Guiding Children to Solve Their Own Problems
http://www.loveandlogic.com/pdfs/guiding-children-to-solve-their-own-problems.pdf
Learn the five steps to guiding your children in problem solving.
- Empathy - "I bet that hurts"
- Send the power message - "What do you think you'll do?"
- Offer choices - Start with the poorer choices and explore the consequences with each.
- Have the child state the consequences - "And how will that work?"
- Give the child permission to either solve the problem or not solve the problem - Don't worry, if the child is fortunate enough to make a poor choice, there may be a double learning lesson.
You're going to love learning this process. Just remember, in the first step, empathy, it must be sincere...from the heart...or it will sound like ridicule and they'll hear it coming for miles.