What is the relationship between problem solving and decision making?
I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach about parenting and good communication as
well as family relationships all over the world through the lens
of self-government and in this video we're going to be talking about making good decisions.
How much does problem-solving ability factor into good decision-making, that is what people want to
know so in this video we're going to talk about problem solving, how people solve their problems
and how that affects their ability to make decisions and then share with you some strategies
that you can use to better solve problems yourself and help some of the people in your life
learn better problem solving skills too. For years, I did treatment foster care
for troubled teens. They were all between the ages of 12 and 18. I also raised four children of my
own so I've raised many children and all people need to learn problem solving strategies at one
point or another. Now, normally we naturally learn how to solve problems from the people around us so
if you're wondering why you keep making the same mistakes your parents made when you never wanted
to make those same mistakes, well it's because you learned how to solve problems the way they learned
how to solve problems. The only way to change that history of problem solving repeating itself is by
learning a new method of solving problems. So when I took in treatment children into my home to do
therapeutic treatment care for them and they all had some differences in their processing abilities,
so not all of them were neurotypical for instance and there were many different events and trauma
experiences that they had been through that had also impacted the way that they were able to
solve problems, I knew I had my work cut out for me. So, I knew that I needed to help them
learn a way of solving problems that they could rely upon for the rest of their lives.
Now obviously I was going to set the best example I could but I knew that if I could break it down
for them into a system of problem solving, that they would be even more successful. Sometimes
it's difficult making decisions especially if it's a new decision that we're faced with.
What school do we choose to attend or what car is going to be best for us to buy?
What do we do about maybe our weight problem or some other thing that we're trying to solve this
problem? Should I eat this or this? Should I do this exercise for my body or this exercise for my body?
Should I pursue this career or this career? There's so many different decisions that we are constantly
faced with and if we've never made that decision before, it's tempting to just not do anything.
In fact there are many people who don't want to make a decision because they're so afraid of it
being the wrong decision. Now when a person is a healthy decision maker, they also know that
sometimes they might make a wrong decision and have to course correct. When you are an unhealthy
decision maker, then that's usually when you don't want to ever make any decision unless you know
for sure it will turn out a hundred percent how you want it to turn out in the end.
There's never going to be any decision like that, that's not the human experience
and so part of decision making requires taking a little bit of a leap of faith and saying I
think I've reasoned this out the best I can, let's see what happens and if it doesn't work out well,
well then we will course correct. We'll change it and we'll accept the consequences,
that's actually what a good healthy self-governed decision maker does because when a person has
self-government, they are willing to make plans and to course correct and accept consequences of
their own decisions on a regular basis. But they don't take those consequences for a bad decision
too personally, they just learn from them and they start over again by making new decisions.
So one of the key things that I was teaching my foster children as well as my own four children
as I was bringing them up was self-government and how to be in control of themselves and part
of learning self-government and making good plans, follow-through and correcting problems is learning
how to problem solve in the first place. I'm going to talk about how to teach your children
problem-solving skills and a problem-solving system that you can use too in every area of your
life but before I do that, click that subscribe button now. There are so many great videos on this
channel related to self-government and how you can better be in control of yourself as well as help
other people learn to be inspired to self-govern themselves too. So click the subscribe button now.
When I was doing treatment foster care, I learned about a problem-solving exercise that's called
SODAS. SODAS is an acronym that stands for situation, options, disadvantages, advantages,
solutions. So this is our SODAS journal. This is a place where we record our problem
solving exercises as a family so that we can make better decisions for the future.
So in the SODAS journal, there are pages that are specifically designed for going through
a SODAS exercise with someone or by yourself. So what does a person do if they are going through a
SODAS exercise? Well number one they identify the situation. Now this can be a hypothetical situation
or it can be a situation that just occurred. Now this is the good news. So if you have a child
who has a struggle recognizing why they keep making the same mistake again and again,
a SODAS exercise might be just what they need so that they can go through an experience that they
just had and hopefully not repeat it again in the future. The situation needs to end
open-endedly. Meaning the wrong type of a situation or a bad example would sound like this.
Mom told me not to watch tv but i watched it anyway, that's a bad situation because I already
made a decision in that situation. The decision was I watched it anyway. If we are going to truly learn
how to problem solve this and weigh out all of our options, we cannot have a decision already exist
in the situation. So, a good situation would sound like mom told me not to watch tv but I really want
to watch it. Okay so I want to but I have not made the decision yet of whether I will watch it or I
won't watch it. So, the next step in the decision making process is actually determining our options.
How many options do we have for that situation? Well there actually are many. Option number one,
watch the tv even though I shouldn't. Option number two, accept the "no" answer and don't watch the tv.
Option number 3, disagree appropriately with mom about watching the tv, that's one of the teaching
self-government for basic skills is disagreeing appropriately and hopefully they would think to
use that. Option number four, go do something else. Option number five, make cookies. Option number
six, go and play with a friend. There's so many different things that you could put in there. They
could get as specific or as broad in their options as they want to. We come up with our options then
we think of disadvantages and advantages related to each of those options. So did you know that
there are disadvantages to making the right choice? There are, that's actually why people don't want to
make the right choice sometimes is because they see the disadvantages. So let's look at the right
choice of not watching the tv. So accepting that "no" answer from mom. What are the disadvantages
to not watching the tv? Well I don't get to see my show, I might not have anything to talk to my
friends about the next day at school. I might be bored. There's a lot of disadvantages that I could
think of. What are the disadvantages to making the wrong choice like watching the tv anyway? Now mom
can probably think of those disadvantages pretty easily but the child probably did not think of the
disadvantages easily otherwise they would have picked not to watch the tv in the first place.
What are those disadvantages? Maybe if I choose to watch the tv anyway I might feel bad
because I know I'm picking the wrong thing or maybe I won't like the show that I watched anyway
or I might feel lazy because I'm wasting time or maybe mom will find out,
maybe I'll earn a negative consequence, maybe I'll lose a privilege for the future of watching tv.
There could be all kinds of things that could happen. What about
disagreeing appropriately? Is there a disadvantage for trying to disagree appropriately with someone?
Well yeah. Maybe the person won't care about your disagreement and you still won't get your way
and it will take more time to do a disagree appropriately. Some people don't like to take the
time and maybe it will show you that disagreeing appropriately works to get your way and you
really don't want to acknowledge that disagreeing appropriately works, that's something that a person
with oppositional defiance might think. So what about advantages? What are the advantages? Well you
go through a similar scenario. There are advantages obviously to choosing not to watch the tv but does
the child actually acknowledge what those are? Do they recognize that mom will praise them? Wait a
minute, is mom praising them for them choosing to do the right thing and not watching the tv
and accepting that "no" answer? Well if not, they may not recognize the benefits. Another one of the
advantages might be that they get the opportunity to work on some other activity that they might
find fun or to go be outside and they might like that better but do they really recognize that
there is a sunny side to not getting your way? Well you might need to talk that out with a person. Also
what about the advantages to choosing the wrong thing such as choosing to watch the tv anyway.
Well that's what they're focusing on, the advantages then they'll be able to see their show,
have something to talk to their friends about and not be bored, that's exactly what they're
focusing on right at the time of making that wrong decision. But what about disagreeing appropriately?
Are there advantages to disagreeing appropriately? Oh yeah, you might get your
way. You also could practice one of your skills so you become better at your self-government,
you might feel mature or grown up because you were able to have a very mature, productive conversation
with other people. There are multiple advantages and disadvantages for every option that we are
faced with when we are making a decision. So when we are thinking through all of those disadvantages
and advantages and options, that's actually developing our problem-solving ability,
that's developing our prefrontal cortex. It's hooking multiple pieces together in the brain and
it's creating a web that you could refer to again in the future when you have a similar circumstance.
So this brings us to the solution. The end of the SODAS exercise involves a solution. When a person
decides upon something, they are picking their solution. Now sometimes they might
pick a solution that some people don't agree with or that the parents or teachers might think
are wrong. Maybe they're picking it because truly they want to do the wrong thing because they are
a little bit oppositional defiant. Well they need to have that spelled out for them on paper then.
Okay so you're picking this? All right now why? Let's talk about our decision, our solution. Why?
What advantages and disadvantages spoke to me the most about this,
let's tell the other people around us how we are processing this so that they can better help us
get things our way in the future and so that we can better understand how we are processing
so that we can solve our problems better in the future too. Even the oppositional defiant person
knows what the right choice is and what the wrong choice is, that has usually been communicated to
them enough. But if they choose to do attention seeking when you're doing a problem solving
exercises, just take them at their word and say okay well, we'll keep that in mind next time we
leave the room. We will make sure that the tv is locked in some way that you can't access it.
You know that's it, just leave it be but having a little bit of a discussion so that they can
see how they're problem solving makes all the difference. In fact it will expand their problem
solving abilities exponentially. Problem solving is a vital skill for making good decisions. If you
want to help your children make more good decisions then be sure to teach them more
skills, that was just one skill that you can use to help develop the prefrontal cortex but there are
so many skills that you can teach your children so that they can become self-governing and have
better relationships with you. I have a video that is a full length class that you are going to
love. I recommend going to the video called the not so known secret for parenting success
next. This will teach you vital skills that you need to teach your children self-government and
for you to learn so government too. So click on the link to that video now and I'll see you there.