Why Your Kid Asks “Can I Have Advice Please?” (And What To Actually Say Back)
It’s 7:12 p.m. in my kitchen, and I’m fishing a plastic T-Rex out of my dishwasher’s silverware basket. My 8-year-old dropped it in there five minutes ago, and I’ve already snapped at him once tonight for leaving sticky grape juice on the dining table. My 11-year-old Lila is leaning against the fridge, twisting the hem of her hoodie, a crumpled art show flyer peeking out of her back pocket. She waits until I straighten up and wipe my wet hands on my jeans, then says it: “Can I have advice please?”
I almost answered automatically, like I have a dozen times before. “Oh, just tell them how you feel,” or “Compromise a little, that’s what groups do,” or some other generic line that sounds good but never helps. The last time she asked for advice about a fight with her best friend, I told her to be the bigger person and apologize first. She came home from school crying the next day, said the friend took the apology to mean Lila thought she was 100% wrong, and things were awkward for a week. After that, I started paying attention to what actually happens when kids ask for advice. Most of the time, they don’t actually want my answer. They just want help finding their own.
Lila’s issue is the group mural for the school art show. She and two other girls are supposed to paint it together, and the other two have been set on an all-rainbow, all-unicorn design from the start. Lila wants to paint the community garden the whole 5th grade built last semester, the one where she planted the tomato plants that actually grew. She doesn’t want to fight, doesn’t want to be labeled the bossy one, but she knows she’ll resent the whole thing if she just goes along.
I pull the half-eaten granola bar off the counter and toss it in the trash, then lean against the counter opposite her. First I ask, “What’s the thing bugging you most right now, not the whole problem, just the worst part?” She thinks for 10 seconds, then says, “I’m scared if I speak up, they won’t want to be my friend anymore. But if I don’t, I’m gonna stand next to that mural at the art show and lie when people ask what I painted.” That’s the core of it, way clearer than the “we can’t agree on the design” she led with. If I’d jumped into advice right away, I never would have gotten to that part.
Next I ask, “What are all the things you could do here? Even the bad ones, even the silly ones, no judgment.” She starts listing, slow at first, then faster: I could quit the group and paint my own thing. I could tell Ms. Henderson our art teacher and make her decide. I could lie and say Ms. Henderson said we have to do the garden. I could suggest half unicorns, half garden. I could just go along with them and not care. I could text them tonight and ask to talk about it tomorrow. By the end, she has seven options, all hers.
Then the third question: “Which of these options feels the least bad, even if it’s not perfect?” She bites her lip, counts off on her fingers, then settles on the half-and-half idea. “But is that stupid?” she asks. “No,” I say. “It’s your idea. What do you need from me right now?” She asks if we can practice what she’ll say, so we do. She tries it a couple times, lands on: “I love your unicorn idea, and the garden means a lot to me because we grew it together. Can we split the mural half and half?” It sounds natural, not scripted, and she grins when she gets it right.
I’ve taught 4th grade for 12 years, and I get the “can I have advice please” line at least twice a week from students. For the first 10 years, I’d give them my answer immediately, because I know how middle school works, I know how friend drama goes, I just want to keep them from hurting. What I didn’t see was that every time I gave them the answer, I was telling them their own judgment wasn’t good enough. Now I use these three simple questions, and the results are almost always better than anything I would have come up with. Last semester, a boy got into both robotics club and student council, and they meet at the same time. I would have told him robotics looks better on middle school applications, right? But when we ran through the questions, he told me the thing he cared most about was helping plan the new playground, and his best friend was in student council. He picked student council, and he’s still talking about how much fun he has planning the fundraisers. I would have steered him wrong.
This doesn’t work for every situation, obviously. If a kid comes to you saying they’re being hurt or bullied, you don’t ask them to list options, you step in and fix it. But for all the small, everyday problems that kids are actually capable of solving themselves, it’s low-effort and it works way better than unsolicited advice. I don’t have to have all the answers, I just have to help them sort through theirs.
Lila ended up pitching her half-and-half idea to her friends, and they loved it. They painted unicorns grazing in the garden, rainbows arching over the tomato plants. It was weird, it was charming, and Lila stood by it for 20 minutes at the art show telling every visitor about the tomatoes she grew. It didn’t need my solution. It needed her solution.
Last night, she knocked on my office door again, phone in hand, and said the same line: “Can I have advice please? My birthday party invite list is too short, I don’t know who to add.” I closed my laptop, pushed my cold coffee to the side, and got ready to ask the first question. I still get the urge to jump in sometimes, to tell her what I think she should do, to fix it so she doesn’t have to feel the awkwardness or the disappointment if it doesn’t work out. I still worry sometimes I’m not giving her enough guidance. But so far, the small mess ups she’s had have taught her more than any perfect advice I could have given her. It’s not a fancy system, and it doesn’t work every time. But it’s the best thing I’ve found, so that’s what we do.
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