How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?

We are all a little broken inside.  We all have a kid hidden deep inside the layers of our mind which sneaks out at times. We should make the broken beautiful and look at it with our love glasses on.

Life was not made so that we could flow through it.  It was made challenging so we could grow through it. Adults just like kids should keep the inner child alive, the secret to eternal youth and a beautiful mind. Our scars, whether mental or physical, make us who we are today. They are designed to remind us to be grateful. They are a symbol of the experiences we have gained over the years, good and bad both.

Teaching kids life skills is very important. A, B, C can be learned in schools but how to fix a light bulb or a broken heart is not something taught in everyday classrooms . We need to model ourselves to create coping skills amongst our kids so they can solve life’s everyday issues and not just crack math equations.

Not everyone can be a lawyer or an engineer or doctor. Let the kids use their hands to make things, let there be carpenters, potters, farmers. Let kids paint and be artists. Let them not just be experts digitally and run fingers on touch keypads but let them also be critical thinkers, apply logical reasoning and engage in visual analysis.

Problem solving skills cannot be taught, it’s an enquiry based acquired ability. You give a task and let the child think. Let them use their imagination and come up with a solution.

The child can decide whether a problem is actually a problem. It the attitude that matters after all; Some people can create mountains out of mole hills whereas others can create roads across mountains to reach their destination. That’s the attitude we need to build in children to think for themselves, to question.

Be curious – it helps gain new survival skills. Survival is not just maths, science, accounts, history, geography, English grammar- not text bookish. Survival skills are needed to conduct life in day to day situations in the smoothest possible way.

Dealing with emotions, people, situations, crisis, etc are things kids will learn from parents. Throw random issues at them. For example, put some pebbles and sand and paper in a small bowl of water and ask them how they would separate the trash from the water. Let their creative cells run wild. Some kids would come with an answer like use a net to remove the trash, while another would ask for tongs to remove trash and others would suggest using a thin cotton cloth or simply use the hand to segregate the objects from the water.

Another example; give 10 chocolates in a class of 15 and ask how would they give all 15 children chocolates. They would break it into pieces and how many pieces would be required, etc.

By doing such exercises we are encouraging problem solving life techniques that can be applied to real life situations too. You are also teaching that one issue can be broken down and can have various options as solutions. There are different perspectives to each situation and hence thinking over it can help decide in coming up with the most feasible solution.

Do not provide readymade solutions let the kids think the solution out and you as a parent will always be there to guide them their anchor to fall back on. We wean them away from breast feeding, helping them dress up, washroom training, etc. Similarly we should gently and slowly push them towards independency and wean them away from dependency. This will help develop strong survival skills and instincts.

Think about it, its food for thought. What life skills have you passed on to your kids?