What can a child decide, and what is it allowed to have a say in?
The Doc saw a video on Instagram of a ‘dadfluencer’ who spent several minutes trying to persuade his two-year-old child to agree to having his nappy changed. It’s a good starting point for exploring the topic of ‘(joint) decision-making’.
First of all: It’s generally a good thing that we now give much more thought to how we can involve children in decision-making, rather than simply deciding and acting without consulting them.
Now, of course, comes the ‘but’.
We must always ask ourselves: How old is my child, and given their level of maturity, what decisions are they actually capable of making without being overwhelmed?
For example: A three-year-old cannot decide whether they’d rather go to the indoor swimming pool or Tobidu Adventureland ‘at the weekend’. This is because they cannot think far enough ahead to grasp what ‘at the weekend’ actually means. Nor can they really imagine exactly what the differences between these two activities are. The child becomes emotionally stressed because they’re being asked to decide something they’re not yet mature enough to decide.
What’s more, if I present my child with a decision where, at the end of the day, there’s actually nothing to decide, then that isn’t particularly wise either. To stick with the Dadfluencer example: the nappy will have to be changed at some point (soon), before the child’s skin in the nappy area becomes sore.
Conclusion: There are two things we should always consider when we want to involve children in decision-making. Firstly: Is the child really mature enough to help make this decision? And secondly: Does the child actually have any freedom of choice, or are we merely holding out the prospect of a pseudo-decision, even though there is ultimately no choice at all?
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