Parenting and Decision Education: Stories from Alliance Staff

At the Alliance, we believe that Decision Education should be part of every student’s learning experience—and we know that effective learning can also continue at home. Decision-making as a family can be a great opportunity to explore Decision Education concepts and tools. For example, a weight-and-rate tool can be helpful for larger decisions that require taking into consideration various factors and family members’ preferences. A weight-and-rate works by identifying and weighing the importance of different criteria and then seeing how various decision options rate against those criteria. Below, Alliance staff members share their stories of how they used a weight-and-rate tool to make decisions as a family and how they support their children in identifying what matters to them as they make their own decisions.

When one staff member’s son was accepted into a magnet school, she and her family had to make a quick decision: would their son enroll at the magnet school that was farther away or attend the local school? At first, the decision felt a bit daunting, as there were academic, social, and logistical factors to take into consideration.

To help them sort through and assess the various aspects of the decision, the family used a weight-and-rate tool. They made a list of everything about their son’s schooling experience that matters to them: his schedule, ability to take electives, making and maintaining friendships, after-school activities, commute, and more. They weighted each factor by level of importance, then rated both schools on each factor. By thinking through all the different factors that are important to them as a family, they were able to confidently decide to enroll their son at the magnet school.

Our staff member reflected, “Structuring our conversation with a tool helped us realize that what initially felt like a very hard decision, was actually a clear choice for all of us.”

Weight-and-rate tools can also be helpful as families support their children in figuring out what is important to them personally and making their own decisions.

For example, one Alliance staff member heard her 10-year-old son express that dance class, a beloved extracurricular activity, was beginning to feel stressful and he was contemplating quitting.

To figure out the best course of action, the staff member helped her son complete a weight-and-rate to help him identify what matters most to him. The son identified what he cared about—improving his dance skills, reducing stress, having more free time, and performing at the recital—and added those criteria to his weight-and-rate. He assigned numerical weights to each of his criteria to help capture their relative importance.

They then listed his options:

• Maintain his current schedule
• Keep the same number of class hours per week so he can perform in the recital, but condense his schedule so there are fewer days spent at the dance studio
• Take fewer class hours per week and be disqualified from performing in the recital
• Leave his current dance school and look for a less rigorous schooling option

After evaluating how each of the above options aligned with his values, the son was able to confidently decide to change his class schedule. Taking the same amount of dance hours on fewer days allowed him some days off to reduce stress and spend time with friends while still being able to improve his dance skills and perform in the recital.

“Having a chance to think about this decision in a structured way with defined steps helped ground him. He could talk about how he was feeling about it in a calmer, more rational way,” the staff member said.