Choices, choices, choices!

As it turns out I don't have as much time for a blog as I thought I did, but I'm still going to attempt to stick with it.  Right now Garrett's napping and Matt's watching Notre Dame v. Stanford so its a good idea to just retreat from that scene and do a little blogging!

Anyway, this post will focus on the Chapter 1 experiment, which was to give lots of choices (deposits) and then once in a while make a withdrawal (give no choice, explaining that "I've given you lots of choices, now its my turn to decide....")  I tried to focus on giving lots of choices, but there were days when it didn't seem possible or I'd forget.  But from time to time I made some mental notes of how this were going.  Here's what I found.

My first reactions:

• Coming up with appropriate choices for a 16 month old is HARD!
• Giving kids choices requires a lot of flexibility and time.
• Giving choices requires some preparations sometimes.
• What if he doesn't understand what I'm asking or doesn't respond?
• Seems like giving choices at this age are more for me to get in the habit of doing it.  
• Sometimes the choices I give don't really seem like they should be choices at all, like when I ask him if he wants blueberries or strawberries.  It would be fine with me if he wanted both.

My thoughts about my first reactions (in the same order as above):

• Appropriate choices for a 16 month old or for Garrett in particular require some creativity because his preferences are still developing and I don't want to hinder his exploration of the world.  I ended up modifying some of the choices I originally thought would be good.  For example, instead of asking him which snack he wanted, I asked him if he wanted his snack in the bowl or on the tray, with a spoon or fork or fingers, or which snack he was going to eat first (without taking any snack away).  Because he doesn't seem to have much preference about clothing (he'd rather be naked anyway) I'd ask him if he wanted to choose or if he wanted me to choose.  Sometimes he'd go to his room (I took this as a sign he wanted to choose) and sometimes he'd run away (I took this as a sign that he'd rather be naked and I'd better choose his clothes and prepare for battle!)  One choice that I had quite a lot of success with was: Would you like to walk or for me to carry you?  I asked this when I wanted him to come upstairs with me because he frequently gets distracted by the things under the open spiral staircase that is fenced usually.  When I open the gate he usually wants to go under the stairs and explore and play with the off limit things so I'd ask him just before I opened the gate and he'd usually respond with a rhythmic bouncing and "wa wa wa" which means "walk, walk, walk" and he'd climb the stairs with me right behind him.  If he got distracted I'd remind him that he choose to walk up the stairs and if he couldn't do that I'd have to carry him.  Another choice that worked well some of the time was: "Where do you want me to change your diaper?  On the floor or on the bed/couch?  (The bed and the couch are fun to climb onto so that was usually his choice, he'd signal this by running over to them but once on them he wasn't always cooperative with the diaper change, so I'd remind him, "you chose the couch/bed" so I need you not to wiggle or we'll go on the floor.)  Also, even though my first reaction to most of my choices was that he didn't really understand, I think he does understand more than I thought, but we're still working on this.
• It requires a lot of flexibility and time when giving choices.  If you're in a rush its easy to just grab your kid and go.  I'd find that on mornings when I wasn't on the ball it was hard to remember to give choices or think of good ones on the fly.  But in reality it doesn't really require much more time to give choices.  The "rules" clearly state if they don't respond in 10 seconds then you make the choice for them.  Still it felt harder when you're running behind schedule because if he chooses to pick his own clothes or walk the stairs himself then that'll always take a little more time. 
• When it came to giving Garrett choices between food items I had some more trouble.  Sometimes I didn't have more than 1 choice.  That's when I came up the questions like "do you want to eat it in a bowl or on your tray?"  "...with a spoon or your fingers?"  I don't really like giving choices between two foods because if there are 2 food choices I've usually gone to the trouble to prepare those 2 foods and I'd really prefer that he eat both anyway.  I think that an older child could answer this question before the food was prepared and understand that the result of his choice was coming in a little bit after the food was prepared.  Initially I also thought that I'd have to prepare 2 activities for Garrett, but realized the choice between activities could be as simple as, "Are you going to throw the ball now or play with your stove?" or "Do you want to draw with the red crayon or blue crayon first?"  (That way he could always choose the other one after he was done with the first, but usually he just ended up trying to eat the crayons and I had to take them away.)
• What if he doesn't understand?  Use this as time to practice making choices.  If Garrett didn't seem to understand or ignored my questioning, sometimes I'd ask him again with some hand signals and then I'd just say, "Okay, I'll make the choice for you, I choose..."  I tried to remember to give 10 seconds, sometimes I gave less (if I was feeling impatient, and sometimes I gave WAY more if I was trying to get him to understand.)
• Initially I thought that giving choices at 16 months was more for me to practice giving choices than for Garrett to practice making them, but I realized he understands a lot more than I gave him credit for and even when he may not have really understood he still sometimes made a "choice".  So I suppose he's learning that he has some power in his life!  He frequently responded more positively to me making the choice for him after I gave him the choice rather than just doing sometime for him like picking his clothes and dressing him.
• I frequently felt like some choices limited Garrett's ability to explore his world more fully.  So I tried (and am still trying) to come up with more ideas for choices that didn't do this, sometimes it just required rewording a question.  Once at a parenting class I was at we were talking about positive parenting and choices came up.  The leader, who has a background in early childhood education and Montessori training, mentioned that sometimes choices can be overwhelming for a child.  Her example was a child trying to decide whether to stay home with one parent or go to the store with another, seemingly an easy choice, but trying to remember what happened last time he went to the store or stayed home is difficult and could even be stressful since the child might perceive the decision as being one that determines his happiness (at home with mom, store with dad).  So she suggests instead giving choices that not only don't hurt anyone else in the world (like Love and Logic rules) but also don't limit the child too much.  So if you give the child 2 candies ask, "Are you going to eat the red one or the blue one first?"  You're not going to take either one away, they still get to eat both of them but they also get to make a choice.  

Final thoughs:
Choices must be given with the child in mind and with the adults preferences in mind.  Since Garrett doesn't seem to care much about what clothes he wears, I realized that maybe this doesn't have to be one of our choices or maybe he'll get more interested later.  Our choices will develop and we'll start to understand his preferences better and we'll be better able to form our questions so that we get the best behavior results.  I learned that when he was tired or upset and was requesting to nurse it was a bad time to ask him if he wanted milk (cows milk in a sippy cup) or water, because he didn't want either!
I learned in this experiment that even though some choices may seem silly they give the child an awareness that he/she has the power to make choices and that those choices have consequences.  Right now those consequences are purposefully small, but later they could be big deal choices that do determine happiness, success, or health in life.  So practice now!
Other things I tried this week (I know its been more than a week, but humor me here) were "bedroom time" when he was throwing a tantrum.  At first it took him a while to calm down, but very quickly he learned to calm down quickly and he usually knew that when he came out of his room he should show me how his behavior had changed.  Like he'd hug and kiss me or stroke my cheek if he'd hit be before.  Sometimes he went right back to doing what he had been doing and I'd put him right back in his room.  Usually that meant we just needed a change of scenery and I'd wait for him to calm down, remove the offending temptation, and try to get us out of the house for a while or put him down for a nap.  I was happy that bedroom time usually didn't last long.  I know the rule of 1 minute for each year of age for a "time out" and agree that the association to the offensive action is lost after too long in time out.  Mostly its not a time to "think about what you've done" just a time to cool off.  I also tried using empathetic words when delivering a consequence, but that was hard.  It all sounds sarcastic an insincere to me.  I'll have to work on that.  There is still a lot to work on!

Please post comments about ideas for choices if you have them!