We are creating a culture of learning. How can you help?

Each week for the next six weeks I will share one idea from Raising Resilient Problem Solvers.

By Michael Grose.

Personal problem-solving is an under-rated skill shared by resilient children and adults. First, identified alongside independence, social connection, and optimism by early resilience-researchers in the US, the ability to solve your own problems is the basis of a child’s autonomy and self-efficacy.

When parents solve all children’s problems we not only increase their dependency on adults, we also teach kids to be afraid of making mistakes and to blame themselves for not being good enough. As I noted in my book Anxious Kids, this is fertile ground for anxiousness and depressive illness.

So how can we raise kids to be courageous problem-solvers rather than self-critical, low risk-takers?  Here are six practical ideas to get you started:

Turn requests for help into problems for kids to solve

Kids get used to bringing their problems to parents to solve.  If you keep solving them, they’ll keep bringing them.

“Mum, Sarah’s annoying me”

“Dad, can you ask my teacher to pick me for the team?”

“Hey, I can’t find my socks!”

It’s tempting if you are in a time-poor family, to simply jump in and help kids out. Alternatively, you can take a problem-solving approach, cuing them to resolve their own problems and take responsibility for their concerns.

“What can you do to make her stop annoying you?”

“What’s the best approach to take with your teacher?”

“Socks, smocks! Where might they be?”