by Beverly Wertheimer, PsyD, MSW
I was giving advice about balanced diet and exercise to one of my children when she stopped me and quipped, “Mom, every time you give me advice, you take a year off my life.” Advice-giving was apparently reducing life expectancy more than diet and exercise were adding to it.
Parents love to give advice. It’s like we possess a yearning to impart decades of knowledge and wisdom into each interaction with our kids. We persist in telling our kids what’s appropriate to wear, what’s best to eat, what sports or hobbies to pursue, how to do something “better,” and what political and social beliefs to espouse. This parenting approach has proven to be not only unhelpful, but potentially damaging.
A Social Work No-No
Excessive advice-giving doesn’t belong in the therapy room, either. As a new social worker, you will need to resist the temptation a dozen times a day to pack clients full of your fresh therapy knowledge. When you tell a client what to do, you are essentially saying that you are the expert in their lives, not them. Giving a client frequent problem-solving direction removes their sense of agency and industry; they begin to doubt if they could act without your advice and guidance. Other risks include the client blaming the therapist if things go wrong or feeling as if the therapist is imposing their value system on the client.
Letting Littles Discover
Children, especially, need a sense of will and self-agency, and they feel this longing at their core. Alfred Bandera, a Canadian psychologist who developed social learning theory, described agency as “to intentionally produce certain effects by one’s actions.” Children are incredibly insightful and creative and want to use their knowing to problem solve. When they figure stuff out for themselves, they experience a sense of achievement, industriousness, and confidence—traits that pave the way for future success and happiness. We know this thanks to the insights of child psychology theorists Erikson and Piaget, who explained that children are not merely little adults, but they have unique knowledge and abilities depending on their stage of development. Piaget was among the first to understand that children are not less intelligent than adults—they just think and reason differently, as they should! In fact, Piaget described children as "little scientists" who actively learn by observing and interacting with the world around them. A big scientist, Albert Einstein, called Piaget’s discover “so simple only a genius could have thought of it.”
Parents’ excessive advice-giving, correction, and interference restrict children’s ability to make their own decisions, manage problems, and develop agency. But when free to experiment in their self-made mini learning labs, children will also discover that certain things are out of their control, and acceptance of this irksome truth is an invaluable life lesson. How many grown up children (e.g., adults) still believe in the fallacy of fairness or peevishly fight things completely beyond their control, only to end up bitter and despairing?
Shirk Swooping In
Family-focused social workers can educate parents on how to provide options, model good behavior, offer praise, and create structure and consistency. They can explain that when children are frustrated during homework, social interactions, or play, parents can allow them to develop industry and mastery by withstanding the impulse to swoop in and show them the “right way” to do it. Social workers can explain that with parents’ gentle support for their kids’ self-agency, their little scientists will learn to problem solve, fail, and try again, or equally as important, accept what they have no influence over and move on. In fact, that might be one of the greatest gifts we can impart to all our clients—children, and adults alike. In the words of Mother Goose, “There is a remedy, or there is none. If there be one, try and find it; If there be none, never mind it.”
Resources
Bandura, A. (2017). Toward a psychology of human agency: pathways and reflections. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2):130–136.
Hall, C., & Slembrouck, S. (2013). Advice-giving. In Analyzing Social Work Communication (pp. 98-116). Routledge.
Haring, U., Sorin, R., & Caltabiano, N. J. (2019). Reflecting on childhood and child agency in history. Palgrave Communications, 5 (52). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0259-0.
van Elk, M., Rutjens, B. T., & van der Pligt, J. (2015). The development of the illusion of control and sense of agency in 7-to-12-year old children and adults. Cognition, 145, 1-12.
Dr. Beverly Wertheimer
Beverly Wertheimer, PsyD, MSW, is a clinical social worker specializing in child and family therapy at Daybreak Health, an adjunct professor of psychology at Pepperdine University, and a certified life coach and CEO at BeWorthy.com. She is a published author on mental health issues and previously was a TV anchor and reporter at ABC and NBC affiliates, CNN Turner Entertainment, and Entertainment Tonight.