When Kids Ask ‘Is This Right or Wrong?’: What To Do Instead Of Giving An Answer
I was folding a mound of mismatched soccer socks last Tuesday when my 10-year-old Mia slumped onto the couch next to me, crumbs from her after-school granola bar already dusting the coffee table. She picked at a loose thread on her leggings for a full minute before she said it: “Mom? I need to ask you something. Is this right or wrong?” Then she told me about hiding Javi’s cleats in the oak bush by the playground the day before. Javi had cut the line for the twisty slide three times in a row, pushed her best friend Lila out of the way hard enough that she scraped her knee, and the teacher was busy dealing with a kid who’d thrown up on the blacktop so no one stopped him. Mia and Lila had snuck the cleats after recess when no one was looking.
My hand froze mid-fold on a knee-high sock with a hole in the toe. My first thought was obviously that it’s wrong. Hiding someone’s stuff is wrong, embarrassing someone for being rude is wrong, you need to apologize first thing tomorrow. That’s what I would have said a month earlier, when Mia came home upset because she’d stood by while a group of girls teased another girl for her frizzy hair. Back then I’d said “It was wrong not to speak up, next time you need to say something” and she’d just nodded, stuffed her half-eaten apple in the trash, and gone up to her room without saying another word. I didn’t get it until later that I’d shut down the whole conversation before she even got to tell me she was already scared.
So this time, I didn’t answer. I put the sock down, pushed the stray Lego that was digging into my thigh off the couch, and said, “What makes you ask that right now?” She told me Javi had to walk home in his heavy rain boots because he couldn’t find his cleats, his mom had sent an email to the whole class asking if anyone had seen them, and Mia had read the email that morning while her dad poured coffee and her stomach had been twisted ever since. I followed up with the next question I’d started practicing: “How do you feel about what you did?” She stared at the rerun of the baking show playing low on TV and said, “It felt good when we did it. Like we got back at him for hurting Lila. But now it feels wrong. Like it was too much. He didn’t break anything or anything, just cut in line.”
That’s when I realized how often we get this question wrong. When kids ask “is this right or wrong,” they rarely want a black and white answer. They already have the bad feeling tangled up in their stomach, they just need help untangling it. If you jump in and say it’s wrong right away, they get defensive or ashamed, and they stop talking. If you say it’s right to stand up for your friend, you miss the chance to let them work through the impact their actions have on someone else.
My friend Sarah teaches third grade at the local elementary, and she told me she notices this all the time in class. When a kid comes up to her asking if it’s wrong that they didn’t share their new fancy markers, she doesn’t say “yes, sharing is caring” and force them to hand it over. She asks them to tell her what happened, then asks how it felt to walk away. Half the time, the kid already knows it didn’t feel good, they just need a minute to figure out how to go share without looking like they backed down in front of their friends.
It’s three small, specific questions you can swap for an immediate answer, and they take way less effort than a 10-minute lecture. First, instead of answering, ask “What makes you ask that?” That lets them lay out all the messy context you don’t know – that Javi cut the line, that Lila got hurt, that there was no teacher around to help. Second, ask “How do you feel about what happened?” That pulls the focus from hard rules to real impact, which sticks way better than any rule I’ve ever repeated. Third, ask “What do you think you want to do next?” That lets them come up with a solution that fits their comfort level, instead of forcing them to do something that feels too scary – like a public apology that makes them never want to admit they messed up again.
Mia thought about it for a few minutes that night while we dried dishes. She said she didn’t want to go up to Javi in front of everyone and say sorry, because all the other kids would make fun of both of them. She decided she’d get to school early the next day, move the cleats from the bush to the front office door, and leave a note that said “Found these by the slide” plus a mini chocolate bar from her leftover Halloween stash to say she was sorry without saying it out loud. I didn’t tell her that wasn’t a “real” apology. I just said that sounds like it fits how you feel, that makes sense.
That was three weeks ago. Javi got his cleats back, never mentioned the chocolate or the note, and no one got in trouble. Mia still brings it up sometimes; last week we were driving to soccer practice and she said “Next time someone is being a jerk at recess, I’m just going to tell the teacher instead of doing something stupid that makes me feel bad for three days.”
I still mess this up, sometimes. Last week I caught my 7-year-old son lying about eating the last chocolate chip cookie, and I immediately blurted out “Lying is wrong” before he could say anything. He shut down, just like Mia did that first time. It’s a hard habit to break – we’re all used to clear rules, to checking a box that we’ve taught our kids right from wrong. But when I remember to pause, to ask those three questions instead of giving an answer, I’m always surprised at how much they already know. They don’t need me to tell them right from wrong most of the time. They just need me to help them hear the answer they already have in their head.
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