of one pair I didn’t particularly like.
“Put them in the pile,” she said.
The “maybe” pile grew. Of course, I threw in my two cents.
“Love those. I can still see your face,” or “No. Way too serious.”
Oscar seemed to listen to me but he knew what he thought and wasn’t afraid to say. He knew, in the end, it was his decision. And it was. The new gun-metal frames with funky orange at the sides are on order. I preferred another pair, but so be it. I don’t have to wear them.
It saves a lot of arguments in our house that the kids get to decide at least some of their fate. Recently, my eldest said something about how I’d been the one to pick his middle school, MS 447. He loves it, so it wouldn’t have been a fight necessarily if I’d actually been the one to decide. But I’m positive I let him make the choice.
“No,” I said. “I distinctly did not. I let you decide.”
He can add this well-made choice to a long list of others, including his decision to start writing his metaphorical poem days before it is due, and his decision to leave a playdate early to go help kids learn chess.
“I am so proud of you, for making such good choices,” I tell him often. “I’m so impressed.”
And I am. I’m impressed with how young it is that children are capable of making good choices on their own if we despots get off our thrones and let them, if we guide them to be their own best guide.
Of course, sometimes it backfires. There are days when Oscar chooses to not bring a jacket despite my suggestion, and he hugs his little arms around himself, frigid in the cold. Or when his stomach hurts from the $10 worth of loose candy he consumed a fair bit of in one sitting. Eli might choose fun over homework, and be forced to cram days worth of work into one long night. Or not eat breakfast and regret it in the long hours before lunch.
But I am happy to say they can’t blame me, and so they might learn something about what they might want to do differently next time.
That’s life. There are ramifications to choices, and the sooner we let our kids figure them out, the better.
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