E059 · Thinking, attention & executive function
Difficulty making choices and decisions
What might be happening when choosing between possible actions or options becomes unusually effortful, distressing or immobilising?
Phoenix Encyclopaedia
Overview
Choice is often presented as inherently empowering.
Usually it can be — but having choices and being able to use them are not the same thing.
Making a decision may require the young person to:
- understand the options
- hold them in mind
- identify what matters
- anticipate possible outcomes
- tolerate uncertainty
- accept that choosing one option often means losing another
- risk making a choice they later regret.
Too many possibilities can therefore increase rather than reduce demand.
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What this might look like
A young person might:
- say “I don't know” to most choices
- repeatedly change their mind
- ask another person to choose
- become distressed when presented with several options
- delay until the choice is effectively made for them
- seek repeated reassurance before deciding
- choose quickly simply to escape the decision
- worry extensively about making the wrong choice
- struggle with open-ended questions
- make ordinary choices easily but become stuck when consequences feel important.
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Developmental expression
At this stage
Early childhood
adults appropriately make many choices and provide limited alternatives.
Early childhood
adults appropriately make many choices and provide limited alternatives.
Middle childhood
school increasingly asks young people to choose activities, strategies, friendships and interests.
Early adolescence
identity and peer-related decisions become increasingly important.
Later adolescence
education, employment and independence create genuinely consequential decisions, often under uncertainty.
Choose each stage to see how the presentation and surrounding expectations may change over time.
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Strengths and differences
Taking time over decisions may reflect:
- thoughtfulness
- awareness of consequences
- care about others
- detailed analysis
- desire to make an informed choice.
Fast decision-making is not inherently better.
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Top tips for support
- Reduce the number of options.
- Present choices clearly.
- Distinguish reversible from difficult-to-reverse decisions.
- Allow processing time.
- Help identify what matters most.
- Make “I don't want to choose yet” legitimate when possible.
- Avoid presenting false choices where the adult has already decided the outcome.
- Permit trusted others to support decisions without taking over unnecessarily.
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Things needing careful planning
Decision-making develops substantially across childhood and adolescence, and capability varies according to context, emotion, familiarity and uncertainty. Contemporary developmental reviews caution against simplistic assumptions that adolescent decisions are simply less rational than adults'. (1)
Phoenix should therefore distinguish difficulty making a personally useful decision from merely choosing differently from an adult.
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Practical support principles
Useful approaches include:
- two-option choices
- visual comparison
- pros/cons
- ranking priorities
- thinking time
- trial periods
- trusted consultation
- reducing unnecessary decision load
- explicitly accepting “good enough” decisions.
From understanding to support
Phoenix Atlas connections
Often useful
- supported decision-making
- visual supports
- executive-function scaffolding
- collaborative problem solving
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Evidence and cautions
Prototype placeholderPrototype placeholder. The current source does not yet include a separate evidence-and-cautions synthesis. Its public evidence sources are retained below for the next review pass.
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Public evidence sources
- Adolescent decision making in context — developmental review.
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Possible explanatory lenses
Consider:
- uncertainty
- perfectionism
- anxiety
- working memory
- planning
- processing time
- fear of criticism
- previous experiences of choices not being respected.
About this entry’s source
Open Beta · read the evidence notes and limitations
Source status describes the underlying material. The current site edition is Open Beta; the evidence notes and limitations remain part of the entry.
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