Possible disadvantages of giving children too much choice

It is an article of faith for many British home educators that their children should have as much freedom as possible to direct their own lives. It is taken as axiomatic that this freedom to decide upon what is learned, how time is spent and even upon such things as bedtimes is a good thing for the child. I have been thinking this over since my daughter's friend came to stay from America. This girl is twenty one and was raised in a completely free way; not attending school and with a huge amount of responsibility for her own life, starting from when she was a small child. I have to say at once that this lifestyle does not seem to have done her any harm from an educational perspective. She is now at a good university and has no trouble in organising her life and learning. There is a slight problem though and it is one which I have observed with other children raised in this way, whether home educated or schooled.

Many liberal parents, even if they send their children to school, try to give them as much control as possible over their lives in other ways. they allow them to choose what to eat, how they spend their leisure time, what they wear, when they go to bed and a million other things. These choices sometimes start very young; I know parents who allow their three year olds to dictate the course of their lives to a large extent. I suspect that many readers will at this point be nodding their heads approvingly and muttering to themselves, 'Yes, so what?' Young children like to have familiar routines. these are comforting to them; they know what to expect. With the family where the child is in control of matters like bedtime and what he does with his time, such routines can be absent. More than that, a child who has so much power can become scared. Often, he does not really know how to exercise this power and it all becomes a bit much for him. Besides, young children should not have to worry about deciding what they will be eating or studying. This is in any case the adult's job and it can be very disconcerting for a child to have to make decisions of this sort.

I have observed that those children in our own circle who were raised in this way, being allowed lots of choices and making decisions all the time, seem to be more neurotic and anxious than those raised in a more conventional way. This is not of course a scientific survey, I am just thinking the matter over! My daughter's friend is extremely neurotic and I talked to her about her childhood. She says that she felt unhappy as a child at having to make a lot of decisions. She felt that her parents were not in control and this was a scary feeling. This makes sense to me, because most children like to feel that their parents know everything and can always decide what to do for the best. Mind, I am not saying that this is proof of anything. For one thing a circumstance which I have not mentioned is that this young woman's mother is a child psychologist. It is a very strange thing, but I have noticed over the years that the children of specialists in childhood problems always seem to be a lot weirder than other people's kids. One of our friends was a child psychiatrist and his kids were so awful that nobody would ever babysit for him.

I have an idea that it makes children uneasy if they have not got a loving adult nearby who always knows what is best and usually tells them what they should do. I would not be at all surprised if this was a recipe for anxiety and neurosis, because instead of simply enjoying childhood such children are constantly being bombarded with choices and decisions. 'Shall I wear my red shirt or my blue one? Or shall I wear something else? Should I clean my teeth? Do I want toast or cereal? If cereal, which kind?' A great part of the pleasure of growing up is the gradual acquisition of power over one's life. For a four year old, a familiar routine and not being worried over too many choices is probably the best thing psychologically. Because for many children, these choices are a worry and I have observed that some grow up a little odd about making choices in later life.

I am not laying down any dogma here, rather mulling over what I have observed about the children whom I have known and worked with. And I have to say that those from 'progressive', middle class homes where Penelope leach was the Bible seem to me to have been on the whole more highly strung and anxious from those where more conventional and authoritative child rearing practices were the norm. There is a reason why for most of recorded hsitory parents have been authority figures and before we ditch that archetype I think that we should be very sure that a new system is as good for our children as the old one.

Giving choices to children

For me, one of the greatest things about home education has been the opportunity to give my daughter the widest possible range of choices in her life. When a child is two or three, it is quite impossible to know what direction her interests will lie in. Will she want to be a carpenter? A doctor? A writer? Nobody can tell. When children are taught at home, it is of course far easier to arrange for a variety of experiences and activities so that they can find out what they enjoy doing, perhaps get some idea what they might want to do in later life. As an example, to this end I took my daughter to the Royal College of Surgeons Pathology department when she was five and showed her the body parts there and let her examine the preserved corpses. She did not care over much for this. I got her to dissect hearts and livers of animals when she was a bit older, which was helpful for the IGCSE Biology examination. As a result of all this, she decided against medicine as a possible career, which was a pity!

At other times, I made it possible for her to help a garage mechanic at work, fire a shotgun, go down a couple of mines, stroke a tiger and crocodile, as well as a huge number of other things. Always, the aim was for her to discover what she liked, what she herself wished to do. At the same time that all these activities were taking place, I was providing her with the tools which would enable her to make the most of her abilities. She was very early in speaking and adored books from an early age. Obviously it would give her pleasure to be able read books independently, rather than be reliant upon me or her mother. Accordingly, I taught her to read. This was not a tricky job and by her second birthday she was reading fluently. This enormously increased her chances of finding out what she liked, what she was interested in. She could look at reference books and find out stuff for herself. This again freed her and gave her the power to choose for herself what she wished to read about. Teaching her to write allowed her to put down her thoughts and ideas in permanent form. This has been important to her since she was three or four.

By the age of eleven, she was talking about going to university when she was older. Of course, she could easily have changed her mind, but it seemed a wise move to keep her options open. A child of that age cannot really be expected to know what will be needed to get a place at college or university. As an adult, that was my job. I therefore chose a fairly broad range of IGCSEs such as would be likely to impress a university if that was still what she wished to do when she was eighteen. At the same time, I made sure that they were the sort of qualifications which would also impress an employer. Covering all bases again, you see. Physics, Chemistry and Biology were obvious choices, as were English Language and Mathematics. As for the rest, I thought History and English Literature would be interesting for her. She also wanted to study Religion, so at the last moment I also included that. The purpose of taking these examinations was always to make sure that she had as many choices open to her as possible. Imagine if she had reached her sixteenth birthday, wanted to take four A levels in order to get into a decent university and then found that no college would accept her without GCSEs! This would restrict her options greatly.

Underpinning all my work with my child's education has been the awareness that she alone must decide the course her own future. To do this though, she needs enough knowledge to make an informed choice. The amount of knowledge needed has changed as she has grown older. Being literate increased enormously the information available to her and therefore made it possible for her to make more and better choices. Without the ability to read, children are often dependent upon their parents and other adults for information. This is not a good thing, because the adults around them may have motives of their own for wanting their children's access to information to be restricted. Being a fluent reader from a young age also opened up vistas for my daughter. It was reading "Brideshead Revisited" when she was twelve which caused her to decide that she would like to go to Oxford!

I have sometimes been accused of believing that the way that I educated my daughter is the only true path and that I see other parents as foolish and negligent. This is of course absolute nonsense. I am very strongly committed to young people being able to make their own choices. Ignorant, ill-informed and illiterate people though, are not generally well placed to make good choices. This is why I find so much of the cant about childrens' "choice" to be a little hollow and unconvincing. Without a proper base of knowledge and skills there can be no real choice.