The ‘choose one of two options’ things works pretty well most of the time with my kids.
(Would you like to brush your teeth or get your bath first, for example.)
However, there are some chores/behaviours that are expectations. For those, we give orders. For example, before coming downstairs, you must tidy the mess in your room. Before going upstairs you must tidy the mess you made on the main floor. When these don’t get done (which is, sadly, frequent) they must go fix it immediately. If it happens a few times in a row, there will be an additional consequence.
My kids have chores they are supposed to do each week that are tied to their allowance. They don’t do them, they don’t get their allowance. Means I don’t ask, tell or cajole them to do them. I just do them myself after they don’t get their allowance.
It’s quite common to phrase orders as questions out of politeness - adults in positions of authority do it to other adults all the time. When a policemen says, “Could you come with me please, sir?” you both know it’s not really a request. And that’s fine.
I often hear people (such as in this thread) complaining about others phrasing instructions to their small children this way, but I don’t understand why. Whether or not the child realizes it’s really an instruction is going to depend not on the specific wording you use, but on the kind of relationship you’ve built up over the years. There’s no need, in my opinion, to specifically avoid the more polite phrasing; they’re smart enough to figure it out.
I agree with you, if a parent, teacher or boss wants me to do something I don’t expect them to ask unless I actually do have a choice which sometimes may be the case. If I have to think about how I am going to phrase the request something has allready broken down in the relationship. Raising my kids there were things that they assumed they were expected to do and somethings they were accustomed to doing in their own time, like cleaning their room for instance, if I had company comming over I might ask they clean the room up like right now and explain I had company comming. Sometimes they would lighlty protest and I just pretended I didn’t hear them.
I do think there are people out there that always phrase thing as a polite question and expect the child to magically read their mind about what is a genuine request and what is a command. Then they get mad when the child gets the signals wrong. (and the reason the child gets the signals wrong is because the parent often wasn’t clear even in their own mind about what they meant).
There are other parents who are so non-confrontational that everything really is a request and kids take advantage of that and become self-centered, entitled little jerks while their parents stumble behind them, exhausted, frustrated, and helpless.
I don’t think these are terribly common, nor to I think it’s the case with the vast majority of polite parents. But both patterns happen, and when you see them, they tend to make an impression.
I believe that people including kids are more aware of the energy we are putting out when we communicate something to them than they are the actual words. Firm, friendly, polite will seldom be a problem unless one allready exists.
You are doing exactly the right thing, teaching your children to make decisions, that they are part of a community rather than an autocracy, and to pick up on subtle cues.
I really like “Will you …” versus “I need you to …”.