Guilt-Free Decision Making: Part 1

When my kids were little, I found myself paralyzed by making parenting decisions. What did I really believe? Did my parenting decisions support those beliefs? Did it matter what my friends, other parents, or far-flung experts would think, or was that just background noise muddying up the issue? Every situation seemed so fraught with importance: make the wrong choice, miss a “teachable moment”, fail to decide fast enough, and my kids would take the fall for it.

Five or six years in, I began realizing that no one decision is as important as we moms sometimes make it to be. We have hundreds–no, thousands–of chances to get it right, wrong, or right-enough-for-us. And it’s not any one day or decision or event that shapes motherhood, but the whole picture.

That said, I know how hard it is to struggle with decisions because I still do it sometimes (increasingly now because we’re moving into pre-adolescence: uncharted territory for me). I’ve been working on a ten-step method to guilt-free decision making for the last couple of years, and want to share it now. I’ll post the first five steps here, and the next five steps in a few days, and then expand on each step in future posts.

So without further ado, here is part 1 of my “The Happiest Mom’s 10 Steps to Guilt-Free Decision Making”

1. What do you want to do?
Most of the time, you can stop right here. I’m serious! I’m sure you’ve heard that 90% of the time your first answer on a test is the right one…it’s the second-guessing yourself that causes mistakes. I think motherhood is the same way. The first instinct is almost always right, and it’s only when real (not imagined) obstacles and disagreements get in the way that you have to go further than that.

2. Is there an obstacle? Is it real?
Assuming your gut is telling you to go with a certain choice, is there an obstacle to that choice? Is it real?

Valid obstacles might include a disagreement between yourself and your baby’s father over a decision, the need to do additional research, that the decision affecting you or the rest of your family negatively, or that the decision appears to go against your religious beliefs or accepted scientific fact.

A dissenting friend, relative, or parenting expert you don’t know or respect and who doesn’t know you is probably not a valid obstacle.

Imagined future criticism (What might “they” think?) is not a valid obstacle.

It can be hard to move past the voices in your head, especially if you’re feeling vulnerable or insecure about a parenting decision because you fear negative feedback or some other consequence. But as your confidence grows, you’ll start to understand that you can’t please everybody all of the time, and some people can never be pleased. If you’ve gotten this far and determined that the only obstacles were the negative voices in your head, you’ve gone far enough! If not, and you have a real conflict, move on to #3.

3. Who has the conflict? (your beliefs vs science, one kid vs the other, etc)
If you’ve determined that there’s a valid obstacle, figure out where the basic conflict lies.

Your gut instinct versus science:
Studies and research can be helpful when making a decision, but they often don’t tell the whole story. You and your family are not a statistic. Make decisions with your own situation front and center.

You and your partner:
Figure out if he’s actually dissenting or just wants to have his opinion heard. In some families, husbands and wives put an equal amount of time and effort into researching and making decisions for their kids. In other families, one parent puts in the bulk of the effort. If your partnership is like the latter, it can be frustrating to suddenly hear disapproval or criticism of a choice. You might think “well, where were you when I was doing all the reading?” But resist the urge to turn a parenting decision into a fight over who does more. Allow your partner to express his opinions and thoughts, and when possible, table the issue (it’s almost always possible except in the case of a life-threatening health concern) and bring it back up later. You may be pleasantly surprised to see that, once he’s been allowed to express himself, he’s no longer as invested in the decision you ultimately make.

The family unit has conflicting needs
Let’s say you found, and are excited about, a private school for your oldest child. But paying for the tuition will mean you’ll have to put off preschool for your youngest child. How can you choose between the two? Who will be most drastically helped or harmed by the decision? This is a very valid obstacle and one that sometimes leads to surprising choices. I have a general rule in my home that I put the needs of the group above the need of any one person, but there are always exceptions.

Opposing sets of values
Sometimes decisions don’t come easily because you try to apply somebody else’s values to your own process. And sometimes you may actually have two values that seem to conflict with one another. Before you can make decisions that work for you and your family, you have to take the time to get really clear about what your values are, and then prioritize them.

4. Clarify values and priorities.
For instance, a mom who highly prioritizes paying for her child’s college education may make a different choice about working outside the home than a mom who believes that a single full-time caregiver is crucial for an infant’s development. Don’t see judgment in the word “values”. A value is simply something you assign importance to in your life. Don’t confuse a value with a moral.

Try writing down your top five parenting values, then put them in order of priority to you. Again, there’s no right or wrong here. The jury is still out on what the single most important factors are to a child’s well-being. Instead, what we know is that a diverse set of characteristics–love, consistency, self-expression, honesty, trust, learning, attachment, etc—positively affect kids as they grow. Thing is, you can’t prioritize them all in every situation. Sometimes showing affection trumps consistency. Sometimes financial stability trumps time spent together. Sometimes time spent together trumps opportunities for educational enrichment. You can’t possibly do it all, but you can figure out what’s most important to you and your family. That way you’ll have a blueprint that will make it easier to make parenting decisions going forward. Just be flexible: even if a specific vaue is high on your priority list, that doesn’t mean it has to trump in every single situation.

5. Do a reality check. Once you’ve clarified your values and prioritized them in order of importance, consider how this decision will support or go against your personal values. Your decision should support at least one value. This could be as simple as deciding to give your child an ice cream cone because you value making happy, fun memories as much as you value health. Bottom line: any decision you make should satisfy something that’s important to you.

Look for the next five steps sometime next week. But in the meantime, I’d love to hear from you. Have you ever imagined an obstacle where none existed? What are your primary parenting values? Have you ever tried to apply somebody else’s values to your own parenting? What happened?