The Self-Driven Child Read online

  As parents, we often make decisions for our children that seem perfectly reasonable, like signing them up for soccer instead of drama, only to kick ourselves later. The same is true in our own lives. Most of us work too much, eat too much, sleep too little, make bad investments, and find ourselves in careers that do not go as planned. Remember to be humble. Sometimes you just don’t know what’s right.

  In the first few months of his freshman year in college, Ned wanted to withdraw for a year. His parents, concerned that he wouldn’t return, rejected the idea. He muddled his way through freshman year and when he found himself in the same funk sophomore year, he again tried to withdraw for the year. This time, his parents let him do it. That year off gave Ned a chance to step off the conveyor belt. It gave him a chance to decompress and think about what he really wanted to do. He didn’t find all the answers, but he did return to college in a better place. It was during that second attempt at sophomore year that he joined an a cappella group, and he sings with several of its members to this day. Most important, in his junior year Ned started dating Vanessa, who is now his wife, and she is the one who turned him on to tutoring. Without that year off, he wouldn’t be writing this book right now, and he wouldn’t have the amazing kids he has. It’s all very It’s a Wonderful Life, but that movie is a classic for a reason. Serendipity is the stuff of life. All that parental planning isn’t always for the better.

  5. Kids are capable. Really.

  When Bill first started to work as a neuropsychologist in 1985, it was common for students to repeat kindergarten or first grade. What struck him was how often he’d work with college students who, in response to being asked what year they were in school, replied, “I’m a sophomore in college. I should be a junior but my parents made me repeat first grade.” These kids still carried an enormous grudge because a decision had been made about their lives over which they’d had no control—when they were six or seven. Eventually, although he was nervous about it at first, Bill started to advise parents of younger children to bring their child into the decision-making process. He suggested that they say something like, “No one is going to make you repeat first grade. It’s going to be your call, but we want to think through the pluses and minuses of going on to second grade so that you have the information you need to make a good decision.” What Bill found was that even young kids were consistently able to make a decision that was at least as good as the one adults might make for them. He also saw that when faced with a problem, a kid will often come up with a solution that neither parent had thought of. Several kids eventually said things like, “I’m not ready for second grade, and if kids tease me about repeating I’ll just ignore them.” Or, “I think I can do it. Can I have a tutor, though, to help me if the work is too hard?”

  Over thirty years ago, a fascinating study looked at the decision-making abilities of kids from ages nine to twenty-one.3 The study asked the participants how they would handle a really sensitive situation: a boy who refused to talk to family members or come out of his room for several weeks. Turns out, fourteen-year-olds made decisions that were very similar to those of eighteen-year-olds and twenty-one-year-olds. And those decisions resembled the recommendation made by most experts (which was that the boy get outpatient psychotherapy). Interestingly, half of the nine-year-olds chose that option, too. Overall, the fourteen-, eighteen-, and twenty-one-year-olds got virtually identical scores on decision making, and the nine-year-olds’ scores were only slightly lower. We think this shows not only that nine-year-olds are capable decision makers, but also that when they come up short it’s because of lack of knowledge, not necessarily judgment.

  Robert Epstein, the former editor of Psychology Today, has written extensively about the power and potential of adolescence. Along with his colleague Diane Dumas, he developed a “test of adultness,” which asks questions about love, leadership, interpersonal skills, and handling responsibility. He found that teens generally perform as well on this test as adults do.4 (For the record, we both passed.) Epstein argues that here in America we infantilize adolescents, in part by acting as if they aren’t capable of making responsible decisions. While we can’t entirely stop teenagers from making impulsive choices, we can entrust them to make informed decisions about things that are important to them. Research has found that by the time kids are fourteen or fifteen, they generally have adult-level ability to make rational decisions. In fact, most cognitive processes reach adult levels by midadolescence.5

  6. Good decision making requires emotional intelligence. Kids need to learn what matters to them.

  Good decisions are informed by knowledge, but not just that. In the Pixar movie Inside Out, the characters Joy, Anger, Sadness, Disgust, and Fear share the control panel in a little girl’s brain. The movie reflects a basic scientific truth: emotions play a crucial role in guiding our thinking, our decision making, and our behavior. It is impossible to evaluate whether something is good or bad, right or wrong, beneficial or harmful, without the guidance of our emotions. People whose emotional brain centers are damaged can’t make simple decisions like whether to go out to dinner, because they don’t know what they want.6

  We want kids to pay attention to their emotions. That is not the same as saying that we want them to act impulsively and emotionally. If you’re angry, that’s not a good time to make a decision. What we’re talking about is informed decision making. They have to be able to access feelings such as envy, guilt, compassion, and admiration in order to consider other people’s needs and wants. They also have to know what to make of anger, jealousy, resentment, and hatred when they feel it.

  How children feel about things and what they want are important components in their decision-making process—as important as the hard facts. However much we may want to override our kids’ negative emotions, we can’t. If a child is afraid after seeing a frightening movie, we can help her see that it is just a movie, but her response is real and will inform her readiness to watch a scary movie again. If a child is angry and feels betrayed, we can help her process her pain and learn to take a step back and consider the person she wants to be before retaliating. We want kids to practice tuning in to their own emotions, and asking, What’s right for me?

  A Sense of Control in Action

  Encouraging your child to make informed decisions hinges on your being behind them and offering guidance. It means saying something like, “I trust you to make a good decision, and this will ultimately be your call, but I want to be sure you make the best decision possible, so I’d like to help you think through the pros and cons of either option. I also want you to talk to people who have more experience and to get their feedback. Finally, I think it’s important that we talk together about a possible Plan B if your decision doesn’t go the way you want.”

  There are many messages in this “speech.” You are letting your child know, first and foremost, that you trust him. You are making it clear that you are present and that you will support him. You are helping him to think through what kinds of information he needs to make a good decision. And you are helping to gird him against setback, framing a misstep not as a failure but as a signal that it’s time to come up with another plan.

  Obviously, you can’t use this exact speech at every age. But its basic principles can be marshaled even with very young children. Here are some examples of what “It’s your call” looks like through the ages:

  Toddlers: Offer to let them choose between two outfits. Or, if they are up to the challenge, let them dress themselves, offering your help but not forcing it on them. It may take them ages to put on their pants, and they may grapple with the frustration of not being able to do it correctly or easily. But they are learning to master important skills. You can also offer them agency within a larger framework. “Would you like to play with blocks or to paint?”

  Preschoolers: Good preschool teachers have long known that one of the most important things they can offer children is an opportunity to
make decisions about how to spend their time and what is important to them. There’s a reason that “free choice time” is an important staple of the preschool world.

  Parents of preschoolers can encourage dramatic play rather than video games or adult-organized activities such as sports. When children play in unstructured ways, they are making autonomous decisions about how to spend their time. They ask questions like, Should I make this cardboard box into a train or a castle? Should I dress up that doll or this one? Should I build a Lego airplane or a Lego vet clinic? Should I play dress-up or should I color?

  When children are young, much of the work is demonstrating to them that they do have control. One wise friend of ours who was a parent educator for twenty years advises giving calendars to preschool-age children and writing down all the important events in their life, in part because it helps children understand the passage of time better, and how their days will unfold. We can’t overstate the importance of the calendar tool in helping kids feel in control of their day. Have them cross off days of the week as you come to them. Spend time going over the schedule for the day, giving them choice in that schedule wherever possible. This communication expresses respect—they see that they are not just a tagalong to your day and your plans, and they understand what is going to happen, when, and why. As they get older, children will then start to write in important things for themselves, which further helps them develop their sense of control.

  Elementary schoolers: As children get older, you can start to offer them more choices about what activities to participate in, what foods to eat to stay healthy, and what schedule would work for getting enough sleep. “It’s your call” starts to make more sense to them. You might say something like, “I understand you really want to go to the movie opening tonight, and so do I. I will let you make the decision, but first let’s think through the pros and cons. Because it’s opening night, it’s likely that the line will be very long, so we’ll have to get there early and wait. It’s cold outside, so you might be really cold while we wait. But to see the movie on its opening night with everyone else who is really excited about it would be fun.” Let’s say that the child decides to go to see the movie. Then you might say, “Great. Let’s also think about a Plan B in case it doesn’t work out the way we want it to. If you get tired in line or if there are no good seats available, how do you think we should handle that?”

  A movie outing is a pretty innocuous proposition either way, but elementary-aged kids can also make good decisions when the stakes are higher. Bill recently met with the parents of an eleven-year-old boy with a learning disability. Andy’s parents thought it was a good idea for him to work with a tutor through the summer. Andy thought not so much. Bill suggested that they offer to help Andy make an informed decision about whether to do it. They could explain to him that, if he didn’t fight the tutoring and committed himself to it, it could change his brain in a way that would make reading and writing easier for him. Andy could remind himself that the tutoring would only take about 2 or 3 hours in a 168-hour week—there would still be plenty of time to have fun and recover from the stress of the school year. Those were the pros. But they should also acknowledge the cons. So Bill suggested they explain to Andy the benefits of downtime, of taking a break from school altogether and letting the brain develop without any stress at all.

  Finally, the parents could say, “When I think about the pros and cons, I think it’s a tough call. It could go either way. Ultimately, nobody knows what the right thing to do is in this situation better than you do. So I want you to decide, and I’m confident that you’ll make a good decision and that you’ll learn from whatever decision you make.” The parents took Bill’s advice, and Andy chose to forgo tutoring. It wasn’t what the parents would have chosen, but it also wasn’t crazy. They followed through with their promise that it was his call.

  Let’s look at what it might have looked like if Andy’s parents hadn’t given him the choice and had forced him to get a tutor:

  Benefit: It’s possible that a great tutor would light a fire under Andy and he’d be grateful later that his parents had insisted on tutoring. Or if Andy got into it and worked hard, we might have seen the pace of his academic development—and his confidence—improve slightly over the six or eight weeks of tutoring. More likely, Andy would do the sessions and maybe get a little bit (but not much) out of them because kids benefit very little from academic help they resist and don’t feel they need or want.

  Cost: Strain in the parent-child relationship would come from trying to force the child to do something he doesn’t want to do. There would be negative consequences from essentially telling Andy, “I know better than you do. Your opinion doesn’t matter.” Andy would miss out on the empowerment that comes from really having to think about what’s best for his future, and the maturation that would come from doing so. His parents would lose out on Andy’s turning to them for advice.

  Middle schoolers: In the greater Washington, DC, area where we live, one of the most important decisions parents make for their kids is about where to send them to school. Over the years, dozens of parents have come to Bill with the question, “Where is the best place for my child to go to school?” He has always responded by saying, “In my opinion, a better question is, ‘How can we help your child figure out the best place for him to go to school?’”

  Bill worked with a boy named Max whose struggle with learning disabilities was severe enough that from first through eighth grade he needed a school especially designed for students like him. Like many children who attend small schools during childhood, Max was eager to “bust out” of his small, supportive school and go to a larger high school with a wider range of social options. He also wanted to prove to himself that he no longer needed a school for kids with learning disabilities. Max’s parents were understandably anxious about the possibility of his going to a less supportive school, and they asked Bill how they could help Max see that it would be in his best interest to stay put. Bill recommended to Max’s parents that they tell him he would ultimately make the decision himself and that they would do everything possible to help him make a good decision, including offering their best advice.

  Bill met with Max and reviewed the two or three private school options Bill thought might be within Max’s reach. He also shared with him the conversations he’d had with a school psychologist about the kinds of support Max might expect if he were to enter a public high school. Max took this decision-making process very seriously. He asked his parents, the admissions directors at the other private schools, and Bill thoughtful questions about what his experience might be like if he were to change schools. At the end of the process, Max came to the conclusion that he needed the academic support that was offered at his old school and decided to stay there. He then went on to have a successful (and happy) high school career during which his confidence soared. He’s now knocking it out of the park in his third year of college and is planning on going to graduate school. In this instance, he came around to his parents’ viewpoint—but he did so on his own steam. Had he been forced to go back to his old school against his will, we suspect he would have continued to believe that he didn’t need to be there and would have resented his parents for making him stay.

  High schoolers: “It’s your call” is hard for a lot of parents of high schoolers. Teenagers are known for taking outsize risks and for being particularly vulnerable to peer pressure. For anyone who remembers driving, dating, and the party antics of high school, it’s not any different today. But the good news is, current research on adolescent brain development suggests that teenagers do not think that they’re immortal. They’re very aware of the risks entailed by their behavior. It is true that they put stronger emphasis on the possible positive outcomes of an action than the potential risks. Experts call this hyperrationality.7 When engaging in collaborative problem solving with teenagers, know that they have this bias and put a special focus on helping them to really th
ink through the possible downsides. If they’re not having it—if they’re seemingly put out by your collaborative problem-solving approach, suggest going back to a more autocratic system of consequences. “Okay,” you might say, “we don’t need to work through this together. You can just lose the car for three days as a consequence.” We bet you anything they’ll concede to talk it through instead.

  Teenagers are the closest to legal age, and they are the ones who most need to hear this message: “I have confidence in your ability to make informed decisions about your own life and to learn from your mistakes.” That doesn’t mean they won’t make mistakes—they will. But with every mistake, they’ll develop better instincts and self-awareness, especially if you help them process what went wrong without blaming or saying, “I told you so.”

  And beyond: Parenting doesn’t stop the moment a child turns eighteen. Watching the choices our kids make in college and during young adulthood can be excruciating. A few years ago Bill was talking with one of his best friends, Kathryn, about her son, Jeremy, who was a college freshman. Jeremy had developed a relationship with a girl who eventually became controlling and abusive. Kathryn shared the various ways she had tried to get Jeremy to leave this girl, and sought Bill’s advice about what else she might try. Bill said, “I think it’s disrespectful to give Jeremy the message that you think he’s incapable of resolving this situation himself and needs his mom to step in.” Kathryn is one of the kindest people on the planet, and she was mortified to think that she may have been treating her son disrespectfully by trying to get him to break up with this girl (to whom he clung tighter because no one likes to feel coerced). They talked about ways of communicating confidence in Jeremy’s ability to figure this out.