Giving Your Child Options
Hey parents. My name is Denny Strecker. And I’m the chief instructor at Skillz Dynamic Martial Arts. And for the past 30 years, I’ve had the pleasure and the honor of working with hundreds and hundreds of great kids in our community of Troy Michigan and helping the parents become better parents.
One of the tips I wanted to talk about today is giving your child choices. All too often, when I’m talking to a family, the parent will turn to the child and they’ll say something like,
“Well, do you want to try karate” or anything else depending on the circumstance?
What I’d like to see is basically giving your child an option where what we call an A or a B choice versus a “yes” or a “no” choice. What happens is if you give your child a “yes” or a “no” choice, normally you want them to choose “Yes”, and you are anticipating or expecting them to choose “Yes”. Unfortunately, all too often they are going to choose “no” and as soon as they do, you have a debate or an argument on your hands because you have asked them and they have told you what they want. So now you’ve got to try and grab them, pull them over to the Yes side. And it becomes a lot more stressful in the conversation. A much better option that I use all the time at our karate school with my ninjas, is the A or the B option, “Do you want to start karate today? Or do you want to start next Monday.” So at that point, you’re telling the child that we’re going to be doing this, but you get a say in the process or a vote about how it’s going to happen. Sometimes my ninjas will even catch me and I will trip them up a little bit, What color ring Do you want today? Do you want the red one or the red one?
They understand and they know that you’re giving me the same choice. Yes, but I’m still giving you a choice. So instead of just saying Here, take this ring, we turned it into a fun little game. So you really want to spend some time thinking about when you are talking to your child, don’t give them “yes” or “no” options. Figure out a better way to give them an “A” or a “B” so that way you don’t have to argue and be so stressed when your child doesn’t give you the answer that you are looking for.
This is just one of the great tips that we use here at the karate school all the time. If you found this information useful, I would love for you to share it with other parents and or do me a favor like and comment down below with any other tips or comments that you’d like me to talk about in the future. Have a great day.