What is responsible decision making?

According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), responsible decision making is “the abilities to make caring and constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions across diverse situations” (CASEL). The other four competencies of social emotional learning (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship skills) all help one’s ability to make responsible decisions such as with safety concerns and understanding the consequences of certain actions on oneself and others. Responsible decision making is strengthened by the ability to problem solve, use critical thinking skills, and to be curious about the world around us.

Why is it important to make responsible decisions?

The decisions we make every single day can have impacts on ourselves and others. These include the decisions we make at home, school, and in our community. As adults, we can model our decision making process to help kids understand the important questions we need to ask ourselves when making decisions. The Child Mind Institute shares a few examples of questions we can ask when making a decision to include kids in the conversation (Miller, 2023):

• What decision do I need to make?

• What are the pros and cons of each choice?

• How will this decision impact others?

• How does that decision make me feel?

How to recognize responsible decisions

We can recognize responsible decisions as something that will positively affect others and will protect our safety and well-being. Here are some examples:

Here is Joe not making a responsible decision:

Joe’s teacher asks everyone to walk carefully around the icy patch on the sidewalk. Joe is eager to get to the playground and decides to run across it instead. Joe slips and scrapes his knee.

Here is Joe making a responsible decision:

Joe’s teacher asks everyone to walk carefully around the icy path on the sidewalk. Joe listens to the instructions carefully and helps guide one of his classmates around the icy patch.

Here is Kristen not making a responsible decision:

Kristen’s parents suggest Kristen could help her brother with his homework while they cook dinner. Kristen watches t.v. instead and ignores her brother when he asks her to turn the volume down.

Here is Kristen making a responsible decision:

Kristen’s parents suggest Kristen could help her brother with his homework while they cook dinner. Kristen sits quietly with her brother and helps him work through questions he has while doing his homework.

How to practice responsible decision making

• Give kids options

Just like with any other social emotional skill, responsible decision making requires lots of practice and patience so we encourage you to create daily opportunities for practice. When we give kids the opportunity to make a decision, they will get first-hand practice at considering the pros and cons and how each decision could have an impact. This could be as simple as giving kids options for dinner, or asking if they’d rather read a book or listen to a meditation before bed.

• Use problem solving activities

When problems arise, children’s big feelings can sometimes be consuming and affect their ability to make responsible decisions. We can empower children by helping them develop their own thinking processes for solving problems more independently. This includes learning some concrete steps and knowing how to identify the size of their problems. Check out our free activities for at home or in the classroom to use as visual reminders!

• Learn from mistakes

We know as adults sometimes some of the best lessons we learned were from making mistakes and they informed us of how to make better decisions. The Child Mind Institute suggests letting kids make mistakes too and “once they’ve experienced the consequence, help them learn from it. Remain calm, avoid placing blame, and help them examine and learn from mistakes. Even if they regret the choice they made, work to build their decision-making confidence” (Miller, 2023).

• Discuss social scenarios

Our ability to be socially aware helps us to make responsible decisions. Use social scenarios to help kids think about what they would do in various situations such as the ones in the image below.

• Ask “Would you rather” questions

Practicing responsible decision making can be playful too! If you are on a long drive or at dinner, “Would you rather” questions will teach kids how to prepare for situations when they might have a limited number of choices, weigh the pros and cons and make the decision that is right for them. Kids can unleash their creativity by creating their own “Would you rather” questions.

When we can make responsible decisions, we can recognize the consequences of our actions, and critical thinking and problem solving skills are strengthened. As parents and educators, we can give our students opportunities to make decisions and learn from them along the way.