Problem-solving fosters critical thinking and resilience. Help your child develop these skills by guiding them through defining, planning, experimenting, and reflecting on challenges in their daily life.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” - Thomas Edison
Key Concepts:
- Problem solving is directly related to executive functioning. It’s the ability to reflect on what you know, what you’ve learned, what you need and then to solve problems that are important to your life.
- Research shows that when critical thinking skills are explicitly taught, problem solving abilities improve!
- Flexible thinking can lead to an increase in both problem solving skills AND resilience. Strategists have simplified problem solving into 4 steps:
- 1) Define the problem - what isn’t working and how can you address it?
- 2) Plan - come up with ideas on how to solve the problem, use prior knowledge like “what happened last time?”
- 3) Try it out - experimentation is key! Test out multiple solutions, learn from the good, bad, and ugly
- 4) Look back - this is reflection, which is key to growth and learning.
What to Try:
- Encourage debate - try asking your child to “make a good case” as to why they should be allowed to have another book or get pancakes for dinner. Encourage them to think about why you may say no, and to come up with reasons that would convince you.
- Provide explanations - instead of “because I said so” (which doesn’t work AND is authoritarian parenting), try to provide simple and clear reasons for the decisions you make each day. This promotes logical thinking and will help your child to understand your process and the outcome.
- Encourage questions - …about why things are the way they are, how they could be done differently, and lots of “what if” scenarios that help your child test new theories and explanations.
- Encourage multiple solutions - even if your child gets something right on the first try, work to expand their thinking to include multiple ways of getting the same outcome.