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Raising Resilient Problem Solvers.

By Michael Grose.

TIP #4

Prepare kids for problems and contingencies

You may coach your child to be independent – walk to school, make their lunch, answer the phone– but do they know what to do in an emergency? What happens if they come home after school and the house is locked? Who do they go to? Discuss different scenarios with children whenever they enter new or potentially risky situations so that they won’t fall apart when things don’t go their way. Remember, the Boy Scouts motto – “Be Prepared!”

TIP #5

Show a little faith

Sometimes you’ve got to show faith in children. We can easily trip them up with our negative expectations such as saying “Don’t spill it!” to a child who is carrying a glass filled with water. Of course, your child doesn’t want to spill it but you’ve just conveyed your expectations with that statement. We need to be careful that we don’t sabotage children’s efforts to be independent problem-solvers with comments such as, “BE careful!”, “You’ll be okay, won’t you?”, “You’re not very good at looking after yourself!”

TIP # 6

Applaud mistakes

Would a child who accidentally breaks a plate in your family while emptying the dishwasher be met with a ‘that’s really annoying, you can be clumsy sometimes’ response or a ‘it doesn’t matter, thanks for your help’ type of response? Hopefully it won’t be the first response, because nothing shuts down a child’s natural tendencies to extend themselves quicker than an adult who can’t abide mistakes. If you have a low risk-taking, perfectionist child, consider throwing a little party rather than making a fuss when they make errors so they can learn that mistakes don’t reflect on them personally, and that the sun will still shine even if they break a plate, tell a joke that falls flat or doesn’t get a perfect exam score.

As I’ve often said your job as a parent is to make yourself redundant (which is different to being irrelevant) at the earliest possible age. The ability to sort and solve your own problems, rather than step back and expect others to resolve them, is usually developed in childhood. With repetition and practice problem-solving becomes a valuable life-pattern, to be used in the workplace, in the community and in family relationships.

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,

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?”