5 Ways to Help Children Make Smarter Choices

No human has lived without making some poor choices at some point in their lives. If anything, it seems like making mistakes is natural to the human organism. And for most people, some of these mistakes are so life-changing that they wish they could go back and correct them.

Everyone has one or two — may be more — things they wish they could go back in time to change. For example, some people wish they had graduated from high school. Or some people wish they had chosen a different major in college.

Some people wish they had started saving money when they were younger instead of spending everything on things like the latest gadget or a new car.

All these thoughts cause us to want to help our children make more intelligent choices. And save themselves from making some of the same mistakes.

How Can You Help Your Children Make More Intelligent Choices? Try These:

1. Allow your children to make mistakes. It might seem strange that allowing children to make mistakes will help them make fewer mistakes in the future. But mistakes are opportunities to learn.
♦ Children have a natural curiosity that helps them learn. Many adults lose that curiosity. Instead, they prefer facts instead of exploring. Allow your children to explore. Let them make mistakes. Let them learn from those mistakes.
♦ A child who learns from his mistakes gains insight, develops a sense of confidence, and learns to think outside the box. This confidence can pay off later when they face a challenge they didn’t anticipate and need to think on their feet.

2. Include your kids in daily decisions. For example, if you’re making dinner plans with your spouse, include your kids. Let them go with you to the grocery store to pick things out for the meal.

♦ Every week, let them choose one place where they want to go or thing they want to do. Doing these things can help your children learn problem-solving skills.

3. Help them develop the habit of pausing to observe a situation before speaking or acting. A person who speaks before thinking tends to make mistakes—however, someone who waits to think before acting is more likely to make wise choices.

♦ When you train your child to pause before acting, you’re teaching them essential life skills. They won’t always be perfect, but at least they’ll have a head start on learning good decision-making habits.

4. Don’t shield them from the real world. As parents, we like to protect our kids from the unpleasant aspects of life. However, this often backfires in the sense that too much protection means our children will never learn the skills they need to cope with difficult circumstances.

♦ It’s common to find adults who find it hard to adapt because they don’t anticipate the world’s hardships. When you expose your child to the world, you allow them to learn how to embrace difficulties instead of avoiding them.

5. Train them to have good moral values. An excellent way to guide your child in healthy decision-making is by basing decisions on solid morals. A child with values like kindness, generosity, and integrity has a much higher chance of making good decisions.

♦ To set your kid on the right path, give him more autonomy and notice how he reacts to different situations. Then, when your child makes a mistake, don’t lecture him or punish him. Instead, teach him how to learn from his mistakes.

We make mistakes as we interact with other people and in our decisions. However, it’s essential to recognize how errors can benefit our lives. Parents should remember that they can trust their children with some of their choices because they will help them learn life skills and develop good moral values.