Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Inability to make up one's mind - gifted trait?

My 7 year old has been unable to make up his mind for the past 2 years. I am not even talking about big decisions. The small ones - like shoes or crocs to go outside, shower or bath, sandwich or pizza for lunch etc. etc. Usually, after I ask these questions, there is no reply. After a while I ask him to be respectful and answer my question and he replies with "I am thinking about it". If I asked him something else that was more important - like do you want to sign up for robotics camp or art camp for summer, that would probably take him a month to decide. He was not like that until he turned 5 years old. He was quick and precise and knew what he wanted. But, the older he gets, the more difficult it is for him to make choices. He is very good at answering quizzes in school, but it he gets a problem that requires him to analyze data, it takes him forever to figure out what conclusions he wants to make.
Frankly, it is annoying for me, especially for the really small stuff, though I try to prod him along gently by reminding him of the possibilities - e.g. since he ate a sandwich yesterday for lunch, maybe he could try something else for lunch today etc.
Is this a gifted trait? Or is it just phase at this age? TIA.

Giftedness -> Perfectionism -> Procrastination/Indecision

I would use a combination of natural consequences/deadlines, parental-imposed consequences/deadlines, and parental choice (taking the decision out of his hands), depending on the situation. Talking through the decision making process and friendly reminders of impending deadlines can help, as can reminders that the decision doesn't have to be perfect.

Ohhhhh, I have one like that. Actually, my "easier," less intense child (the more intense one is extremely decisive...good luck changing her mind...and that, too, has its challenges) is that way...and it is a maddening trait. DS6's perfectionism seems to also include the need to make a perfect decision...I can sympathize with it, but at times it makes our lives (sigh) insane.

I have gotten to the point where I try to talk him through why he feels as though each might be a good decision, and then I almost point him to a decision (but I try to make it his idea)...because he seems to almost need that. It has helped. A bit.

Isn't living with gifted kiddos interesting?

But that forces him to think about what he wants for lunch. It is faster to operate by rote. I had a peanut butter sandwich, milk, and Hershey bar every day for lunch in elementary school, so I never had to think about it .

Sounds like the Buridan's Ass paradox.

Limit the choices.

Yes. This was my brother. I think slow processing speed and ADHD can also exacerbate this in a gifted kid. I don't think this is a respect issue.

I can't say that it's a gifted trait or a phase because I don't think it is. However, I do have one child who sometimes wants to palm off certain decisions on me. For the most part except for trivial stuff, I don't allow it given his age. He has also expressed a desire to have all his outfits exactly the same because it's too much trouble to have to match clothes or figure out what to wear. He did go through a stage in first grade where he would appear in the same outfit every Saturday; it took me a while to notice the trend. I think part of it is not wanting to take the time to think about stuff that are unimportant to him. The other part is not wanting to be responsible for making the "wrong" decision.

I personally do this myself. I don't know when it started, and I wouldn't call it a gifted trait, per se, but it seems like small decisions are the worst almost. For me I think the biggest problem is that it's always like I'm "missing" the other choice if I don't choose it -- for example, if I eat the sandwich, would I wish I had had pizza? What if I don't eat pizza again for a while? What if....? It's not like I get anxious over it or anything; it's just more like, "Well, but I COULD...".
I think what works best is either saying " We had x yesterday so let's have y today", or helping to reframe the decision by reminding him either option will work, maybe making a list of pros and con's if it's a big decision. My mother always told me it's not a lifetime decision. At least, ice cream isn't.

One of my sibs went through a phase like this, too, where the answer to any non-factual question was "I don't know". In retrospect, I think it was the awareness that it is impossible to have all of the information about any one situation, such that one can definitively make the "right" decision. I seem to recall that it stopped around the time college started...I wonder if moving on to an instructional setting that acknowledged uncertainty helped.

I do think that it is a good idea to emphasize that, most of the time, we are choosing from two good options.

And for myself, you should see me trying to pick something from a menu...

Just jumping on the "oh yes, do I know paralyzed by decisions" bandwagon. No solutions, but listening hard.

I was never given choices about food or clothes until I was old enough to buy my own. if you tell him stuff rather than asking it won't hurt him.

DD is like this. Then again, I can be too. To some extent, anxiety is involved (what if I make the wrong choice?) However, DD is also quite particular and highly aesthetic and enjoys weighing options (for instance, she likes to shop and to think about party planning). But it can be a problem, for sure.

For older children (and adults!) a tool like Pinterest can help organize decision-making.

Have you tried making a decision tree together for some of these choices to bound the decision? It might be slow the first time or two, but giving him a systematic way to analyze a decision might help downstream. Keep your probabilities simple.

Great thread. You've received wonderful replies and I'll just add that while it may be good for kids to begin practicing small decisions now in preparation for making larger decisions later, to keep slow decision making from being annoying for a parent, you may wish to consider stating which option will be the "default" if he doesn't answer within x minutes.

This introduces another lesson - which some might call "window of opportunity", or "strike while the iron is hot", or "the show must go on", or "not making a decision IS making a decision", or "analysis paralysis".

Aquinas already mentioned decision trees and probabilities. I like those as well as any other decision making tools especially ones where I can calculate the best decision.

Now, I also like to analyze time efficiency. Often, I can be prone to want to come up with the optimum solution to some problem, but as soon as I realize it must be the optimum solutions within a time domain I can break free of the perfection trap. I do think it is good for kids (and adults to have adequate time to make decisions that are important), but that can not be an unreasonable amount of time.

My kids went through phases like this - I don't think it was necessarily related to giftedness as I've seen other kids go through it too. With mine, I think it was more simply not being interested in the decision. I am fairly certain that most of the time I was asking my kids if they'd decided yet they had actually moved on and were thinking about something else entirely but just said "I'm thinking about it" as a standard go-to answer.

Limiting decisions is one way to deal with it - giving a child choices is a good thing, but they don't need to be given choices on a large # of things. If it's a decision your child does need to make, give them a time limit and remind them to make the decision.

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - fwiw, my kids didn't really have choices like what's for lunch or which shoes to wear outside at 7 years old. The choices they had at that age were more along the lines of what toy to play with, what game to play, what friend they wanted to have a playdate with etc.

My personal observations with this type of behavior tell me three things: it's not specific to giftedness (though the gifted proclivity to perfectionism makes it more likely), it's not something one necessarily grows out of, and it can become a limiting factor in future success. I'm most easily able to observe this behavior in the technology field, where you find people who are unable to successfully diagnose hardware/software problems, because they are so afraid of breaking things further that they require significant handholding and never take a single step forward in the troubleshooting process on their own. They find themselves sidelined, and do not advance in their careers.

So, I would recommend taking this seriously as a potential problem, and addressing it at an early age.

Apart from the many strategies for addressing perfectionism in general, for this specific problem I'd add one: give him a time limit, and once he exceeds it, choose for him... and if you know he has a preference, choose the one he'd like least. So if you know he likes baths over showers, choose shower. When he immediately protests, tell him it's too late, and let him experience the consequences of failing to choose in a timely manner.

If you're not certain of a preference, then choose the one that's more convenient for you.

I think this is a gifted trait. My DS16 does something similar. He won't answer the question "what is your favorite" or other vague prompts that expect you to make a random choice. For years he couldn't answer it.. period. He would freeze and not answer or not write anything. Teachers LOVE to use this as a prompt for writing and he often just freezes and can't write anything. It's taken YEARS to get him to not take the question literally. It's especially bad when it's something he really doesn't care about like "what is your favorite sport".

Over & over I've explained and had other teachers and professionals explain that it is a prompt to get him to say something. The teacher really couldn't care less if it's really his favorite he just needs to find something social acceptable to respond, or if it's a writing assignment that it's a subject he is comfortable writing about. If it's a person trying for an ice-breaker it's perfectly OK to say you don't have a favorite.

Yup.

Of the three gifties in my house, DD and I are the ones that do this.

Could be that it is LOG, could be it's a major aversion to black-and-white thinking, could be that it's perfectionism, and it's possible that it's just a personality quirk.

I will say that this kind of over-analysis tends to be a really detrimental feature in many educational settings which use T/F, cloze, or multiple-choice assessments. Because the more you know, the harder the questions get, see...

In the case of little insignificant things, though, DD and I neither one have any trouble at all-- it's only when we are MISSING information necessary to make a larger decision that has definite consequences that we begin to have trouble.

I'm another me too. A recurring event from my childhood was standing at the register in a store where my mom was waiting for me to pick a candy bar frozen like a deer in headlights. She eventually would say say I had to the count of three or I wouldn't get any, and I would pick at random, and often ended up a little disappointed. Looking back, I may have a solution. I think what kind of sandwich do you want isn't a thinking kind of question, it's a feeling one. I was a very cerebral kid, and tried to analyze everything, but was not really in the world the way some people are. Mindfullness, and sensory and emotional awareness let us know what we like. I was almost 30 before I had any idea that I liked anything other than problem solving reading books drawing and swimming. I knew what i didnt like, but everything else take it or leave it.Im pretty sure those skills can be taught, and the how to make a decision advice is probably inappropriate for this particular kind of situTion. Better is to pick at random, then get him to really pay attention to eating Which ever, and how it makes him FEEL.

My DD10 is highly prone to perfectionism, and she's always been very decisive in picking outfits or ordering from a menu, so I'd check that one off the list. I lean to "personality quirk", in which the individual is agonizing over picking the best possible of too many options, given too many unknowns.

That seems to be what's going on with DW, our family's only bad menu orderer. Way too many times she has agonized over a menu, narrowed her options to the thing I picked or choice B, ordered B, compared our dishes, and engaged in self-recriminating regret when my choice turned out to be "better," even when her food was perfectly good (and when her dish was not well-executed... yikes!). She'd be a lot happier if she just ordered whatever I do, but she still keeps playing this game.

DD, on the other hand, is perfectly content to learn that someone ordered something she'd prefer, enjoy her own meal, and take note of it for next time.

DD8 would make a full analysis of options including a pro and con list, a checklist, a timeline, a floor plan, a sketch, an informational poster, some art and a poem about every decision if she could. But if she can't (which is most of the time, because, come on) she'll just decide straight away and move on.
I will decide straight away and move on because I'm very lazy and impatient.
DH cannot make decisions. I think he gets stuck secretly making pro and con lists, checklists, timelines, floor plans, sketches, posters, art and poems in his head

Okay, that last part....really just summed up everything for me. I mean, I always know I don't want to paint that room blue, and I don't want green or yellow but....then what do I want? I never know what I actually want, just what I don't.
And that's so true for me about the thinking/feeling thing, or at least sometimes. Because it's like, do I FEEL like this or like this? Not just if I feel like I want pizza or a sandwich (although of course that's another thing), but do I feel lunch-y and nostalgic like the pb&j or do I feel happy and carefree like pizza? And then I ask other people what I should do when I can't decide, and they stare at me like Can't you make your own choices? And how do you FEEL lunch like that?
At least I know it's not just me. Hope that made sense BTW - maybe that last part IS just me. :-)