Inside: A simple and fun game you can play with your kids to practice making decisions. You can play it at home, in restaurants, car rides or while waiting.
It’s Sunday and it’s my meal planning time for the week. I sit at the kitchen table, sip my coffee, and ask myself “what should we have for dinner this week?” Often, I ask my family for input, but let’s be honest, I get a lot of “pizza!” and “pasta!” answers from my children :-)
Every day, we are faced with all sorts of decisions. Sometimes the decisions are small, like what to wear or what to eat. And sometimes the decisions are bigger, like where to live or where to send your children to school.
Decision making is not something that children get to practice all that frequently. It’s good to allow your children the time to practice making small decisions now. They’ll learn how it’s done and have more practice going through the decision making process. As they get older, the decisions they make have bigger consequences and you want them to have the skills in place to make good decisions.
Of course, right now they can’t make huge decisions like where to live or where to go to school. But they can make decisions about other things, like:
What to wear to school
What to have for dinner
Who to invite over for a play date
What after school activities they’d like to try
Obviously, you can’t do this every day, but try it out on days when you aren’t rushed or pressured for time. What will be hard is letting them experience the consequences of their decisions. For instance, if they decide to wear shorts in 20 degree F weather, then not only do they experience cold legs, but potentially not being allowed to go outside for recess. That experience will probably stay with them more than if you just tell them to put on something warmer!
Want a fun way to practice making decisions? Play Would You Rather!
When you answer a question, you have to choose one or the other, you can’t pick a third option. You can always ask questions to get more information about the scenario to help you make a decision.
This is a great game for a play date, for car rides, while waiting in line, or at dinner too. We often play it at dinner time, with each of us taking a turn to make up a question. To get you started, click the image below to get a printable with 36 kid friendly Would You Rather Questions that you can use now (plus 5 other free printables to help you encourage play!)
