When Your Kid Asks “Can I Have Advice Please?”: What To Do Instead Of Jumping In With Answers
Last Tuesday, I was wiping a cranberry juice spill off our kitchen counter when my 12-year-old Lila dropped her backpack by the door, kicked off her scuffed purple Vans, and leaned against the pantry. “Can I have advice please?” she said, around a bite of granola bar. I froze. Lila doesn’t ask for advice. Usually she rants for five minutes about whatever went wrong that day, brushes off my questions, and goes upstairs to scroll TikTok. This was new.
My first instinct was to drop the sponge, lean in, and give her the perfect solution that would fix whatever was wrong before the timer went off for dinner. I’d already started opening my mouth to say I thought she should reach out and talk it out when I remembered what happened the weekend before. I’d called my sister complaining about my messy shared work space and how my co-worker kept leaving their stuff all over my desk, and I’d asked for her take. Before I finished the second sentence, she was telling me I should talk to our manager, I should rearrange the whole room, I should set firm boundaries. I hung up feeling more frustrated than I had before, like I hadn’t even gotten to say what was really bugging me. I shut my mouth, wiped my wet hands on my jeans, and pulled out the chair next to the table for her. “Before I say anything,” I said, “can you tell me what you’ve already thought about trying?”
She sat down, pulled her phone out of her hoodie pocket, and showed me a half-written text to her best friend Mia. They’d fought three days earlier over their 7th grade science fair project—Mia had skipped two planning sessions to go to the mall with another girl from their math class, and hadn’t texted Lila about it until the next morning. Lila told me she’d been staring at the text for two days, too scared to hit send. “If I send it, she’ll say I’m overreacting, and then we’ll never be friends again,” she said. “If I don’t send it, it’s just gonna be awkward forever, and I’ll just be mad all the time.” Our golden retriever, Max, trotted over and stole a bite of her granola bar off the table. She yelled, threw a crumb at him, and he trotted out, satisfied.
I asked her the next question I’ve started remembering to use: “What part of this feels the hardest right now?” That’s when I got the part I never would’ve guessed. It wasn’t just the fight. She’d been annoyed with Mia for months—Mia kept bailing on plans last minute, started sitting with a different group at lunch, always made plans without asking Lila first. This fight was just the first time she’d actually felt hurt enough to say something. If I’d jumped in with my advice right away, I would’ve been telling her how to fix a friendship she was already halfway out of, and that would’ve been totally wrong.
I’ve been a part-time middle school tutor for five years, and I’ve noticed this same pattern with the kids I work with, too. When a kid asks “can I have advice please?” 9 times out of 10, they don’t actually want a step-by-step solution from me. They just want help untangling the thoughts they already have bouncing around in their head. Over the past year, I’ve worked out three small, concrete things I do now that I didn’t do before, and they’ve made a huge difference. First, I pause for three full seconds before I answer. That’s just enough time to stop myself from blurting out the first thing that pops into my head, which is almost always some generic tip that doesn’t fit the actual situation. Second, I lead with one of three questions, instead of advice: “What have you thought about trying so far?” “What’s the part that’s bugging you most?” or “Do you want help figuring this out, or do you just want me to listen right now?” Those aren’t fancy, they’re just questions that let the kid lead. Third, if they still ask for my input after they’ve talked through it, I only give one or two small options, not a whole plan. I don’t tell them which one to pick. I just lay them out and let them choose what fits.
In Lila’s case, after 20 minutes of talking, she said she didn’t need to fix the whole friendship right now. She just needed to say she was hurt, so the awkward feeling wouldn’t sit with her forever. She asked what I thought, so I said “You could send that half-text you wrote, or you could wait until you see her tomorrow at school and say it in person. Which one feels more like you?” She picked the text, edited a few lines to take out the snarky part she’d added when she was mad, and hit send. That night, Mia texted back that she was sorry she hurt Lila’s feelings, and they agreed to get ice cream after school on Friday. Lila also told me she’s finally going to ask the girl from her art class to sit with her at lunch next week, something she’s been wanting to do for months.
I still mess this up, all the time. Two weeks ago, my 17-year-old son asked me for advice on whether he should drop his AP biology class. I immediately blurted out that he needed it for his pre-med college apps, and he shut down and went to his room. An hour later, I remembered what I do now, so I knocked on his door and asked him what he’d already thought about. He told me the teacher lectures three times faster than anyone can take notes, he’s failing every quiz even after studying for three hours a night, and he’d rather drop it and keep his A in AP statistics, which is actually more interesting to him anyway. I never would’ve gotten that if I’d stuck to my first, wrong advice.
It’s not that parents and teachers shouldn’t ever give advice. If a kid is about to do something dangerous, or they truly have no idea where to start, of course you step in. But far more often than we think, when a kid asks for advice, they’re really asking for help to hear their own thoughts clearly. It’s still a work in progress for me. I still rush to fix things when I’m tired or busy, I still think I know better than a 12-year-old what her friendship should look like. But so far, the times I pause and let her work through it first? Those are the times she ends up with a solution that actually fits her, not the one I would’ve picked for her. I don’t think we’re ever going to get this right every time. But that’s okay.
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