Help Your Tween Make Really Good Choices

Dear Mom and Dad,

You know how important making right choices is for your life… but what about your children? What are you doing to train them in how to make right choices for themselves? Well, we’ve got three suggestions for showing your preteen boys and girls how to make really good choices.

1. Try to involve your tween in the decision-making process. If possible, sit down together with a snack. Approach your time as a heart-to-heart talk. In the end, the final say on the decisions will be yours, but you can at least help your tween understand the “why” of the decision.
2. Walk your tween through the process you use in making choices, like prayer, seeking counsel, finding out what God’s Word says about the choice. Openly pray with your child, and encourage them to pray too. Then open the Bible and look together at what God says about the choice.
3. Help your tween understand that choices always have consequences. With each option, show them what would happen with each decision: A good choice will lead in this direction, and a bad choice in another direction. Then ask your child, based on what God says about this choice, which choice do you think you should make?

One day your children will be out on their own, making their right or wrong choices. How relieved and thankful you will be when you see them making godly choices because you took the time to show them exactly how right choices—God’s choices—are made.

Read Help Your Tween Make Really Good Choices on Elizabeth & Jim George.