Simple Yet Effective Strategies to Build Your Child’s Decision-Making Skills
posted on Jul 16, 2025
Gurukul The School, one of the top schools in Ghaziabad, have been making concentrated efforts towards exposing children to activities beyond academics, where they are required to work in groups
Decision-making is a life skill that can take children a long way in life. In fact, organisations such as UNICEF have been stressing the need to involve children in decision-making, as these children shall soon go on to become stakeholders who will make important decisions to shape the future of their respective economies.
Owing to the same, we at Gurukul The School, one of the top schools in Ghaziabad, have been making concentrated efforts towards exposing children to activities beyond academics, where they are required to work in groups, communicate, collaborate, and come to decision consensus. In today’s blog post, let us explore effective strategies that we are certain can help your children become excellent decision-makers.
- Encourage Your Kids to Make Age-Appropriate Decisions:
If you want your children to be great decision-makers, you must first detach them from the fear of making decisions. Similarly, it is important that you teach them not to be obsessed with the outcome of their decisions, even in cases where their decisions fail to deliver the desired results.
To achieve this end, you, as parents, have to take the lead and allow your children to make decisions, particularly age-appropriate ones. It can be something as simple as deciding what snack they would like to have in their mealbox. In the process, children are certain to become clear and confident decision-makers.
- Promote Reflective Thinking:
At Gurukul The School, we encourage our students to make fearless decisions, even if it involves making mistakes. To cope with their mistakes, we then introduce them to reflective thinking, which involves asking oneself questions, such as, “What are the possible reasons behind this decision going wrong?” or “How can I improve this same decision in the future?”
We believe when we, adults, act in this manner, it not only prepares children to make smart decisions in the future but also ensures that they are not bogged down by decisions that unfortunately could not pan out in their favour.
- Stress on the Decision-Making Process:
If you are desirous of grooming your children to become efficient decision-makers, you need to explain to them the importance of having a foolproof decision-making process in place. This shall essentially involve teaching them the criticality of weighing the pros and cons of every decision they make.
Doing so shall polish children’s analytical skills, ultimately showing them the way ahead as far as making decisions is concerned.
Here, we at Gurukul The School would like to keep parents reminded that if you want your children to stand out as excellent decision-makers, you must first work on being good decision-makers yourselves. Why? Because there is a lot that children learn from observing their parents.
If you as a parent are in the habit of making abrupt and impulsive decisions without giving things enough thought, it is time to be concerned, for your children are likely to mirror your behaviour. On the other hand, if you choose to be mindful about every decision you make while being vocal about the process you followed to arrive at your decision, your children are sure to model good decision-making. This surely counts as a simple and effective decision-making strategy, doesn’t it?
- Speak About Emotional Play:
As adults, we make countless decisions that somehow end up going wrong. And then, when we sit down to analyse, we figure out that in most cases, strong emotions like anger and over-excitement were the root cause of it all.
This is exactly why it becomes important to teach children to keep their emotions at bay when making decisions because overpowering emotions can often come in the way of sane decision-making.
Decision-Making is a Superpower Every Child Deserves to Possess:
All this while, if you have been big on raising curious, independent thinkers, we recommend you give undivided attention to teaching your children the fundamentals of decision-making. Confused about where to start? We recommend you put the above-mentioned simple and effective strategies into play.
Just keep in mind that it is completely normal for children to falter at first. At Gurukul The School, ranked among the top schools in Ghaziabad, we believe learning to make decisions takes time; mistakes are a part of the journey. However, with your encouragement and with consistent practice, your kids will gradually grow more confident and capable of making the right decisions. As parents, your role is to walk beside them, providing them with the necessary support and reassurance. Guide them when needed, and then gradually hand over the charge so they learn to trust their own judgment. After all, the real goal is not just to help children make the right choices but to help them believe they can!