Making decisions is difficult. Weighing the options available and selecting the path that is best is not without anxiety. My philosophy has always been to allow a child to make as many decisions as possible as they grow up, with the hope that when the child is an adult, the early experience will lead to better decision making.
Once I was driving to a company wide meeting in a car with four fellow managers. During the drive of four hours, one of the managers talked on the phone 16 times to her children. There was no crisis. My friend was not allowing her children to make decisions about anything. There were calls about the color of the shower curtain in her apartment, and questions about courses, all questions that should have been handled and decided by the child. These children were all in college or graduate school. I did not endear myself to my friend by suggesting that she was harming the kids down the road. Her response was to say somewhat superciliously, "We are a close family so we like to keep in touch". Pure bull. It was all about her.
Kate and Mary Frances, who are 16 and 13, were asked by me, to select the restaurants each Sunday for Brunch. They did an excellent job, looking up on the Internet for restaurants, then reading the reviews. Today they chose a restaurant that was new to all of us, which I thought brave. It was a new Spanish restaurant, called Babano, where they served tapas. The girls selected the restaurant and made the reservations. Now the girls are skilled at what I do best, which is selecting a restaurant, then making reservations. It is a most useful skill!!
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