Choices for Empowerment
Friends, welcome back! Using the blog on limit setting from last week as a jumping off point, we are going to spend the next two weeks exploring another handy discipline strategy - choice-giving! Now, as with limit-setting, this is not my brainchild. Rather, it comes from the Child Parent Relationship Therapy curriculum as created by Drs. Garry Landreth and Sue Bratton of the UNT Center for Play Therapy, which I use frequently in practice and love.
Before we jump in, I want to preface this work by saying that this is just ONE way of doing things. It happens to be a strategy that is evidence-based and that I have found to be really effective, however, if you are using discipline or behavior management strategies that work better for your family, great! Choice-giving doesn’t have to be the end-all strategy for you. This is a tool that can be used in tandem with lots of other things, be it a reward chart or something else.
Next week we are going to get into how to use choice-giving to enforce rules and provide consequences for negative behaviors, so stay tuned for that. But this week, we are going to talk about using choice-giving to promote self-esteem and empowerment (and to head off tantrums!).
The thing about being a child is that you just don’t get many opportunities to decide things for yourself, especially as a younger child. In the playroom, I constantly see children playing about themes of power and control, mainly because they have so little of either in the real world. Providing children with age-appropriate choices and autonomy when possible will build empowerment, give opportunities and practice with decision-making and problem-solving, and will ultimately reduce power struggles.
There are a few important guidelines when providing choices in this way:
Choices should be age-appropriate. Too many choices or choices that are too complicated for a small child will be overwhelming. Conversely, choices need to be scaled up in complexity for older children and teens, so they don’t feel patronized. You might let your three year old choose between having carrots or an apple for snack, whereas for an older child, you might sit down together and weigh options to discuss which sport they’d like to try.
Choices should be actually acceptable to you and to your child. This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how often parents paint themselves into a corner by offering a choice that they aren’t actually okay with, in the hopes that the child will select the alternative. Guess which choice the child usually picks in those scenarios? So, make sure when you are giving choices you are equally satisfied with whichever outcome occurs. It’s also important to make sure the choices you give are actually choices your child cares about, or it won’t be as effective; if you give your child a choice between wearing the pink shirt and the red shirt to school, knowing that they hate the red shirt, the choice isn’t going to have the same effect.
Approach the choice with responsive empathy, rather than reactive emotion. Your tone should be calm and empathic, and should remain that way throughout the conversation. If your child becomes escalated and you escalate right along with them, nobody wins.
Sometimes a refusal to choose is a way to test limits. If your child refuses to make a choice, you can let them know that they have chosen for you to make the choice for them by not doing so themselves.
A child in tantrum cannot process a choice. We’ll talk more about this in a later blog, but if your child is completely dysregulated emotionally, the priority needs to be soothing and calming down before anything else. Then, you can always circle back when things are calm and they can access the logical and decision-making parts of their brain.
Choice-giving can be used to redirect. Let’s say you are getting ready to leave for the grocery store and your toddler is heading toward a meltdown. You might say, “It’s time to go to the grocery store, would you like to choose to wear your sneakers or your boots?” or “In five minutes we are leaving for the store. You can choose to bring your stuffed dinosaur or your teddy bear. Which do you choose?” The child that was headed toward a tantrum now has to use a different part of their brain to process the choice. (Note: this is not applicable if your child is already in tantrum mode...see above.)
Giving these empowerment-based choices is a great way to proactively introduce choice language before using it to enforce rules. Plus, it provides so many opportunities for you to turn a power struggle or a “no” into a “yes” where everyone feels satisfied and heard. Happy choice-giving, and see you next week for Part Two!
