> When I ask him what he wants to do he says "I don't know"
A blogger I read a while ago (I completely forget who) wrote something about this that stuck with me: if you ask a kid if they want pancakes or cereal for breakfast, they'll pick one and be delighted. If you ask them what they'd like to have without presenting options, this can lead to a complete meltdown. Picking from infinite options, forcing them to think all of them up and then turn down n-1 of them... It can be too much for a kid.
Give kids a small number of diverse options where you also approve of all of them. Everyone is pretty happy with the decision. (This system maybe also works really well with adults.)
Eh. I'm a teacher these days, and it works with real kids. With my own kids, who know the range of possibility and aren't quite so believing in my authority as that of a real teacher, it's still effective but less so.
[It works to get class buy-in, even if you are offering meh choice A and awful choice B. A class that has chosen "A" will be more engaged doing it than if you just told them to do A...
but you'd better be ready to do 'B' if the class decides to be contrarian. Once, they really wanted to do the quiz to show that they really -do- know what we've been doing, and if I hadn't had the quiz prepped and ready I'd have been in trouble...]
Might it simply be the social setting that makes it work in a class and not with your own kids? At a work offsite I'm happy enough to choose between a walking tour or a brewery visit as mandatory fun, but if I'm the same city with my wife we're probably gonna do something different
Has literally never worked with my kids (now aged 17 and 13) fwiw.
> Might it simply be the social setting that makes it work in a class and not with your own kids?
Oh, totally. It does work with my kids somewhat, but there has to be at least a minimal reason for constraint and at least some desirability of the options. At school, constraint is expected and things that are not entirely fun are tolerated.
Asking A or B for breakfast as someone else pointed out, when they're not interested in eating, isn't going to do anything.
Also--my wife and I do the "A or B --- or -you- propose something" with each other. Prevents just absently saying "nah" to a long list of options.
It doesn't with mine, I'm afraid. I frequently give them 1-3 options and they shoot them all down (even pancakes?!). Eventually I give up and ask them what they want, and they still don't know, or just want to eat nothing.
It’s because they’ve learned that they can say no and you’ll keep coming up with more options. They’ve exited the game because you created the exit by failing to enforce the boundary.
Yeah I've experienced this when I was young.
My mom was running a daycare at home, and I would sometimes try to help at lunchtime.
Me: <Kid's name>, do you want apple juice? No. Do you want orange juice? No. Do you want grape juice? No. Well that's all we've got, which one do you prefer? None, I want something else. ... and obviously whatever we had would not do.
My mom who saw I was not efficient enough: Okay <kid's name> do you want apple or orange juice? Orange.
My first reaction was "but I already suggested it", but I got better after a while.
OK, sure, offering a choice of what to eat when they're not excited about the idea of eating isn't going to generate a response. I almost never ate breakfast as a kid... unless there was leftover cake or something I could sneak...
A blogger I read a while ago (I completely forget who) wrote something about this that stuck with me: if you ask a kid if they want pancakes or cereal for breakfast, they'll pick one and be delighted. If you ask them what they'd like to have without presenting options, this can lead to a complete meltdown. Picking from infinite options, forcing them to think all of them up and then turn down n-1 of them... It can be too much for a kid.
Give kids a small number of diverse options where you also approve of all of them. Everyone is pretty happy with the decision. (This system maybe also works really well with adults.)