Special Topic: Developing Decision Making

In recent years, conversations about teen learning have opened up to considering executive functions.  Depending on who is involved, I have heard such conversations quickly jump to key terms like prefrontal cortex and cognitive flexibility, while also hearing conversations (sometimes the same ones unfortunately) reduce executive functioning to a matter of organization.  It’s much more than that.  One key consideration to keep top of mind is decision making, and an important decision for adults is determining ways to support decision-making’s development among teens.  Modeling our own thinking is one promising route.

Writing about experiences with her own parents, Dr. Angela Duckworth encouraged adults to “show the process” when it comes to making decisions, and she pointed to research that reinforces the power of “observational learning.”  A key takeaway seems to be that learners benefit from observing others apply knowledge as they think through decisions.  This is what Duckworth gets at regarding showing the process.  

As teens build their knowledge of the world, they will further benefit from an inside look at how others think through decision-making’s nuances.  This is decidedly more than simply a learning-by-doing or trial-and-error approach.  We may often hear that we learn from our mistakes, but we must also realize that the specific takeaways are not always straightforward.  Learning from those mistakes relies on the individual’s effective reflection on the experience, which can be a fuzzy matter and cannot be taken for granted as something in which teens will engage.  Modeling one’s navigation of that fuzziness, showing how different paths and factors are considered amid unclear scenarios, creates a frame of reference for teens to then engage in similar activity.  Among other things, it shows a process for thinking through decisions and reinforces the reality that many questions will lack an obvious answer.  

Keep an eye out for moments in which you’re making decisions, particularly tough ones.  Those will be promising moments to make the thinking process clear to your child.  Rather than a direct lecture, modeling will be a time to live through a bit of the decision process with you, creating a mental touchpoint for their own decisions down the road.