Do you want to know the best method for teaching children problem solving? Well, that's what we're
talking about today. I'm Nicholeen Peck, and I teach parenting, good communications and how
to build strong family relationships all over the world through the principle, self government and
today we're talking about problem solving.
In this video, we're going to learn about how
children learn to problem solve and what they need to be focusing on in their brains. Also,
we're gonna talk about a problem solving exercise that you can use for anyone, not just children.
So let's talk about children and problem solving. Just so you know, they learn most
of their problem solving by example. So whatever they see happening is what they will duplicate in
their problem solving. They also tend to problem solve based off of what has worked in the past. So
they try different things, trial and error and if they seem to get their way doing something, then
they'll do it again. This is why a child whines repeatedly, they whine once, it worked for something
someone wasn't in the mood for the whining, they didn't want to teach to correct it or talk about
it. They just gave the child whatever it was. And because it worked, sometimes that was their
preferred method of problem solving. So anger, emotions, all kinds of things can be used as a
method of problem solving. But they're not always very productive and certainly not unifying. So
when a person learns to problem solve, it is possible to problem solve in a way that does
not divide family members, but instead unites them together and that's what we're going to be
talking about today. So what's going on inside the child when they are learning by trial and error,
and example how to solve their problems? When a child is learning by trial and error, they
might employ some of their emotions. If they start solving their problems with emotions, this isn't
something that should be shocking. In fact, almost every person starts out trying to solve their
problems with their emotions. If you think that when a child is nonverbal, they're a baby, they
can't talk, they only have their emotions, they're in mid brain at that time. And so they're using
their emotions to communicate their feelings and their desires to somebody else, so that they can
get their problem solved. Well, this lasts for a long time, sometimes even after a child is verbal,
they don't use their verbal communication skills to actually solve their problems. They revert
back to their emotions to get the point across. Now, verbal communication skills are usually a
prefrontal cortex thing. So that front part of the brain is the part where we really get into real
cognitive work where we're solving our problems. But the thing is is a child's prefrontal cortex
develops slowly over time. The prefrontal cortex of the brain is not fully developed until a person
is between the ages of 18 and 25 years old. This means you could have a person in their mid 20s,
that doesn't even have their brain fully developed yet, this is why they still have to call mom for
a recipe or ask dad how to set up insurance for a car or something like that, even when
they're adults, because they just don't know how to solve that problem yet and they're needing a
little help because they don't have full cognitive ability. When a person is tiny, they're like two
and three and four, their prefrontal cortex is are so small, that they don't have as much ability to
solve problems. This doesn't mean that they have no ability to solve problems so let's keep that
very clear, because they do have some ability. And I'll talk in a moment about a game that I use
to help them when they are tiny, learn to solve their problems, as well as the problem solving
exercise that you can use for somebody at pretty much any age to solve their problems as well and
this problem solving exercise helps develop that prefrontal cortex so they get better at solving
their problems, no matter who they're with, or where they are. Are you enjoying this? I hope so.
If so, please subscribe. I would love to help you learn even more about self government and there
are new videos that come out all the time, so if you subscribe, you won't miss them. In this book,
which is my best selling book, the one I'm most known for, Parenting A House United,
I talk about how to teach children problem solving. In fact, there's an entire chapter
dedicated to just teaching children how to solve problems. I'm going to share with you just two
of the ideas that are associated with the chapter of this book right now. Number one is a game that
I used to play with my children when they were very tiny. This game was called the "What If" game.
The way that you play the "What if" game is maybe you're driving down the road or sitting there at
lunch just hanging around the house and you say let's play the what if game and they say okay,
how do you play that? All right, well, I'm gonna give you a circumstance. I'm gonna
say what if, and then I'm gonna say what would you do, and you get to come up with some options
of what you would do and we'll see if you're good at solving the problems, then they'll say, okay.
So then I say, what if your brother took your toy? What would you do? Hmm, they say, I would take it
back, or overtime up, or I would disagree appropriately because that's a skill that
they can always use. That's one of our four basic skills and if you want to know more about it, you
can see the video, the best method for teaching children to get along with others because I
talk in there about disagreeing appropriately, and some of the other four basic skills that I teach.
So they might come up with this as a solution. Now I'm going to bring in safety things like
what if this thing happens that doesn't seem so safe? What would you do? And we're gonna just say,
what if, what if, on any type of circumstance a small child might find themselves in? And
they love thinking about it and processing what would be the best thing to do? Sometimes
they even asked me, What would you do? Because they don't know. And so then I would tell them
what I do and this teaches them what some of their options are. So when they were little,
we would play the what if game, and that what if game prepared them to start solving their problems
and engaging that prefrontal cortex ahead of time so that when they're in the minute, they can
better solve their problems. But we did something else once they got just a little bit older, maybe
about four years old, maybe five years old, we started teaching them a problem solving exercise
that I call SODAS. Now in our family, we have a SODAS journal. In fact, you can find these SODAS,
journals, as well as all the other teaching self government stuff on my website, teachingself
government.com This SODAS journal goes over how to solve problems by factoring in every piece of
information that you might normally miss. So SODAS is an acronym that stands for situation, options,
disadvantages, advantages and solution. I learned to do these SODAS exercises when I was doing
therapeutic treatment care for troubled teens. And I'm so grateful and I think I made a format,
it's a little bit easier than the way that I learned them. So if you've heard of them before,
it's probably because they've been around for a while. So when the parent gives the
child the situation, and the parent always gives the child the situation,
they make sure that that situation is open ended because after the situation is given to the child,
then the child needs to come up with their options. Sometimes we use SODAS as a negative
consequences. Sometimes we just use them to solve problems or to go through an instance that just
happened. So we don't make the same mistake again in the future. So there are many ways to
use a SODAS exercise, and there's no age limit for using it either. So me and my husband will
often do SODAS exercises with each other when we're trying to make decisions for our family
because it's just good solid problem solving. The parent gives the situation, a situation might
be something like mom said, I can't watch TV, but I really want to. Hmm, now we've stopped
the situation right before a choice is going to be made. So what are the options that the person
might have? Hmm, maybe I watch it anyway. Maybe I don't, I say okay, and don't or number three,
maybe I disagree appropriately with mom and use one of my skills. After I've come up with some
options and I always say at least three options, then I'm going to go through the
disadvantages and advantages for each option. Did you know that there are disadvantages of making
the right decision? So let's say a child says okay, and doesn't watch the TV when Mom tells
him not to? Well, what's the disadvantage, they might be bored, they don't get to watch the TV,
they don't get to talk with their friends about this new show that everybody else is watching.
Those are a lot of negative consequences or disadvantages and sometimes they don't want to
accept those. Did you also know that there are advantages for making the wrong decision? This
is why people make the wrong decision. So what are the advantages of watching it anyway? Well,
I'm not bored or I get to talk to my friends about it, or I feel cool, because I got to see the
show before everybody else, something like that, right. So there are advantages and disadvantages
for every single options and we need to explore those so that we can actually make a really
educated choice. Once you fleshed out all of the options, then you can make an objective decision.
And you can say I think it's better to disagree appropriately so that mom could understand how I
feel about it and I get to express my feelings to her or something like that. So at the end,
there's a solution section after the advantages and disadvantages section and then the solution
is where they decide which choice they will use in the future. Then we discuss it in the debriefing
section. This helps the child know that I know what their thought processes are. So now everybody
knows in the future if they make a decision to watch the TV anyway, what they went through and
why they decided to disobey in the first place. Now, I'm still going to correct it if they don't
accept the "no" answer for watching the TV. But now we'll have something even more to talk about and
they'll remember what their other options were because we can refer back to those again and
again, since we keep them recorded in the SODAS journal. I have a free gift for you remember,
I talked to you about that? Well, it is a calm parenting toolkit, which is actually a course it's
a mini course. It's got 10 lessons, 10 tools that you can utilize to be calm when someone else isn't
and to get you on the road to self government. In the description below this video, there is a
link that says teachselfgov.com/toolkit. Click on that link right now and you can get the calm
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