Empower Your Child’s Future: Let Them Make Choices

In Texas, schools must discuss support and services that address self-determination. Self-determination is just a fancy name for controlling your own life.

One way a child works on self-determination is by making their own choices. Are you helping your child make choices? Are you supporting those choices even if the choice might lead to failure? I know I am guilty of doing things for my son instead of letting him do them for himself. 

We all learn by doing. For my son to learn, I must let him make choices even if I disagree with them. Often, a good question to ask yourself is, “Would I do this for my child without a disability?”

The Texas Transition Network created a great tool that can help. It is called Next Steps to Independence. The tool gives families an idea of which skills their child should have at each age, from birth through adulthood. It also offers strategies to build those skills. 

There are four categories: Making Choices, Goal Setting, Self-awareness and Self-advocacy. Parents can check off skills their children have or do not have. The tool may also help you discover skills that need to be addressed within your child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP). 

In our family, we started to encourage our son to make more of his own decisions. Honoring the clothing choices he made every day helped him learn how to dress for the day’s weather. Allowing him to choose classes where he did not succeed helped him learn what he was good at. Giving him more than one option for household tasks helped him learn how to do more as an adult. 

The important thing to remember is that you don’t have to do everything for your child. Encourage them to make choices. It will help them in the future. 

Learn more on the Helping Your Child Build Their Independence page on this website.