“When Does My Child Make Their Own Decisions?” 10 Questions to help you decide.

Why Parents Struggle With This Question

Have you ever been confused about when to give advice to your child/tween/teen and when to let them make a decision? If so, you are not alone. Every parent grapples with this question.

New School Situations Create New Challenges

School is starting soon, which means there will be new situations where the question of who should solve the problem will arise. Your child may feel anxious about a new school or teacher. Perhaps some friends are no longer there, so they feel lonely. Maybe they’ll struggle with schoolwork. 

Deciding Who Owns the Problem

It’s important to have a system for deciding whether the challenge is one for your child to handle, for you to handle together, or where you need to step in and make the decision. 

Understanding the Supporter Role

There is no cut-and-dry way to decide on problem ownership. However, I would like to give you a guide that will help you decide when you’ll say, “This is your problem to solve, and I’m here to support you. I won’t tell you what to do.”   

I call this being in the Supporter Role and this is the focus of this article. The other two roles are the Collaborator and the Director. 

Four Key Questions To Clarify Your Role

Ask yourself these questions to help clarify your role.  A simple way to determine your role is by answering 4 basic questions:

1. Who requests to solve the challenge?
2. Whom it directly affects?
3. Are rules and safety involved?
4. Can the child handle it without your help? 

Ten Questions To Help You Decide

As you answer these more detailed questions below, you’re trying to determine if you can say to your child/tween/teen/ “This is your problem to solve, and I’m here to support you. I won’t tell you what to do.” 

1. Whom does the problem directly impact?
2. Who wants the problem solved? 
3. Does the problem involve safety and/or rules that will or have been broken?
4. Is your child mature enough to handle the situation or do they need help?
5. Can you watch your child suffer from a “poor” decision without rescuing them? 
6. Is this a good time for your child to take responsibility? 
7. Can you “allow”  your child to experience their emotions without placating them?
8. Are you overprotecting or rescuing your child?
9. Are you making excuses for your child?
10. Are you doing too much for your child, which will weaken them?

Staying in the Supporter Role

Before you can help your child with the emotions of a new school year, which is their challenge to solve, it’s important to be clear that “at this moment I am being a Supporter. “  If you know it’s time to support them, then you’ll be less likely to jump in and rescue them. 

When Your Child Comes Home Upset

Imagine your child/tween/teen coming home from school looking upset.

What would your first action or words be?

• What’s wrong?
• What happened?
• You look like you are upset.

Are these questions working for you? Are they opening up? If not, I’ll be talking about what could be a more effective way to respond in the future. 

Examining Your Intention

What is your intention?

• To understand what’s going on so you can help.
• To get a connection.
• To help your child feel better.

Are Parents Responsible for Fixing Feelings?

It’s hard when we see our kids upset. We feel it’s our job to take away, or somehow change their unhappy feelings. 

But is this really our job? Are we responsible for taking care of their feelings? 

Big Emotions Require Support, Not Rescue

It isn’t easy to just support your children during their emotional times. 

Perhaps they have big emotions from challenges such as friendship problems, fear of a new teacher and classroom, a lack of friends, an inability to do the work, struggles with teammates, and much more. 

What the Supporter Role Really Means

In the Supporter Role, your “job” is to help your children understand their emotions and manage them. And I don’t mean by telling them what their feelings are. 

Why It’s Hard Not to Rescue

Is a tall order to not rescue our kids when we are often grappling with our own emotions in reaction to what our children say or do. If we can make them calmer or happier, then we will feel calmer and happier, too.

Overview of the Supporter Role Steps

The Supporter Role steps that I’ll discuss are a helpful guide on how to approach your child when they are struggling with problems that directly or primarily affect them, such as those mentioned above. 

When your child/tween/teen has a challenge or experience that primarily impacts them, then I suggest that you respond as a Supporter. As a supportive listener, you say in your mind and perhaps aloud, “This is your challenge to solve. This is your experience to share. I’m not going to take it over and try to tell you what to do or take away your feelings about it. I will listen as you express yourself.” 

Wow!! Have you ever said this? This is a very scary exclamation to make. You may think, what if they make a mistake? What if they followed my advice and were happier as a result? You’d be happier too because you wouldn’t have to see them suffer. 

Our fears can easily keep us from being the supporter that our children need in order to learn how to handle challenging situations and gain confidence. So, when your fear entices you to rescue them with advice, stop yourself. 

There are 4 steps to being a successful supporter.

Step 1 of being a Supporter is – Stop blocking communication. 

A communication block is any remark or attitude you show your child that hurts their self-esteem to the point of stopping talking to you.

There are 10 possible ways you could be blocking, and you have no idea you are doing it because your intention is to increase communication, not shut it down. Yikes! That’s a lot.

Here they are:

Commanding, giving advice, placating, interrogating, distracting, psychologing, sarcasm, moralizing, being a know-it-all, and me-tooism.

Let’s say your child is having friendship troubles, which is often a problem for them to solve with just your support. Each child may react differently if you try to give them advice. One may be open to hearing it. Another child may say, “Leave me alone.” And another would feel insulted and  say,  “I can figure it out myself.” 

At this point, you probably feel frustrated because you want to help, but your child won’t let you. 

To recognize if you are giving unwanted advice, ask yourself if you start with “You should….” or “If I were you I would….” The unspoken underlying hurtful message is, I know more than you do. You can’t figure it out. I need to tell you what to do. These implied messages hurt your child’s self-esteem.

Once parents learn about the 10 communication blocks and realize that they are doing many of them, then what? Let’s take a look at the next step. 

Step 2 of the Supporter Role is: Listen Openly 

The key to Listen Openly is to have an open mind where you are not judging them and trying to solve their problem. This is a freeing state of mind where you are just there with them. 

You aren’t responsible for what they are struggling with, which means you don’t have to ask questions to “get to the bottom of it”, and figure it out for them. 

It’s time to believe that by listening to your child muddling through their struggle, that you are allowing their emotions to get released first. Then, as you continue to listen openly, they can use their thinking brain and start to solve their challenge.

There is a second part to Listen Openly in addition to the accepting mind set. It can be helpful to offer what I call empathetic phrases that, when used “properly,” encourages your child to keep talking. 

They are different for each child so pay attention to how your child responds to you saying phrases such as:

“You sound upset …….”

“It can be hard……..”

“Wow! That’s difficult…..”

The goal in step 2 is to give a safe space for your children to talk about their challenges without the fear of you jumping in and blocking them. 

Some parents are driven to say, “I understand.” I discourage this phrase because you are talking about yourself, not letting your child talk. However, what you are looking for is whether or not your child keeps talking because then you know you haven’t blocked communication.

BTW, I’m not talking about reflective listening, which is often done when you are solving a problem together and you want to make sure you understand your child’s meaning. That’s not your “job” as a Supporter.

I’ve been talking about the first 2 steps of the Supporter Role. 1) Stop blocking and 2) Listen Openly which are crucial steps in allowing your child to express themselves. 

Some kids, no matter what age they are, are very strong-willed and want to make their own decisions. You try to “help” them and they reject your advice because it is a communication block.. 

Keep in mind that strong-mindedness can be a wonderful trait to have. It’s important to not take their “rejection” of your well-meaning advice as a rejection of you.

Know that by doing steps 1 and 2, you are offering your child a safe place for them to process their thoughts and feelings. This chance to verbally express what ‘s going on inside of them, will help them process it and make more sense of the challenge they are facing.

This may be all they need and want from you. They may not want to go through step 3 which is to discuss ideas and pick a solution to try with your support. (My daughter didn’t want to. She would decide on her own.) 

If they are open to Step 3, discussing ideas…

It’s helpful to say, “I’m not going to tell you what to do or what I would do. Instead, we can come up with possible solutions together and you’ll pick which one to try first.” 

This can be very scary for you because you are giving up power over them. If in the past they have relied on you to solve their problems, your letting go can be scary for them, too. However, in order for them to gain confidence that they can handle the outcome of their choices, it’s essential that your discussion ends with, “Whatever you decide to do is up to you.”

There is much more to learn about word choice in my video-based program Win, Win, Win Parenting that I can’t cover here. 

After a period of time when you think they might have tried to solve the problem is when you can try…

Step 4) Check – in. 

You could say, “ I was thinking about the solution you were going to try about….(fill in their problem.) .I was wondering how it’s going?” 

Again, depending on their personality, you may get a “Fine”, “It’s not a problem anymore”, or a full rundown of the issue. 

If they didn’t do steps 3 and 4 with you, I’d be hesitant to ask them if they solved their problem. They may say you’re too nosy and shut down in the future. It’s a delicate balance keeping communication open with some teens in particular.

If you would like help in learning the Supporter Role, I encourage you to email me at and we’ll set up a time to discuss your particular situation.

I trust this article has been helpful to you. When your children become grown adults, they will love to talk to you when they know you won’t block communication and be an empathetic listener instead.

Happy parenting!

Cynthia

Cynthia is available for private coaching sessions, so you can quickly get the answers you need and make those much-needed changes right away. Click HERE for a complimentary 45-minute Fast-Track Clarity Session to learn what you can do now to create more harmony in your home.

Learn about how you can solve your parenting challenges at your own pace with the Win, Win, Win Parenting Program.