Teaching My Kids How to Solve Problems Works
My wife and I have three children ages 14, 10, and 9.
We had taken some parenting classes from Cynthia and tried applying her strategies on our own, without her guidance.
It wasn’t too effective because we couldn’t see what we needed to change. Then we decided to start one-on-one sessions with Cynthia.
What a huge difference this has made.
On a recent walk around the neighborhood, our 9 and 10 year old’s started fighting over who got to use the scooter with the “better” handle.
My normal response would have been to jump into the middle and try to arbitrate or just make a ruling one way or the other.
I even started down this path instinctively when it happened, and became very frustrated when the kids weren’t responding to my ideas (despite that being the regular response).
Just as I was about to call off the whole walk and head home, I decided to give Cynthia’s approach a try.
I explained that this was a problem that I was going to help them solve THEMSELVES.
Then I made sure that each individual child got a chance to speak uninterrupted DIRECTLY to the other ones (not using me as the judge).
Once they each heard the other out, they jointly came up with a fair solution that was 10 times better than anything I could have imposed on them.
Cynthia has taught us valuable problem solving skills. We now see ourselves as more of a coach to help our kids solve problems, than the judge, jury and jailer roles we often played in the past.
