By Dr. Kalman Heller, Child and Family Psychologist
Fall Brings a Flood of Decisions
In early fall, parents get hit with a wave of decisions about activities and schedules for their kids all at once. After-school programs, school electives, sports, tutoring, part-time jobs, extended day care, it all lands on the doorstep at the same time. For a lot of parents, this is a genuinely anxious stretch. The worry is always the same. What if we make the wrong call for our child?
Three Families, Three Different Dilemmas
Jon is 7 and not especially coordinated. His parents think pushing him a little to try the soccer program might be good for him. He can run fast, but he’s pretty timid. They’re hoping it’ll build his confidence and help with his social relationships, which have been fairly limited so far. But what if it doesn’t work out? They worry he’ll come away even more discouraged than before.
Barbara has a 9 year old daughter and a part-time job. She’s been asked to extend her hours this year. She loves the job and could genuinely use the extra money. But it means her daughter Michelle would go to aftercare three times a week instead of two. Michelle isn’t sure how she feels about that. What if it makes her sad? Will she end up angry at her mom for not being home more?
Liz wants an after-school job. She’s planning to use the money for clothes and the usual teenage spending. Her grades are okay, not great, and her parents think she could be putting in more effort at school. They’re worried a job would make it even less likely she’d bring her grades up, or worse, that they’d slip further.
Kids Are More Resilient Than We Give Them Credit For
Buried inside all three of these dilemmas is an unspoken assumption, that children are fragile and that parents are supposed to be all knowing. Both are wrong. Kids are almost always more resilient than we give them credit for. Their capacity to bounce back, even from real hardship, is genuinely impressive, especially inside a supportive, caring family. And parents who agonize this much over decisions like these are clearly doing so because they care deeply.
You Can’t Control the Outcome, Only the Decision
But no one gets to be all knowing. Parents can’t possibly predict or control every circumstance that ends up shaping how something turns out. A good decision doesn’t guarantee a good outcome. A bad outcome doesn’t mean the decision itself was bad. There are simply too many variables in play. Jon’s coach might turn out to be a great guy who makes Jon feel completely at ease, and his play improves all season. Or some kid on the team dislikes Jon for no clear reason and turns a few teammates against him, making the whole season miserable. Or Jon meets a kid from another part of town and the two of them become genuinely great friends. Or it just ends up being an ordinary experience, nothing especially good or bad, and neither Jon nor his life looks any different once the season wraps up.
Let Mistakes Be Part of the Process
Parents are too afraid of making mistakes, and too afraid of their kids making mistakes. It’s a lot healthier to convey the attitude that mistakes are an inevitable, even important, part of life. Try something. If it doesn’t work out, learn from it and move forward a little wiser. Research backs up just how important this is for kids in the long run. Of course we still have to weigh real risks, and should discourage or sometimes outright forbid anything that looks like a serious threat to a child’s health or wellbeing. But those situations are the exception. Most decisions parents agonize over just aren’t that consequential, even though it rarely feels that way in the moment.
Even the “Permanent” Decisions Aren’t Really Permanent
Even decisions that feel irreversible can usually be adjusted if they don’t pan out. Is it okay to have Melissa start kindergarten a year later, or have Billy repeat first grade? Once you’ve made that call, it plays out across the rest of a child’s school years, and there’s genuinely no way to predict the long-term consequences with any real accuracy. You get a best guess and nothing more. Say little Billy is physically and socially immature and struggling with a few developmental delays in his learning skills. He could still end up six foot three and reading above grade level by the end of third grade. He might carry some resentment about not graduating alongside the two neighborhood friends who started kindergarten with him. Or he might just feel quietly embarrassed about having repeated a grade. But you can’t know any of that ahead of time. You weighed what you knew at the time and made the best call you could.
Focus on the Upside
Over the years, if you focus on the upside, there’s a decent chance your child will too. Maybe Billy ends up more successful socially and athletically because he’s slightly older than most of his classmates. Maybe he’s the first in his class to get a driver’s license, which makes him thrilled even if it makes his parents a little anxious a year earlier than expected. And even if Billy’s personality never lets him fully embrace the decision his parents made, once he’s off living his own adult life, a single year’s difference loses its weight, and the whole issue tends to become less and less meaningful to him over time.
Tell Them the Truth, You’re Not Sure Either
So tell Jon, or Michelle, or Liz, that you’re not sure exactly how this will turn out, and that trying something new has a fair shot at working, but no guarantees attached. That kind of honesty conveys real confidence, both in your child and in yourself. It also teaches kids not to be afraid of life, or of the decisions they’ll eventually have to make entirely on their own.
