Children Making Choices

When our children are small, it's sometimes difficult to imagine how profoundly our parenting will affect them. I've started to really appreciate how effective some of my gentle discipline techniques really were now that my oldest child is 19 years old. I started early in her life to allow her as much autonomy as I could safely and reasonably allow. I adopted the philosophy of the informed decision and proceeded to provide her with as much information as she could absorb at a given age and then stepped back (slightly ;) ) and let her make some of her own choices. Sometimes she chose a less-than-terrific option and learned a lesson in the process. When she made good choices, though, that resulted in positive things happening for her, and she developed an inner confidence in her own ability to make appropriate decisions for herself.

In order for your teenage child to have confidence in her ability to make *right* choices, she has to have been "allowed" to make at least some of her own decisions all along. She has to have been allowed to take her cues from within and not from outside influences. Begin at the beginning by providing your child with sufficient information to make her own choices early on. You don't have to "lord it over" a child to influence her decisions. You will always be an important (and usually *the* most important) influence in your child's life *IF* you don't do something to cause the child to markedly rebel against you. It occurs to me as I'm writing this that one of the lessons Jessica may have learned along the way is that *sometimes* - just sometimes - your mother might be right. ;)

Let me share why I view Jessica as a positive "product" of this kind of parenting. If a child is allowed to decide for herself, without being belittled for her choices, she will develop a confidence in her ability to make the right choices for herself. This is *extremely* important when the teenage years come along because only a child who has confidence in her own ability to make the right choice for *herself* will be equipped to resist the very real peer pressure most teens experience.

I'll do a bit of comparison with my own upbringing. My upbringing was very different from Jessica's. My parents were very controlling and still talk about how much control they wielded over us (do I have to tell you that they still think it was a good thing?). When I got to be a teenager, I was a hellraiser. Lots of times, I knew what I was doing was "wrong" because my parents had said so, but they hadn't told me any of the reasons why it was wrong (except that it displeased them) and they didn't allow me to choose for myself. So whatever the "wrong" thing was, I did it anyway. My only concern was to make sure I didn't get caught and punished. If I had any hesitation about doing something bad, I certainly didn't think of going to my parents to discuss it, maybe to get some more and better information about it. No way. That would've gotten me into trouble. I just went ahead and did it and suffered the consequences (natural, logical and forced, unnatural ones).

Conversely, Jessica has always been welcome to state her opinion about anything and everything. She has not been criticized if she didn't agree with me. I have encouraged her to discuss anything and everything with me, and she felt free to do so because she knew 1) she wouldn't be punished, 2) she wouldn't be ridiculed and 3) her ability to make her own decisions would be respected. She is a very confident kid and managed throughout high school to avoid the promiscuous sex, smoking, and alcohol and drug abuse in which many of her friends frequently participated. When her former boyfriend was trying to convince her to have sex with him, she told him she wasn't ready. How do I know this? Because she *talked* to me about it afterwards. She didn't allow outside pressures to influence her. She knew her own mind and her own needs enough to know she wasn't ready, and she had the confidence to assert herself. She waited until *SHE* was ready, *and* she recognized that readiness because she has been allowed to think for herself and decide for herself what is best for *her*.

When Jessica decided she was ready to have sex with her long-time boyfriend, she came to me and *initiated* a discussion about contraceptives and STD's. We had talked about these things at length before that, of course, but she was down to making decisions on it and wanted more input. In a completely nonjudgmental and open exchange, we discussed together what her choices were, and she decided on them. I also asked her if she was sure she was ready to make such a monumental decision and reminded her of the consequences. She understood each of them and felt confident to make her own choices. I very much prefer this scenario to one in which the teenage girl has to face the prospect of telling her parents she's pregnant or worse. Maybe if more teenage girls felt confident in making their own choices, they would make *better* choices. If that hypothetical teenager had felt comfortable approaching her parents about contraceptives and been sure that she wouldn't be punished for even broaching the subject, she may have been able to avoid that untimely pregnancy.

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