Shared Control: The Art of Offering Choices Within Limits

At some level we are all aware that sharing control with children is essential. As I mentioned in my last post, kids get bossed around all day. Others decide what they can eat, what they should watch on television, who they can play with, etc. I'm not suggesting that this shouldn't be the case. The adult should be making a lot of these decisions. But think about this from your child's perspective for a minute. It would drive us nuts if our boss, for instance, had that much control over our lives.

So the idea of sharing control with kids is to do it both consciously and wisely. One of the most widely used and time tested ways to share control with kids is to offer choices within limits.

Many parents have heard that it is good to offer choices, and have tried it. There are lots of places to go wrong though. The one I see frequently go awry is offering a child two choices intending that he will pick one of them. So the first tip is to make sure to only offer choices where you'd be fine with the child going for either option. You know deep down that if you have one you really are wanting him to go with, he's going for the other. We forget this fact in the heat of the moment though.

Offer most choices when things are going smoothly. Sure choices can, and should be used to set limits as well. In fact, lots of choice both share control and set limits. But choices work best when they are mostly offered on things that really don't matter much to the adult. Jim Fay often quips that there are two places to share control: 1) where we don't really need it, and 2) where we never had it to begin with. I love the second of these two because there are often things that we waste all sorts of our energy trying to control when there is about as much chance of us pulling it off as the family dog does of finally catching his tail.

Now when you offer choices like these inevitably our cherubs will occasionally pick a third option that is not on the list. Sometimes when things aren't going smoothly in the home, kids will do this most of the time. This can drive a parent to the brink pretty quickly. "I'm trying to give him some choices, and he NEVER cooperates." See my next post on choices for how to handle this twist on shared control.

The photo above was taken by Alatriste of his nephew. You can see more of his creative, clever shots on Flickr.

If you enjoyed this article please vote for it on Digg, above, or Netscape or one of the other options below. You can also bookmark the site to the right. I appreciate your support.

Thought: Learning How to Make Decisions is Like Learning a Language

Learning how to think about choices and make decisions is also a lot like learning to play a musical instrument, like learning how to do woodworking or how to ride a bicycle. The common connection with all of these is that we don't learn them primarily by having someone lecture us or tell us about them. We learn decision making skills by actually doing the messy work of making decisions...and then by enjoying, or coping with the results.

Mark Twain wisely said, "Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions."

It can be hard for us to let our kids have experiences that result from us supporting their developmentally appropriate decision making. We badly want our kids to do well. This can be a very tough world. We have tons more experience than our kids do. It is hard not to want to jump in and do the decision making for them so we can ensure that it gets done right.

The trick is to find things that our kids can handle making decisions about on their own and can handle living with the consequences of. We, of course, can't in good conscience give kids decisions about whether or not to go to school or whether to have vegetables or Skittles as a side dish. An appropriate decision for a four year old might be, "Would you like to wear your coat or carry it?" For a teen it could be "Would it better for you to have your chores done by Wednesday night or by Friday night each week? For all kids above four years old, it can be about how they spend their weekly allowance. Allowance is a wonderful teacher about decision making. You can see how this concept overlaps nicely with shared control.

Another important piece is how we respond when they've gotten themselves into a problem with a decision they've made. Here we can link back to a previous idea. This is a great time for us to show some empathy. The bigger the problem, the more important that our empathy has some depth. A big help here is reminding ourselves that even though the better decision looked like a no-brainer to us, our kids have at least a couple decades less of life experience. Also they are different people with their own profiles of strengths and challenges. So things that might have been easy for us to decide when we were our kids' age might be tougher for them.

Give it a try. Make sure to begin with choices that are going to be easier for you to let your child live with. If we give them the power to make the decision, and then swoop in and rescue them, we send a powerful message that we don't believe that they are capable. And these unstated messages have a way of being far more persuasive than the ones we say directly. The good news is that whenever we are able to provide empathy and support to help them cope with the results of their decision, we send an equally powerful message that they are the sort of kids who can handle making decisions and who can learn from their mistakes. That is one of the irreplaceable gifts that we can give to our kids.

Quote: On Shared Control

"Control is a basic human need. We can either proactively share control on our terms, or we can force the child to take control from us on their terms."

Jim Fay

We'll be talking a lot about this one. Shared control is one of four central principles of Love and Logic. I don't always agree with the Love and Logic folks on each particular intervention that they might recommend for a given situation, but I do have to say that their four central principles, after more than well over a decade using them with children, hold up better, and more broadly than any others I've come across. It also turns out that they can be implemented in lots of different ways, which means that I'm not stuck with offering "Off the Rack" parenting advice. Instead, using the four principles along with other parts of my training, I am able to help parents tailor an approach that fits their child's temperament, each parent's temperament and personality, and the family's unique values, strengths and challenges.

Shared control often takes the form of using enforceable statements or choices within limits, which we'll cover on another occasion. Kids who feel like they have a reasonable amount of control tend to spend a lot less time fighting adults for control. Remember we're talking here about choices that affect the kids, not the adults. We don't give a kid the option to throw a big fit right in the middle of a family gathering, but we might give him choices about "Would it be better for you to get calmed down so you can be here with us, or would it better for you to have a bit of time on your own in your room?" Master this principle and you'll experience a nice shift in your ability to positively influence your kids.