I want to follow the idea of teaching my children correct principles and then inviting them to govern themselves. But how do I handle this when they've been taught but still aren't making the wiser choice?
I wonder this most for my oldest daughter (age 17) in areas that affect mostly herself only (like time management, media choices, and choices around food, exercise, scripture study, reading books, habits, etc.). It feels like I should teach her and then let her choose for herself what kind of a life she wants to lead. However, for many of those areas, the natural consequences of consistent poor choices may not be noticeable or seriously problematic for years when it may be too late to reverse the damage, and so it still feels like corrections are in order.
I want to coach my older youth to think through the delayed consequences of their choices, and then deliberately choose for themselves, so that they feel like they still have a choice and are not being manipulated into doing what a parent says is best. However, in the moment when I see a poor choice and give a correction for these kinds of choices, it feels like I am manipulating them because there is a negative consequence that I as the parent have attached to it if they don't choose my way.
I'm trying to think about this from a TSG perspective, but maybe I am thinking about this the wrong way. For example, if my child mismanages their time, then I would do a correction which includes saying what they should have done, right? Then, if they don't follow my counsel and I need to do another correction, then is that considered not following an instruction, since I had told them something they "should" have done? Or is that just making their own choice to not follow parental advice? Would you consider teaching and counseling and correcting all just different types of instructions? Or is offering parental counsel different, where I would step back and freely give them the choice whether to follow that advice without synthetic consequences attached to it if they don't follow my counsel?
Or are choices like these better handled in a Parent Counseling Session instead of a standard correction? Or is this where SODAS come into play? Could SODAS be the consequence when I see them making a less wise choice? And if they still choose the less wise choice, do I honor their choice and just let that go and not do a correction with a consequence attached? Or at that point, do I teach and correct again?