How to Teach Kids Problem-Solving Skills
Parents can begin teaching basic problem-solving and other life skills during early education or playschool to help your child sharpen their skills into high school and beyond. Good problem-solving skills are the key to helping them to manage and lead a much successful and happy life. A school is the first place where a child can build his or her self-respect and confidence. In school, a child can learn the importance of his name, things, and the value of having a friend. Every child learns to communicate with his teachers and fellow students in the Pre School.
The 5 Steps of Problem-Solving
Kids who feel down or hopeless often won’t attempt or try to address a problem. But when you encourage them or give them a clear formula for solving problems and achieve their goal, then they’ll feel more confident in their ability to try. Play school is the perfect place to grow a kid in the right direction. Here are the steps to problem-solving.
1. Identify the problem
It is the parent’s responsibility to identify the problem by which their kids are going through. Identifying the problem and help them to find out the right way that they should try to look for solutions instead of worrying about the problem. Parents should make them comfortable and help them to express their feelings to hold positivity in life by letting them acknowledge their problems and emotions. If it is happiness, sadness, fear, shame, anxiety, or anything, tell them that it is normal to feel happy or sad or facing problems at times. Once they learn to accept these feelings and discuss them with their parents then, there will be no room for negativity. If you feel your child seems unhappy or angry, ask him about his problem. Help your child state the problem, such as confusion between selecting a language. If they don’t have anyone to play with at recess,” or “You aren’t sure if you should take the advanced math class.”
2. Develop at least five possible solutions
Encourage them to brainstorm possible ways to solve the problem. Emphasize that all the solutions don’t necessarily need to be good ideas not at this point. Help your child develop solutions if they are struggling to come up with ideas. Even a silly answer or a far-fetched idea can also be a possible solution. The key is to help them by guiding them properly to see that with a little creativity, they can find many different potential solutions.
3. Identify the pros and cons of each solution
Help your child to recognize potential positive and negative consequences for each possible solution they identified.
4. Pick a solution
Once your child has learned to find out a perfect solution and started to evaluate the possible positive and negative outcomes, encourage them to pick a solution and just be with them to reach their desired goal.
5. Test it out
Tell them it’s good to try a solution and see what happens. If it doesn’t work out, they should not feel depressed but always try to find out another solution from the list that they developed in step two.
The key is to encourage them at anyhow stay with them. Slowly they will start trusting in your words and as a parent, you will become not only a parent but the most lovable person of their life. These things will make them more positive in their life.