Can we give our kids more agency while still holding the reins?

A few simple tools have made life with our daughter more organized, meaningful and empowering for all.

We use a lot of nerdy processes in my family. Everything from setting a family vision and values, to using a Kanban-style Trello board to manage priorities for our home projects. Luckily, I’m partnered with someone who’s as into these systems as I am, which makes for a good time. And because we both value finding alignment and clarity, we have very few disagreements and misunderstandings since we’ve already put in the work on the front end.

So, when my partner and I decided we wanted to engage our three-year-old daughter more in her own decision making, it felt really natural to leverage tools we were already using in our careers and daily lives.

I can’t help but draw on my experience as a facilitator to examine how the methods I use when leading Design Sprints and workshops might be helpful in navigating life with a child, and creating more communication pathways for us. I’ve found a handful of things work really well for our family and give our daughter more agency to participate in creating plans, communicate with us, and keep us present with one another.

1. Focus.

As a parent, multi-tasking is a way of life. There’s nothing more tempting than coupling play time with folding the laundry while starting dinner. But when we have one foot in and one foot out of everything we do, are we really serving ourselves and the people around us as well as we could? What if we took time to focus and do just one thing with our children?

Design Sprints are all about focusing on a specific problem. With your child, that problem may be making dinner or cleaning a room or playing with them in a focused way. I’ve found that my brain and body feel feel much better when I focus and commit to being all in with my daughter on a given activity. And I have to believe that my effort to be more present also feels better for my daughter. To make it accessible, start by carving out 15 minutes to commit to one thing. Maybe it’s playing together, or something else. Try it and see how it goes. Do you feel better? Did your child seem more engaged?

Just like leading workshops, when everyone on the team commits to being fully present the overall experience and outcome is better for all.

2. What does your child want?

Human-centered design isn’t just for Design Sprints. What if you asked your child what they would like to do rather than over-programming and dictating their day? I’ve recently started asking my toddler what she wants to do and co-creating a plan with her. Granted, I don’t always give her an anything-goes moment, but I do offer a few options to guide the day, for example:

“This morning we could swiffer the floors [she loves to clean], or play outside in the kiddie pool, or we could walk to the park. After that we will have lunch, and after lunch we nap. We will get to make another choice after the nap.”

When she gets a bit of autonomy and input, she becomes engaged in the process and is more understanding of how her activities fit in with the broader plans for the day.

We’ve also started using some interactive question cards to start conversations around the supper table. The Best Self Little Talk Deck is an amazing tool for this because it provides you with interesting prompts that your post-work brain may not have the juice to come up with on your own. They’re excellent for exploring what you might do in a day, and are also a lovely way to get to know your child’s likes and dislikes.

3. Say “yes, and…”

I’ve started actively trying to saying YES more. As a neat and tidy woman, this is hard because toddlers aren’t tidy and it seems like their idea of a good time usually comes with a mess (if you know a tidy toddler, please introduce me).

It doesn’t always come naturally, but if there’s not a really good reason to say “no”, I do my best to say “yes” with some guardrails. Enter the “yes, and…” improv method. Leading with yes immediately affirms that something can be done or explored. Following with “and” creates an opportunity to add or build upon an idea. With a toddler, it also might be a bit of a redirect or a chi-change

This method is something I teach when leading workshops and Design Sprints. I like to introduce it to the team because it allows us to be open to all ideas, but also serves as a pivot or key change on the actual request. Doing this feels better for all participants, myself included.

Here’s an example of what it could look like when you’re talking with a three-year old:

She says, “I want to paint the shells I found.”

I say, “Yes, and let’s do it on these papers so you can paint them too” (and not get paint all over the counter).

She says, “I want to take a bath” at an inopportune time.

I say, “yes, and we will do it with some toys after dinner.”

She says “I want to go outside and run around,”

I say, “yes, and you can do that after you put your shoes on as long as you stay on the deck where I can see you.”

Practicing this approach gives my daughter the space to express her preferences, and it also gives me the ability to offer parameters that feel reasonable to her in light of an immediate “yes.”

Each of these methods are variations of tools I use when working with adults on a day-to-day basis, and they work well. So, why not modify them for our home environments? My family functions better as a whole, and my daughter learns how to build her own free will (while also respecting the rules). That might be as close to a win-win as it gets when it comes to parenting.