If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.
It makes sense that parents make most of the decisions for their kids. Parents know more. Kids basically know nothing. About life. About what the weather is going to be tomorrow. About how the world works.
The problem with this is that you’re depriving your kids of a very important skill: the ability to make decisions. Is it any wonder that so many teenagers are utterly overwhelmed when it comes to choosing where to go to college? Or what to major in? For most of them, it’s the first real decision they’ve made in their whole lives.
That’s why, as a parent, you have to actively work to not choose everything for them. Ask them whether they want to go to the park or play catch in the yard. Ask them what movie they want to see. What should we cook for dinner? Do you want to take a shower tonight or a bath? Would you rather try out for the baseball or the basketball team? If you don’t like mowing the lawn, what’s another chore you’d like to do to contribute around the house? Shorts or pants today? Go pick out something to wear.
Teach them how to choose. Empower them. Make sure they know how to decide, and to be okay with their decision even if they decide wrong. It doesn’t matter that you know more. What matters is that you let them learn.
A life is the sum and substance of a person’s decisions. Prepare them to make good decisions so they can make the best possible life for themselves.
—Epictetus