3 Ways to Teach Children Problem-Solving Skills
Teaching your children values will teach them to behave and adapt in life. For instance, disagreements are normal, but sometimes children don’t know how to respond to them. Teaching them how to solve problems will prepare them for the future.
Start at home: Teach them problem-solving skills
Many children have a hard time relating to others. Moreover, they can get restless and become aggressive, angry, etc. It takes time for children to fully develop their problem-solving skills.
Thus, parents at home have the responsibility to teach their children social skills to learn how to communicate, negotiate, and solve conflicts with others. This can be done by teaching them values and principles to live in harmony with others.
3 ways to teach your children problem-solving skills
Teach them how to trust and be empathetic
One of the best ways to help your children solve conflicts is to teach them about trust and empathy. This is crucial to their personality development. Thus, parents need to comply with three conditions:
- Continued attention.
- Unconditional love and support.
- Create situations to develop emotional intelligence.
In a way, this can strengthen their family ties and help them solve conflicts without being violent. Also, through empathy and trust, children can learn to:
- Recognize other people’s feelings and points of view.
- Identify the similarities and differences among people.
- Using soft skills.
- Learning the skills to constructively handle issues through negotiation, mediation, etc.
Teaching them how to establish healthy relationships
Between the ages of 6 and 12, children develop their knowledge of social rules. Their childhood is the best time to teach them how to share, cooperate, and know how to deal with rejections and failures. They can learn to establish healthy relationships by:
- Knowing how to react to intolerance and taunting.
- Reflecting on multiple ways to manage their anger.
- Finding solutions and creating new proposals.
- Knowing that not all conflicts are negative.
This way, children can establish relationships based on respect and a non-violent interaction with others.
Practice role-playing
Practicing role-playing is another way to teach your children problem-solving skills. This can be done through dialogues and acting in a conflictive situation. This technique teaches by example, so it’s even easier to learn.
To do so, parents should create diverse stories, with characters involved in social conflicts that children can solve. Afterward, parents and children can play a role, representing what happened and how it was solved.
In short, family plays a big role in how children express their feelings and manage conflictive situations. In a way, teaching them how to explore what they’re feeling, their emotions, perceptions, and values, can help them understand themselves better.
Remember that fun and games can also become great tools to teach your children problem-solving skills.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Díaz-Aguado, M. J. (2006). El acoso escolar y la prevención de la violencia desde la familia. Madrid: Dirección General de la Familia.
- Martín, X. (1992). El role-playing, una técnica para facilitar la empatía y la perspectiva social. Comunicación, lenguaje y educación, 4(15), 63-68.