Understanding How We Decide: A Book about Choices

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How We Decide: A Book about Choices

If you know children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), you know just how important it is to teach them good decision-making skills. Far too many children with ADHD have a hard time with impulse control and the aftermath of poor decision making. Most books on the subject will tell you how important it is to teach a child with ADHD appropriate decision-making skills.

But teaching those skills requires us to understand how we make decisions ourselves. Many people will say they brainstorm options, list consequences and then make their decision. Yet, being so methodical is not possible with the dozens of decisions we make every day.

In his book, How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer explores the decision-making process. He does so through a combination of interesting anecdotes and explanations of the neuroscience behind the decisions made. Lehrer explores decision making through the lens of the emotional and rational brains, either of which can take over when faced with a decision.

Lehrer spends a significant amount of time on the process of rapid decision making. As many parents of ADHD children know, this is often where children have a hard time. ADHD children very often find it difficult to make decisions "in the moment."

Parents who read this book should not expect a miracle cure for their children's ADHD. While the book does mention ADHD, the focus is on helping readers reflect on their decision-making processes and the science behind them. Between anecdotes about the quick decision making of firefighters, quarterbacks and pilots, and stories drawn from everyday life, this book elegantly describes the interplay of thought processes, dopamine and the many other factors that influence our decisions.

"This type of context can be helpful," says Aaron McGinley, clinical services manager at Talisman Programs and former summer camp manager of the Foundations Program, an ADHD camp run by Talisman. "Whether at summer camp, school or at home, children with ADHD are faced with hundreds of choices throughout the day

One of the most difficult challenges for those who take care of children with ADHD is helping the children internalize the decision-making process. "While teaching decision making and problem solving is a comprehensive process, it helps when parents or professionals have the context to understand how most people make decisions," McGinley says.

How We Decide provides parents and educators at ADHD schools and camps insight into their own decision-making processes so they can pass useful skills onto children with ADHD.

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