How Do We Teach Our Children to Make Wise Choices? (Episode 3)

This the third episode of The 7 Series: Parenting. To see the first two episodes, click here and here.

Show Notes:

Authority and Love reveal the “why” of parenting.

Choices and consequences define the “what” of parenting.

Empowering our children to make wise choices is one of the primary goals of parenting.

Outcomes generally tell us if we made good choices, but not always.

We believe we are good at making choices in spite of all the evidence showing that we are bad at making choices. (See: Dr. Seuss Said You Are Bad at Decision Making)

This is the danger of parenting: we think we naturally make good choices, we don’t, and we are called to teach our children how to make good choices.

Our children often reflect the choices we are making.

Parents must recognize the danger in decision making. This allows us to understand the need to learn wise decision-making.

How do we teach our children to make good choices: primarily by making wise choices ourselves.

As much as possible, bring your children into the decision-making process to show them how decisions are made.

Because our kids are watching, our temptation is to cover up our bad choices, but in reality we need to reveal them.

Choices are extremely important, but as parents we don’t have to get them all right. Whenever we make a mistake, we have a great chance to teach our kids. (See: Remember This When You Make a Mistake)

I want my children to make as many choices as they can with me making as few as possible. Slowly release more and more decisions to them.

Choices empower people. It allows children to understand they have influence on the world and their own lives.

We actually want our kids to make some bad choices so we can help them learn from their mistakes.

As parents there is not always direct correlation between an individual outcome and an individual decision. We are only responsible for the decisions we make. Our kids are responsible for the decisions they make.

We often struggle over the decisions that don’t matter (sports, grades, etc) instead of giving proper time to the decisions which do matter (sleep, eating, faith).

Choices are only important because they have consequences.