"What do you think you can do about it?"

From Carolyn Hax:

Dear Carolyn:

My second-grade son was upset yesterday because his best friend at school told him to toughen up (my son was crying over something) and also told him he was not one of his best friends anymore. What do I say to my son?

 Carolyn's answer starts with:

Next time — since they’re both probably over this already — it’s hard to go wrong with a 1-2 plan of acknowledging his feelings — “I can see you’re really upset, I’m sorry,” plus hug — and directing him to come to his own way of dealing with it: “What do you think you can do about it?” 

I've heard this parenting advice before - that you should ask kids "What do you think you can do about it?" - and it seems unhelpful to say the least.  My own mother has tried it on me (one of those times when you can tell your parent totally read something in an article), and I just found it infuriating.  If I had any remotely productive ideas what to do about it that I hadn't tried already, I'd be trying them!

I think this is even worse to say to a child, because when parents ask children leading questions like that, it quite often implies that the parent thinks the child is supposed to know what to do.  I'm old enough to be his mother, and I don't even have any idea what he should do.  Sitting here in adulthood, we have the luxury of saying "Okay, you're welcome to leave then," but that doesn't work when you're a kid and it's more difficult to function in the classroom and the playground when you don't have someone present whom you can claim as your best friend.  Actual friendship aside, the social logistics of school require having people you can call friends. (This is something I keep meaning to blog about but haven't gotten around to yet.)

I've seen Carolyn Hax give this advice to parents before, and I think it's even worse coming from an advice columnist.  The kid doesn't know what to do, so he goes to his parent.  The parent doesn't know what to do, so they write to an advice columnist.  And the advice columnist tells the parent to ask the kid?  How is that useful?

At this point, people usually ask me "Well, what advice do you expect her to give?  Do you have any better ideas?"  First of all, advice columnists (for whom this is their whole job) should be able to give better, more effective advice that gets better results than anything I could ever think of.  The fact that I don't know the solution doesn't mean an advice columnist wouldn't be able to come up with one, just like the fact that I can't make my hair stay curled doesn't mean that a hairdresser wouldn't be able to.

But, more importantly, advice columnists get a lot of letters.  If the columnist can't come up with a solution to one of the problems, they should run another letter where they can come up with a solution to the LW's problem rather than taking up valuable column inches being one of these people and telling the person who asked for help in the first place to think of the answer themselves.