Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy "I don't know" and "ok"

I attempted to have a conversation with DD (just turned 14) today about classes next year in 10th. As usual, I heard a lot of "I don't know." This is a phrase many kids use, but it's excessive with DD. We almost never can get an answer for what she wants for dinner. "I don't know." is likely the answer. Tonight I was trying to discuss whether she really wished to go on a more math centered track. "I don't know." she says. I state she has claimed she does not like math in the past. "Ok." And then she puts her head under the pillow and says, "Good night."

This is one example of what we face every week. I have even asked what colors she likes, and she will remark, "I don't know." If I ask a couple more questions, she will say, "Ok. Good night." and put her head face down on the pillow. Her inability to make a decision is painful. I sometimes cannot even get her to decide what time to bake cookies.

All the strategies that I know of that work for most parent/ kids interactions to get kids to think through choices and consequences have yet to work with DD.It feels like anxiety plays a part, but I'd welcome thoughts, suggestions.

Usually when someone initiates a conversation, they may have given the topic some thought, possibly even come up with a few potential scenarios for discussion.

Other parties invited into the conversation may or may not have thought about the topic, and therefore may be starting from scratch.

Sometimes it may be helpful to introduce your topic, ask if the person has thoughts on the topic, ask if this is a good time to discuss, and/or share the due date or deadline for decision-making and plan ahead to discuss before the final decision is due. To help spark thinking, you might share the thoughts or scenarios which have occurred to you. The idea is to role-model thinking/planning/decision making processes without imposing undue pressure, and to encourage and affirm the child sharing his/her thoughts.

While some teens may be quite self-absorbed, others' minds may be busy thinking about big concepts, and therefore rarely focus on themselves and what they like. If this might apply, one idea to encourage a healthy degree of positive focus on personal preferences, is creating lists or collections of favorite things in a pretty notebook, journal, sketchpad, or as photos on a smart phone: a personal scrapbook version of pinterest, free from the scrutiny of others. To role model this, you might also make collections yourself, and/or have all family members make collections and have time for sharing whatever a person wishes to share from their collections. A fun conversation starter: What do you like about it?

Having general conversations with open-ended questions about material things in the physical world such as vacation destinations, clothing styles, shoes, accessories, colors... may help guide her to think about what she likes, without feeling like she is under a microscope to provide an answer. For example, when shopping in stores or online, you might wonder aloud:
- How does the Pantone color-of-the-year (2019 = Living Coral) compare with padparadscha, with millennial pink? (Do you notice a lot of items in these colors, recently?)
- If your kiddo likes to cook or bake: What do you think of the current colors of the Kitchen-Aid stand mixers? (Do you remember the colors offered a few years ago?)

Conversations about entertainers or professional athletes, their volunteerism, and the causes they support may also help kids realize what they like, value, and feel affinity for.

In my observation and experience, this helps build a bridge to successful decision-making.

ETA:
When kiddos don't know what they want for dinner, here are a few approaches which have worked to guide the child (YMMV):
- Option 1: Parent has created a blank menu form which suggests what a healthy meal consists of and provides fill-in-the-blank spaces for the child to complete: Produce (Veggie 1, Veggie 2, Fruit 1, Fruit 2), Protein (Eggs, Cheese, Fish, Meat), Carbs (Pasta, Potato, Rice, Bread/roll/biscuit), etc. If kiddo goes through the effort of completing the menu, s/he gets that meal as soon as practical... usually this night or next.
- Option 2: Child chooses "Sampler Plate" and parent provides a plate with little bits of many foods to taste.
- Option 3: (Default) The old-fashioned you-get-what-we're-serving and your only choice is take-it-or-leave-it.

Child learns that their investment of thought and effort pays off. On the other hand, some days they really don't have a preference and anything is fine, appreciated, and eaten.

I'm wondering if there might be someone modeling this behavior for her? It took me years to realize it was happening with my DH. He is masterful at appearing to participate in conversations but really leaving just about all decisions to me. Restating the question, repeating back my last statement, answering in the form of a question, etc. It's always been frustrating but only really got to me when I saw DD (now 14) starting to develop the same habit. They both came to realize that I would eventually make the decision - however meaningless or small - if they kept non answering or talking in circles.

A couple months ago I put my foot down. I said I would no longer be the only decision maker in the house. Period. They were both intelligent and capable of deciding what they wanted for dinner. To have an opinion on whether or not we should attend a certain activity. Invite friends over or have a quiet night. And of course with DD's complex 2e profile there is an endless number of educational questions that should not be left to me alone - that they HAVE to have an opinion on.

I had to fight my instinct to just get it done and stand quietly while they decided. To NOT make dinner if they didn't answer my question. To make it uncomfortable for them to make me uncomfortable. It's a work in progress but we've made some improvements.

I realized that DH probably has slow processing speed like DD. Of all DD's challenges that's the one that has caused me the most frustration. Taking the time to let her process things doesn't come naturally to me. I have to stop myself from jumping in rather than just waiting for them to process and consider. And they have to get used to actually processing and considering rather than expecting me (who obviously does it much faster) to do it for them.

With your DD I would first try to move these conversations away from bedtime so she doesn't have the option of just saying "good night" and putting a pillow over her head. Maybe take her to lunch and have a written agenda like a business meeting. Discuss the pros and cons of the different math options, what color to paint her room and what kind of cookies she might want to bake. It sounds weird but in a more adult context she may come out of the parent-child dynamic of leaving the decisions to you. Have her state what each option would look like. ie If you take class A it would mean not taking class B - would you be ok missing that or is that more important to you? Or focus down the road - If you want to be able to do X you will need class B. Would you rather be able to do that later or take class A now. Or what would be available to her if she didn't do the math option. "How would you feel about focusing on Marine Biology?" (or Anthropology? Or Greek Mythology? or Architecture?, etc, etc, etc) So she sees various options rather than the binary math or no? Does that make sense? Give her ownership of the decision so she knows her input has value. Then maybe give her an either or choice so she HAS to state a preference.

Just a few random thoughts. Good luck!

Oh greenlotus, you have my kid again! DS is now about to turn 15, anxiety at least as high as ever, inattentive ADHD is way off the charts, and that flavour of ASD-ishness still challenges.

I have been battling "I don't know" for as long as I can remember, but it seems like somehow it's ramped up even more with this first year of high school. He can't make the simplest, lowest-stake choice, ever (as opposed to just most of the time, which I guess was the old normal?). What to eat. Does he want to see a friend this weekend. Do you want to go for a bike ride. I don't know.

spaghetti has some really good insights. DS has definitely always been terrified of responsibility, and I need to give more thought to how that contributes to this problem. And certainly, as I have written about here many times, avoidance is his modus operandi for anything hard. And yes, he is the blame-shift king.

That said, though, what I can clearly see is that these decisions leave him absolutely paralyzed with anxiety. Stupid, ridiculous decisions with no meaningful consequences of any kind, and he's just paralyzed with anxiety.

What I have been trying to figure out forever is why?

My best guess so far is it comes out of the weird mixture of anxiety, PG, ADHD and his extreme rigidity (one of his biggest ASD-like traits). Those create a perfect synergistic spiralling soup of catastrophisizing, seeing way too many options, indecision, and tunnel vision.

He can both see way too many pathways - and of course how each of them could go wrong - and yet somehow also be utterly stuck in one track and not be able to see how he could ever possibly leave a pathway should it not be working for him. And he is so absolutist that should his choice turn out to be less than optimal, he sees that as both a complete disaster, and also something that can't be changed mid-track, or recovered from afterwards.

Basically, extreme fear that he'll choose wrong, with a wildly out-of-whack sense of the consequences of doing so. Which is pretty much the definition of anxiety.

Interestingly, DS does much better with higher-stakes decisions. While he can do his usual avoidance of committing for longer than is ideal - and I think here spaghetti's interpretation applies a lot more - there's a lot less of it, and it's easier to get a real answer out of him. Weirdly, I think he can better grasp the real consequences when they are serious and meaningful and have a lot of impact on him (what school do you want to go to? Do you want to take this course in the summer?).

Though I suppose this is consistent with what I've observed since he was a toddler - hard stuff is easy for him, for the easy stuff tends to be really, really hard.

Must get back to herding them out the door. Will give more thought.

Yes!

I am with spaghetti. dd is 14. It could have easily gone that way, but I put my foot down. I think the 3 years leading up to 14 were critical in how it comes out.

DD can give me some IDK but rarely. She knows she has to be an active decision maker to keep her helicopter mom at bay. And I said a year ago that she had to make decisions about her classes, her activities in order to create that package for college. What did she want to focus on? What extracurriculars work for her? I made her make those decisions in order to create a plan. And grades were a little roller coaster the last couple of years, and once she made a decision about her path, she got focused and is top of the class. Applying herself. I wasn't sure we would get here. She is now studying for her finals, 9th grade. But it required several sit downs and real conversations over the previous 2 years. And she says to me that other kids really don't talk to their parents. So I think the structure has to come from us.

regarding dinner: I give 3 choices and then ask which one of them would be a good choice for dinner. I finally learned that my child is an over-thinker and overanalyzes everything and gets overwhelmed and responds with "I don't know" as a coping mechanism. Such kids find it easier when faced with a limited amount of choices.

As for what color she likes, when she says "I don't know", tell her that you have seen her wearing blue (or whatever other color she prefers) several times this month whereas you have not seen her wearing yellow at all and ask her if that is because she favors blue over yellow. Sometimes, it just helps a child reason well if we dropped clues for them. She is probably choosing colors by instinct and not noticing patterns in her action because she simply feels drawn towards some colors.

As for choosing classes for the upcoming grades, you are better off having conversations about this over a longer period of time. Discuss what each choice and path entails, bring up examples of college and career options available for each path, bring up your estimate of the workload that each option is associated with, bring up how other kids that you might know made choices and where they ended up now, bring up your own choices when you were a student and what motivated you at that time. I sometimes pull out a calendar app or even a sheet of paper and schedule in all the activities that my overachiever is raring to do and then show him how some things have to go to make room for something else.
For my child, we find that he can function well only if his main areas of interest were divided into 3 activities. He has other interests and hobbies which are not considered "main" activities. We usually divide a blank paper into 3 columns and write Academics, Extracurricular Sports, Extracurricular Fine Arts into the columns and allocate the productive hours of the week to those 3 slots. If my child wants to pick more fun Electives at school or a heavier Honors class load, I show him how the column for Academics grows very dense and the other two columns take a hit. It helps kids to make school choices when they can visualize how each choice impacts their free time and their whole school year.

As a funny aside: anyone in our household who answers questions like "How was your day?" etc using single-word answers have to come up with a 3-sentence answer before they are allowed to go on to do whatever they were trying to do. The parents are known to do this more often nowadays than the child.

Wow, ashley, great ideas! Well said.

My 13-year-old is exactly the same! With the "I don't know"s and the "OK"s. About everything! It can be very frustrating. He has slow processing and anxiety. I try to give him time to think whenever I can and try not to bombard him with a bunch of language all at once. And I try to make it obvious that I respect and am interested in his opinions and his reasoning when he does share them.

I may be in the minority here, but I believe that nutrition is important, that food should not be withheld as a punishment, that doing so may teach the child unintended lessons, and also be considered as child neglect or abuse if the child tells others what is happening at home.