Pick One

Since my internet service decided to go MIA on Wednesday, my posts are going to be pushed back a day. You can expect a Monkey Toes Diaper Review tomorrow and an awesome Shop Feature on Maxwell Designs – Plus a Discount Code – on Sunday!


Ella has a new game she likes to play: Pick One. She’ll start randomly giving me choices and it is somehow imperative that I choose. It often goes something like this:
E: Red or Green? 
Me: Green
E: Green or Blue? 
Me: Blue
E: Blue or Pink? 
Me: Pink
E: No. Blue.
Me: But I thought I got to choose?


This game truly has endless possibilities, but without fail, there is always at least one moment where my choice is not the right one. In these moments, she always sets me straight. If I’m feeling especially rascally sometimes, I persist in selecting the “wrong” one. Other times, I am a good student and follow her lead.


After a session of this at the breakfast table this morning related to whether or not she should read the My Little Pony ballet school story to me quickly or slowly (slowly was the correct answer that I did not select), I started pondering this game a bit more.


 The thing is, tons of parenting magazines, books, and “experts” recommend that we give our children limited choices. This way, they can feel like they have some control and learn to make choices, but do so within the limitations we’ve set. This is generally what happens in our home, unless I’m having a particularly rough parenting day. Those days, it can go one of two ways:  I either give in to the third option she proposes or get fed up and simply say, “you can have this or nothing.” 


My little girl is at that stage where she’s trying to figure out her place, so it makes sense that she would try out the “pick one” game on me. You can also hear her throughout the house most days saying to her little brother, “You may not,” clearly  mimicking her mom’s attempts to avoid overusing the word “no.”


Even though it can be exhausting offering choices to a 3 year-old throughout the day, I am a firm believer that it builds strong character and helps kids have accountability, as well as keeping back the tide of tantrums. My parents instilled the belief in me from a young age that I had their respect and they believed I had the ability to make my own choices, follow my conscience, and do what was right. Their trust was something I wanted to honor. Their confidence was something I valued. With this trust and confidence, they helped me understand principles, values, the promptings of the Holy Ghost, and the reality of consequences. I didn’t always make the right choices, but I could clearly feel the difference when I made a lesser choice.


I am one of those people who does not like to be told what to do. On the other hand, I also love affirmation from people I respect. The concept that we are all born with our agency and have the ability to choose is incredibly important to me. I like to joke sometimes that some people are building Christian soldiers, but I am building Christian Ambassadors.


Maybe this strategy won’t work with all kids. But because it worked so well with me, I want to parent my children in this way. And, frankly, sometimes it worries me. I look around me and there are many people I love who have taken their agency and made choices that I find heart breaking and disconcerting. I work with the youth at my church and often feel that many of them are given too much freedom without understanding the consequences of their choices.


When it comes to agency, I think that the hope is to not just throw your children out into the world and say, “Good luck.” Life isn’t really like a game of “pick one.” It’s much more complex, with a myriad of choices. Our Heavenly Father has given us guidelines to follow and told us what we can choose to have joy. I think the reality is that all we can do is move forward in faith, raise our children with scriptures, music, testimony, lessons, and love that will help them understand correct principles. Then, eventually we have to let them go and choose for themselves.