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Early Choices Matter: Children Building Choice-Making Skills
Reviewed December 2025
Making choices is a learned skill that is important in our daily lives. All people, including those with disabilities, have the right to make choices about the things that affect them.
Choice-Making is Important
The best way to learn choice-making is to practice. Start practicing with your children by having them make small choices every day. It is okay if they make mistakes; mistakes are how everyone learns. Making choices improves children’s communication skills. Over the long-term, learning to make choices improves safety in the community and can lead to living a more self-determined life.
By practicing choice-making during childhood, children are more prepared to make their own decisions as adults. Adulthood may feel far off, but anything done now sets up children for greater independence down the road.
Start Early: Help Kids Learn to Make Choices
If we want our children with disabilities to control their own futures and have a voice in what they want, families and caregivers need to be intentional about preparing them to make these decisions. The best way to start this process is to teach choice-making skills when children are young.
There are many reasons why adults make decisions for children with disabilities. Sometimes adults, including parents, school staff, therapists and others, focus on keeping children safe and assume they cannot make choices for themselves. However, adults need to recognize that children with disabilities are able, with practice and support, to make their own choices and decisions.
Giving children the space to make a choice, and maybe making a wrong choice, might seem risky to parents. In reality, it empowers children and gives them a sense of control. Research tells us that adults with disabilities who have more control and independence in their decisions are less likely to be victims of abuse and neglect.
Support Your Child in Making Choices
As families, we need to encourage our children to make their own choices. Make sure these plans include activities that support them in setting their own goals, thinking through the options and choices, and working with them to consider the possible consequences, or outcomes, of these decisions.
Everyone’s choice-making skills are different, and there is no right or wrong time to start building these skills. You can begin by offering your children smaller choices and as their skills improve, moving to larger choices that might have a longer-lasting impact. This can feel scary. Make a list of the risks you’re comfortable with your children taking. Then think about the benefits and consequences of each. When your children feel your encouragement and support, they will be more confident in their own abilities.
Did You Know?
Adults with disabilities often share that they wish they had more opportunities to practice choice-making as kids, so they would be better prepared to make their own decisions as adults.
The Role of Professionals
If your children are enrolled in Wisconsin’s Children’s Long-Term Support (CLTS) program, your family’s Support and Service Coordinator (SSC) can support you in this effort. Each year, families and SSCs together identify the services covered by CLTS that direct your children toward their goals.
This annual review is the perfect opportunity to give children the space and time to be part of the planning and choice-making process. This can include asking your child about their interests and talking with them about their short-term and long-term goals for the next year. Deciding Together is a great tool published by DHS’s Bureau of Children’s Services to use to guide this review with your SSC, you can support your child as they communicate their ideas and make choices.
This same approach can be used as you work with your children’s school on the Individual Education Plan (IEP). Include your child as an active member of the team to share their thoughts and give feedback. The other members of the team will appreciate their input as they make goals for the next school year.
Greater Independence as Adults
By supporting your child to make more choices when they are young , they will be in a better position to make decisions as an adult. When your child approaches age 18, it will be time to talk with your child and family about the type of decision-making support your child will need. Options include Supported Decision-Making agreements, guardianship, and other legal tools. Supported Decision-Making empowers adults with disabilities to make informed decisions about their lives, with the support of trusted allies. Supported Decision-Making is a legal standing that allows family and friends to support an individual with a disability in making, understanding and communicating their choices and decisions.
Supported Decision-Making Agreements
Supported Decision Making Agreements are legal documents. This is a less restrictive alternative to guardianship. Supported Decision-Making Agreements allow an individual with disabilities to get the support they need to live as independently as possible, while retaining their civil rights to decide their own lives. These documents are easily changed and do not require an attorney or the involvement of the courts.
To learn more about supported decision making:
- Wisconsin BPDD: Supported Decision-Making Toolkit
- Family Voices fact sheet: Supported Decision Making for Transition Aged Youth
- Live virtual learning session: Supported Decision Making: find the next date on the Family Voices Events Calendar.
INFORMATION AND RESOURCES
Wisconsin Wayfinder: Children’s Resource Network, 877-WiscWay (877-947-2929): Wisconsin Wayfinder offers families one name and phone number to find services for children with special health care needs. Wayfinder connects you to a resource guide at one of the five Children’s Resource Centers in your area.
Do you need a resource in another format or a printed copy? Contact Lynn@fvofwi.org.
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