Society pushes for parents to navigate so many things with their kids on a daily basis: school, grades, friendships, sports, social media, the list could go on. This societal push can sometimes cause us to forget the basics. As parents, our primary responsibility is to explicitly teach skills that don’t come naturally to children, and one of those is problem solving skills and strategies. Our kids, no matter their age, face problems every single day. They may struggle to share a toy, understand math, navigate friendships and resist peer pressure, among others. We adults find problem solving comes pretty naturally to us, and we are largely unaware of how many problems we solve on a daily basis. It’s no surprise then if you think to yourself, “How do I even teach this to my children?”
You may be wondering why it’s necessary to teach problem solving skills in the first place. Won’t they just get it? Won’t they just pick it up? Although this is true to a certain extent, because these skills don’t come naturally, there is a greater need for specific teaching to occur. Now, before you start thinking you’ve got to carve out more time in your day and label it “teach problem solving,” this is a type of teaching that will occur organically through day-to-day living.
Problem solving is an important lifelong skill that children not only need now, but will use throughout the rest of their life. People who struggle with problem solving may avoid the problem altogether or feel stuck, not knowing what to do, or make impulsive or inappropriate decisions when faced with a problem. People with good problem solving skills are typically higher achievers in academic areas, are more successful, independent, resilient and able to cope with the curveballs life throws at them.
How you walk through problem solving depends on the age of your kids, but for elementary and teens, you can follow a simple five-step outline to begin teaching your kids the basics of problem solving:
Step 1: Identify the problem. Simply verbalizing the problem out loud can be helpful for children. For example, I don’t have anyone to sit with at lunch.
Step 2: Brainstorm multiple solutions. Many problems require more than a one-size-fits-all approach and can have many different solutions. Encourage your children to think outside the box and find creative or unique solutions.
Step 3: Discuss pros and cons of each solution. Sometimes, writing this out can be powerful as well.
Step 4: Pick a solution and try it out. Once pros and cons have been weighed, a solution can be chosen and then carried out.
Step 5: Revisit. Chat about how it worked out and, if needed, the child can try another solution.
Now that you have simple steps for problem solving, let’s dive into a few strategies to encourage your children to work through their own problems—you may even be doing these already!
Play. I include this one first because it is so important at any age, even for teens. Play with Legos, build and give young children opportunities for open-ended play. Have your teens code or play chess with them. There are so many opportunities for critical and creative thinking when playing! Krissy Neff, Overland Park mom of two, says, “Introducing our children to Lego play at a young age really helped them be creative, critical problem solvers. It has fostered creativity, analysis and problem solving in our kids way more than any talking we could have done. We started with age appropriate sets, and once they collected numerous sets, they started to reconfigure existing builds and add their own creative touches. Sometimes, those additions broke and caused frustrated feelings. That is when we would revisit and encourage problem solving strategies to use in their next creation. Typically, they go on to create fantastic Lego builds that now get shown off to us at the end … after they took time to work out all the kinks on their own.”
Teamwork. Encourage children to work together, whether that be designing a Magnatiles castle, figuring out how to set up a lemonade stand or constructing a massive fort. They will learn different perspectives for problem solving from each other, as well as learn how to work with other people—bonus!
Keep trying. Let them know making mistakes is always OK. Mistakes are a wonderful learning experience and help us develop stamina to continue seeking answers to problems. However, encourage your children to step away and take a breather from tough problems, which is a healthy habit. Sometimes that is exactly what we need to bring clarity and perspective back to our brains.
Model. Model the very things you want to teach your children. When you are experiencing a problem, talk through the problem solving steps aloud and invite kids to weigh in with their thoughts as well. Their creative, outside-the-box thinking might surprise you!
Keep them curious. Encourage question asking (no matter how annoying it can become!) from your children—but don’t always give them the answers. Also, pose leading questions to them that engage their brains for higher level thinking skills.
Teaching kids to be pros at problem solving won’t happen overnight, but the time invested will be well worth developing this lifelong skill. By nurturing kids’ curiosity, teamwork and opportunities for play, we are setting our children up to tackle whatever comes their way! Let’s continue teaching, supporting and inspiring our young learners, because they are the next generation … and I’m sure we definitely need them for some future problem solving!
Julie Collett is a mom of four in Overland Park, so she has plenty of opportunities to practice problem solving!