Six ways to make your children grow up confident decision-makers
An occasion as simple as spending a bit of pocket money on a stuffed toy is a chance to explore with a child how to make good and quick decisions and better understand themselves
On every holiday we allow our daughters to pick out a souvenir. On a recent trip, our six-year-old immediately homed in on a small stuffed cat, but her 10-year-old sister pointed out that we were only in the first shop. She reluctantly agreed to keep looking.
Over the next hour, however, she continued to solicit our opinion on the cat. We told her it was her decision, but she refused to make it.
Why emotional intelligence outranks IQ for a successful life
That US$9 stuffed kitty launched me on a mission to help my daughter develop confidence in her own opinions.
I asked Katie Hurley, a California-based child and adolescent psychotherapist and author, whether my daughter’s tendency to rely heavily on input from others was a bad thing. Was it a symptom of anxiety? Or was it proof that she is destined to put the opinions of others before her own?
“For parents, the fear is, ‘Is my kid paralysed with anxiety, and am I enabling that by always providing the committee to help make the choice?’ ” Hurley says. But this kind of crowdsourcing is “probably a function more of personality type”.