I could see this becoming potentially detrimental, annoying at best, if the child thinks every set of choices are negotiable.
Confining the options to a small set would help maintain your authority as the parent.
In the situation described in this post, I think the best option in most cases would have been for the parent to just say no. Once we get into the “recovery” section, the parent is limiting the child to two options: wait to eat the messy candy, or eat the messy candy and clean up afterwards. I’m not sure where you see the child as learning that choices are negotiable when they are not, or where you see too wide a set of options?
Separately, while I sort of agree that maintaining authority as a parent is important (kids do need to understand that some things you say are not optional, and be able to tell when that’s what’s happening) I don’t see how having some situations in which the children are choosing from an open field of possibilities undermines that.
I think there is, effectively, some missing context for a lot of others. You obviously have a lot. I’ve been following your blog for a long while, so my main takeaway has been the idea of ‘compensating’ kids when you accidentally offer them a ‘false choice’. I can understand tho why others might be ‘over-generalizing’ from this post in isolation.
That is indeed a large potential cost to doing this kind of thing too much.
I think this post was intended to be much more narrow tho. I like the idea of ‘compensating’ a kid when you accidentally offer them a ‘false choice’ – that seems fair and otherwise reasonable too.
But, yes, some decisions should be made by parents and not be negotiable. And offering a small set of (reasonable) options is better than a misleading open-ended query. (That’s annoying when adults do it to each other too.)
I could see this becoming potentially detrimental, annoying at best, if the child thinks every set of choices are negotiable. Confining the options to a small set would help maintain your authority as the parent.
In the situation described in this post, I think the best option in most cases would have been for the parent to just say no. Once we get into the “recovery” section, the parent is limiting the child to two options: wait to eat the messy candy, or eat the messy candy and clean up afterwards. I’m not sure where you see the child as learning that choices are negotiable when they are not, or where you see too wide a set of options?
Separately, while I sort of agree that maintaining authority as a parent is important (kids do need to understand that some things you say are not optional, and be able to tell when that’s what’s happening) I don’t see how having some situations in which the children are choosing from an open field of possibilities undermines that.
I think there is, effectively, some missing context for a lot of others. You obviously have a lot. I’ve been following your blog for a long while, so my main takeaway has been the idea of ‘compensating’ kids when you accidentally offer them a ‘false choice’. I can understand tho why others might be ‘over-generalizing’ from this post in isolation.
That is indeed a large potential cost to doing this kind of thing too much.
I think this post was intended to be much more narrow tho. I like the idea of ‘compensating’ a kid when you accidentally offer them a ‘false choice’ – that seems fair and otherwise reasonable too.
But, yes, some decisions should be made by parents and not be negotiable. And offering a small set of (reasonable) options is better than a misleading open-ended query. (That’s annoying when adults do it to each other too.)