MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS
Choices & Consequences The art of problem-solving WRITTEN BY CLARISSA RICE
Problem-solving is one of my favorite subjects to talk about and one of the most important areas of problemsolving, I think, is this idea of choices. I'm always surprised how often people say “I had no choice,” or “there weren't any choices.” I believe we have some choice in about 95% of our lives. I know that seems like a shocking
Resident Spotlight: Clarissa Rice Clarissa Rice has a Master's degree and EDS in school counseling. Prior to retiring, she was the Counselor at Snellville Middle School for 27 years. Clarissa also taught English, Speech, and Drama.
figure, and I chose 95% to illustrate that there really are a lot of choices. You may wonder then, what's the other 5% that we do not have any choice about. Of course, we have no choice about being born, ultimate death, physical heredity, or when we're unconscious, and other people's choices. It's so important to give even a young child limited choices because this sets up learning to make choices and experience consequences early in life and even young children are making choices all the time. 55 | HEALTH & WELLNESS
When I was a middle school counselor, students would often dispute the fact that we had a lot of choices in our life and they would say, “Oh, I don't have any choices. My parents tell me what to do and, and they have all the choices.” However, upon closer examination, they would admit that they often chose against their parents’ wishes, and then they often experienced negative consequences because of their choices. The reason we want to believe that we have very limited choices is the fear of negative consequences. If we make a mistake in our choice, then we don't want to take the responsibility for the choice.
