When raising a child, you come up against a hundred or so questions every single day. Some are small and require next to no thought whatsoever – “Shall we have hotdogs or pasta for dinner?” or, “Which bedtime story shall we read tonight?” – and some we obsess over for weeks, or even months, such as, “Which school is the right school for my child?”

Looking back, you’ll no doubt have come up against a fair few kid-related questions today. Perhaps you couldn’t decide whether or not to make them that Nutella sandwich they asked for in their lunchbox, or whether to let them spend the night at their best friend’s house despite tomorrow being a school day.

But when bigger questions arise, such as, “Should I sign them up for the football club, even though it’s rather expensive?”, how do you make your decision? Do you give yourself a tight deadline to make up your mind? Do you write out a list of all the pros and cons? Or perhaps you just go with your gut and let that be it!

If you’ve found a decision-making system that works for you, that’s great! On the other hand, if bigger decisions often leave you feeling anxious and second-guessing your choices, we’d like to introduce you to the four Fs method.

So, what is the ‘four Fs’ method?

Frame the question. What is the actual decision that you must make? What is the question that needs answering? Sometimes it’s obvious, but occasionally, your family’s version of the question will be unique. Let’s say you’re choosing a school for your little one to attend. The real question will be “Which school is right for my child and meets their needs?”

Once the question is established, plan a meeting with everyone that needs to be involved (it’s up to you and the situation as to whether or not this should include your child) and then air any potential issues that may come up – logistics, benefits, costs, risks.

The aim of this meeting isn’t to come to a decision, but to leave with a plan of what information needs to be gathered and assign who will gather which information. It helps to make plans for the next meeting so everyone involved has a deadline to follow.

Fact-find. The next step is to gather the information you will need. If the information is out there, go out and find it and talk to the relevant people. In the case of finding the right school, for example, you’ll probably want to talk to a bunch of parents and teachers at different schools and really find out as much information as you possibly can, asking them all of the questions you came up with in the previous family meeting. Try and think of this process as interactive, but don’t forget that the internet and a good old book will also prove helpful when obtaining useful information.

Final decision. Once you have all the information required to make a decision, it’s time to do just that. This will likely require another one or two meetings - after all, if it was an easy choice it probably could have been decided in the first meeting. Remember, you have everything you need to make the decision now, and while you can’t possibly know if you’ve made the right one, that was never the point. The point was to make sure your decision was a thoughtful one.

Follow up. This is a point often missed, but it’s potentially the most important of all. Make sure to review the decision after some time has passed and you’ve gathered enough useful information. When it comes to the school question, decide that you’ll review how things are going after a 6-month period, and then make sure you remember to do so.

And it’s really as simple as that! Now, let's explore how you can implement this strategy so that it works for you.

So, how should I go about implementing the four Fs strategy so that it works for my family?

Your four Fs system doesn’t need to look exactly like ours. For example, you might choose to always involve the kids, or maybe you might like to organise a few family meetings during the fact-finding process. However your meetings end up, use the four Fs method to encourage you to make your decisions deliberately.

And remember, decisions need time and consideration but they don’t need your constant attention. By organising meetings and agreeing on what information needs to be obtained and when by, you should free up some space in your mind to not have to worry and obsess for days on end.

What are the four Fs of answering a child's question?

Unii has an easy way to work things out before you give them an answer.