> When I ask him what he wants to do he says "I don't know"

A blogger I read a while ago (I completely forget who) wrote something about this that stuck with me: if you ask a kid if they want pancakes or cereal for breakfast, they'll pick one and be delighted. If you ask them what they'd like to have without presenting options, this can lead to a complete meltdown. Picking from infinite options, forcing them to think all of them up and then turn down n-1 of them... It can be too much for a kid.

Give kids a small number of diverse options where you also approve of all of them. Everyone is pretty happy with the decision. (This system maybe also works really well with adults.)

Sounds plausible, but IME doesn't actually work with real kids

Eh. I'm a teacher these days, and it works with real kids. With my own kids, who know the range of possibility and aren't quite so believing in my authority as that of a real teacher, it's still effective but less so.

[It works to get class buy-in, even if you are offering meh choice A and awful choice B. A class that has chosen "A" will be more engaged doing it than if you just told them to do A...

but you'd better be ready to do 'B' if the class decides to be contrarian. Once, they really wanted to do the quiz to show that they really -do- know what we've been doing, and if I hadn't had the quiz prepped and ready I'd have been in trouble...]

Might it simply be the social setting that makes it work in a class and not with your own kids? At a work offsite I'm happy enough to choose between a walking tour or a brewery visit as mandatory fun, but if I'm the same city with my wife we're probably gonna do something different

Has literally never worked with my kids (now aged 17 and 13) fwiw.

> Might it simply be the social setting that makes it work in a class and not with your own kids?

Oh, totally. It does work with my kids somewhat, but there has to be at least a minimal reason for constraint and at least some desirability of the options. At school, constraint is expected and things that are not entirely fun are tolerated.

Asking A or B for breakfast as someone else pointed out, when they're not interested in eating, isn't going to do anything.

Also--my wife and I do the "A or B --- or -you- propose something" with each other. Prevents just absently saying "nah" to a long list of options.

Works well with mine. He’s got 3 choices most mornings.

It doesn't with mine, I'm afraid. I frequently give them 1-3 options and they shoot them all down (even pancakes?!). Eventually I give up and ask them what they want, and they still don't know, or just want to eat nothing.

It’s because they’ve learned that they can say no and you’ll keep coming up with more options. They’ve exited the game because you created the exit by failing to enforce the boundary.

Yeah I've experienced this when I was young. My mom was running a daycare at home, and I would sometimes try to help at lunchtime.

Me: <Kid's name>, do you want apple juice? No. Do you want orange juice? No. Do you want grape juice? No. Well that's all we've got, which one do you prefer? None, I want something else. ... and obviously whatever we had would not do. My mom who saw I was not efficient enough: Okay <kid's name> do you want apple or orange juice? Orange.

My first reaction was "but I already suggested it", but I got better after a while.

OK, sure, offering a choice of what to eat when they're not excited about the idea of eating isn't going to generate a response. I almost never ate breakfast as a kid... unless there was leftover cake or something I could sneak...

> Eventually I give up and ask them what they want, and they still don't know, or just want to eat nothing.

I force a choice on mine, and she immediately 'strongly' choose the other one, which I reject, which makes her want it even more.

> When I ask him what he wants to do he says "I don't know"

I had to reach the age of 22 and get the chance to use computers for the first time in my life to figure that out ... he will be ok :)

"being unemployed" could also be a euphemism for "i sold my startup for $100s of millions"

Then the answer is easy. Go to the nearest Lego store and buy everything!

> Electronics is interesting to him, as is listening to "Daddy music". (Goth/Rock/Metal.) "Mommy music" doesn't appeal as much which I find a little fascinating. Does he genuinely prefer my music, or is it something about me? I know that he behaves and plays differently depending on who he's spending time with ..

There's not an A or B answer to this kind of question. Parents are influential, and the response to parents' recommendations and preferences are inseparable from the actual relationship.

My oldest son is now 13. Most of what I played for him isn't so interesting anymore. But we spent a couple years earlier in his life where we went to my workshop and I'd play Kraftwerk and he'd get one on one time and we'd do "serious" things. Kraftwerk is still treasured to him, and I doubt that it's because Kraftwerk was more intrinsically appealing to him than those other things...

Or, conversely, my dad always listened to music from rat pack performers. It was a subject of curiosity when i was 6-11... awful when I was 12-17 and had a terrible relationship with my dad, and now it's evolved to a mild appreciation tinged with nostalgia. If I was still mad at my dad I think it would be hard to like it.

Baby had a starting preference for things we put with headphones over the mom's belly. This might sound insane, but I was in the OR for the C-section and once the baby was put on the mother's arm I started to play one of these music tracks and the baby stopped crying, appearing to recognize stuff from the older situation.

That said, the pregnancy music selection was mostly daddy's music because daddy has a music education, mommy's pretty much deaf to intervals between notes and stuck on music from her youth. But the things that were there, baby still loves.

Since then I've made an effort to expand on his repertory from daddy's music. Mom's attempts to do so are met with less enthusiasm.

----

Thaaat said: parenting so far has confirmed the story about the Oedipus complex. In plain words, it's like this: mom can't give him her full attention; the world and society and large steal her from him. Luckily, the baby learns to personify all this stuff into dad -- it's dad who steals mommy. This is lucky because he can aspire to be me, while "society at large" is enough to drive anyone insane. This is very very clear in this family: kid wants to be with his mom, often alone with her; but also: kid wants to be like me. He attentively watches me as I dress, and enjoys enormously the homologies (hey, let's all put on socks!). Even when it comes to daddy's "no" -- this is understandable, the overarching ways of the world are not. (Jacques Lacan has this pun where "le non du pere" becomes "le nom du pere" -- baby will have my name, this is the heart of fathering.)

I think our child seems to like us both "equally" these days, though it is clear some days that nothing Daddy does is correct, and mommy would do it better/properly.

I can also see that when she works overnight he tries to outright punish her, by ignoring her, when she returns.

But those kinda things aside I don't see anything like your story there. I guess it goes to show that kids, and personalities, are so varied.

> Does he genuinely prefer my music, or is it something about me?

This is a very insightful question. Although I can’t answer for your child, I know mine takes an interest in almost anything that i show love or curiosity for. If I express love for a song (not with words but by singing it, dancing to it, etc), he will ask to hear it again and again.

Does his mother show a love for music and specific songs?

I see the same thing in other areas, definitely.

He got his first watch, way before he could tell the time, because he was so interested in my watch collection and kept pleading to wear one "just like daddy does".

But yes I think we both enjoy music, and I think we both sing (badly) to our favourite tracks now and again - usually he tells us to stop!

> "Mommy music" doesn't appeal as much which I find a little fascinating.

What genres does "Mommy music" consist of?

I'd choose goth/rock/techno/industrial-metal and stuff from the 80s. She'd choose goth/rock/techno/90s music.

So a reasonably high amount of overlap, which is why it's a bit fascinating.

(I guess I learned early on that he liked loud drums, loud rhythms, and repetition. Things like Rammstein - Fier Fier, Prodigy - Firestarter, so I tend to bias myself in that direction if he's nearby or listening with me. Maybe that's all it is, but it's fun to observe.)

dad was a metalhead and mom was a punk

Hey I will use these tactics in my wife, thanks :)