How do I help my five year old make decisions?

[edukation]

This morning my five year old has got into a real state because he thinks he wants to go to a club at school this evening but he is also nervous that he may not like it and he can't make the decision of what he is going to do. He decides one way and then bursts out crying and changes his mind. I know I could make the decision for him but I am not sure if I should force him to go or say no you are not going - I have a feeling that he needs to learn how to decide for himself whether he wants to try something and learn to try it and then not go again if he doesn't like it.

It is not just big decisions like this - he also struggles with small ones such as should I have a story from daddy and go straight to sleep or not and read some of my book myself. How do I help him to develop a decision making process? Or is he too young? Doesn't help that I am not sure I ever learnt this skill properly myself - probably hence my indecision over this issue!

Hmm. My feeling is that he is definitely not too young to make some choices and decisions, but perhaps since he is finding it a bit tough, it's worth removing some of them. Especially bedtime ones when he is tired.

With ones like the club, could you do a 'what's the worst thing that could happen' to address his anxiety a bit? 'So you want to go to the club... and the worst thing would be that you don't like it?' - then if he agrees that that's the worst thing, start by saying 'Well, to help that, if that happens you don't have to go again'. After doing this a few times, see if he can start to identify the worst thing himself, and then to start identifying what he/you could do about it. Try and keep it all as simple as poss, not lots of options/questions/question tags on the sentences. I don't know if this helps at all? You could also remind him afterwards of decisions he found difficult, made and what the consequence was. Again, keep the language simple. Any good?

Have tried the worst thing approach but it doesn't have much success because the problem seems to be that he wants to do both things and he can't pick one because it will mean he can't do the other one. Also there is what he thinks he should do - because school suggested it etc - and what he actually wants to do and he has a problem doing what he wants. He gets so upset over it - I just wish he would stop getting so many possible things to do!