As a parent practicing positive discipline, your primary focus is helping your child learn to find their own solutions to problems. With time, this life skill will help your child learn to manage their behavior in childhood and beyond. To learn these skills, parents who practice positive discipline rave about the wheel of choice. It鈥檚 a great visual tool that helps with this learning process.
The wheel of choice is a visual aid for younger kids (ages 5 to 12) to learn problem-solving skills. It’s particularly effective when your child helps make it. You only need paper and a pen (or markers), although you can up the fun by adding stickers, drawing with colorful markers, adding pictures, and more. (For more information on creating and using the wheel of choice, check out the , created by positive discipline experts Lynn Lott and Jane Nelsen. The cost of downloading it is $11.99.)
Check out The essential guide to managing your child’s behavior and discipline. In our guide, you can see all the aspects of children’s behavior that we cover. Our guide helps you understand your child鈥檚 behavior, respond with care, and use discipline effectively.
How the wheel of choice works
The wheel of choice is a circular chart divided into sections, like slices of a pie. Each slice has a different positive action a child can take in response to a challenging situation and can have words, illustrations, or pictures (perfect for pre-literate pre九色视频ers, but helpful at all ages) to depict that action. One slice of the wheel might read, 鈥淭ake deep breaths,” another slice might read, 鈥淎sk a parent for help,” while another is, “Go to a different room.鈥�
So when your child has a challenge they don’t know how to handle — whether it’s a sibling grabbing a favorite toy they got for their birthday or a parent telling them to stop playing and wash their hands for dinner — they can refer to the wheel and choose a solution that they feel will best help them resolve their problem.
This exercise empowers your child by giving them more control over their actions while teaching invaluable conflict resolution and decision-making skills. Over time, children get practice with the wheel and can choose their responses when they are out in the world managing conflicts during a playdate, on the playground, in the classroom, or on a cross-country car trip. When you see them struggling in a situation away from home, you can remind them how they’ve used it in the past by asking, 鈥淒o you think any of the solutions on the wheel of choice might help right now?鈥�
Older children might be less willing to have a physical wheel of choice, but focusing on solutions will become second nature for kids who’ve had years of practice using it. For older children who resist using the wheel, the concept behind it — finding solutions through self-agency — remains critical. If your child says they鈥檙e too old to make a poster, suggest you sit down with them and create a list of solution-focused ideas instead.
Creating your own wheel of choice
Encourage your child to lead in crafting their own wheel of choice. The more your child does to create their wheel of choice, the better. Encourage them to draw their own symbols, print and use pictures, write words, use emojis, or a mixture of all to represent various solutions. Then, involve them in deciding where to display their wheel of choice.
Taking the lead in creating it helps children think through different solutions. By mostly being a guide as your child makes their wheel of choice, you’re helping them with problem-solving and boosting their sense of independence and self-regulation.
Practical applications of the wheel of choice in positive discipline
Positive discipline stresses finding solutions collaboratively, which relies on having the right tools and opportunities to practice. The wheel of choice is a concrete tool that shows the power of problem-solving. It can address common issues, such as sharing toys, managing emotions, or resolving conflicts. When you work together to discuss and decide what solutions to include, you get your child鈥檚 buy-in and commitment to using the ideas on the wheel.
You can support your child by providing ideas for solutions they may not have thought of and concrete reasons why a given solution works so they can generalize it to similar situations. Simply put, generalizing means applying what they鈥檝e learned in one instance and using it for others.
In a recent 2022 study of 108 4- to 7-year-olds called ““, researchers found that 6- to 7-year-olds were significantly more likely to generalize information when given an explanation that matched what came next.
In practical terms, imagine you’re teaching your child why taking deep breaths helps calm people down. If you explain how the brain reacts to calming breaths, your child is more likely to understand they can use deep breathing and in other situations when they’re angry, overwhelmed, or scared.
Success stories using the wheel of choice
Many parents have seen how the wheel of choice helps transform their approach to discipline by empowering their children to have agency over their behavior. Rather than arguing over their “bad behavior,” the child learns to tackle challenges more independently and constructively.
On the , parent Mary Tamborski shared how impressed she was not only that her then 7-year-old Reid came up with a list of more than five solutions in answer to the question, 鈥淲hat are some of the things you can do when you are having a challenge?鈥� but that he put them into practice within two hours of creating his wheel of choice. After trying two suggestions on his wheel (walking away and then asking his brother to stop teasing him), Reid’s brother stopped his taunting, and they settled down to read together.
On her blog, , Susie Johnson shared her surprise when her children were physically fighting, her 5-year-old suggested they use “the circle thing” that Miss L. had given students to try at home. She read the choices to her brother: take a deep breath, lie on your bed, sit on the couch, stop, shake hands and agree, stomp your feet and walk away, blow it away. The two kids chose to shake hands and agree. It worked!
Incorporating the wheel of choice in education
It probably wouldn鈥檛 have been as surprising to Miss L, the teacher who uses positive discipline who sent the wheel home with Johnson’s child, that the wheel worked. Many educators have found that the wheel of choice can be valuable in promoting self-regulation and positive student interactions.
Teachers can use the wheel of choice to help students deal with common classroom conflicts, like sharing resources or working in groups. It can also be a part of social-emotional learning curricula, teaching children essential life skills in a practical, engaging way. The wheel can also be helpful in creating a collaborative classroom community.
, an evidence-based guide created by the and supported by the U.S. Department of Education鈥檚 Office of Special Education Programs, notes that including all students in developing classroom rules gives them an 鈥渙pportunity to cooperate, collaborate, and make connections with each other as well as to develop a sense of ownership in the classroom.鈥�
By incorporating the wheel of choice into your home (or in an educational environment), you鈥檒l help your child develop a common language and shared understanding of how to resolve problems. In the longer term, your child will learn how to one day be an adult who is responsible, has self-respect, and approaches others with empathy.
