The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives

by William Stixrud

Kids need to practice making their own decisions before they can do so legally. Telling our children how to make good decisions (or telling them how to do things for themselves) isn’t enough. It’s not enough to show them, either. They need to actually do it. They need practice. They need to experience the natural consequences of their choices, ranging from being uncomfortably cold when they decided not to wear a coat, to getting a bad grade on a test because they decided not to study. We commonly see adolescents and young adults go off to college without having had much of an opportunity to make decisions about the things that matter, including how they want to structure their time, what they want to commit their energy to, or whether they want to be in school at all. Not surprisingly, they have difficulty setting and meeting goals and making good decisions when it comes time to pick classes or a major or more generally to manage their day.