22 SOLVING PROBLEMS FOR YOUR CHILDREN NEVER
TEACHES PROBLEM SOLVING.
“Don’t do that,” repeated the mother hundreds of times a day.
She was frustrated. The child became resistive and oppositional to everything the mother said.
The whole cycle of unproductive, ineffective parenting could be reversed with a question instead of a demand. “Why are you doing that?”
Early in childhood, a parent needs to teach a child to make simple “right from wrong” decisions. A child has to think for himself. But problem-solving skills are not caught, they are taught.
First, they’re taught by example. A child observes a parent making right decision and learns by imitating the parent.
Then, problem-solving skills are taught verbally. A parent goes through the process of arriving at a solution and answers a child’s questions about the process all along the way.
Finally, a parent plays back for a child what a child did in solving a problem. The positive and negative steps in solving a problem are explained, examined, and if need be, corrected.
Admittedly, teaching a child to solve a problem initially takes a lot of time. But time and grief are saved in the long-term because a child will learn how to do make right decisions for themselves. We’re not training up our children to cope. Coping means surviving in spite of the problems. Coping allows the problems to go unsolved, with the false belief that in time they will simply go away.
Solving problems means that children learn to take steps now that will ultimately lead out of the problem and into a solution. Solutions don’t happen instantly. But step by step, any problem can be solved with God’s help, parental guidance, and a child’s willingness to learn. The time-worn but true cliché says, “Mile by mile, life’s a trial. Inch by inch, it’s a cinch.”
I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Phil. 4:12–13). Action Steps I/We Need to Take