Teaching Your Child to Overcome Obstacles*

*This is a collaborative post*

Parents, teachers and children will experience obstacles - it’s just how we react to them that matters. It’s an important part of our development that comes up well into our adult years, so when children learn early on how to tackle them, they can become even more prepared.

This guide from this prep school in London will show you how to begin teaching problem-solving and handling obstacles to your children.

Teach them how to face a problem step-by-step

Children mostly learn how to face obstacles by experience. So if your child comes to you with a problem that they’d like help with it’s good practice to sit down with them and dissect the problem.

By breaking down the problem into smaller, simpler steps, your child will feel reassured that the obstacle they’re facing is actually much easier to handle once they’ve been given a different perspective.

Speak to your children for advice

They can be real life situations or completely made up, but a good exercise is to speak to your child to see what they think about a problem you’re currently facing. They have the chance to sit back and think about the situation and hopefully be comfortable enough to provide advice to you.

The answer may not be heading in the right direction at first, but you can begin to signpost them to solutions to the problem and see what they think.

Provide a plan for children to use

When your child hits a will and doesn’t know how to proceed, writing out a list of pros and cons to the situation will give them a number of options on how they should go forward. They also become more informed about the situation afterwards.

A top tip is to not become annoyed if they choose a wrong decision. Allow them to learn about this process slowly and they’ll be able to make the best decision for them over time.

*Photo source Pexels