Doctor Rosemary Roberts: Choice
One of our questions to ourselves as practitioners is how can we help children to choose things when they are very young, how does that work? And I think that it’s all about paying attention to the situations and experiences that we offer children. On an adult level choice only works if it is well informed choice – you can’t properly choose something unless you really know what the options are – and the same works for very young children. So it’s no good just saying, in a blank room, what would you like to do now, that doesn’t really help. What they need is a manageable environment for them to operate their wish to make choices, and we have got plenty of evidence that they both wish and need to make choices.
When you have got babies you could argue that babies never make choices because they are just not old enough. But hang on a minute, there is that whole thing about treasure baskets, isn’t there, and the way that, as soon as a baby can even sit up propped on pillows, if you put a lovely treasure basket, which has got all sorts of real life things in it, beside that baby and you give them real attention – because the thing about treasure basket is you don’t dump it down and go away do you, you have to stay there and hold the baby in your mind, but not interfere. And that is what that baby needs. And they make choices; that’s the first time they can really think I will have that, but I don’t want that, and I want what he’s got round there.
So it’s all of that ability to make choices, and the need to very young. But then of course when you get older you get much more sophisticated decision making by children, and that is right at the heart of that sense of internal locus of control, about making your own choices and, what do I want, or what does she want me to say. And we need to give children lots of manageable experiences to do those things.