All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind.
~Martin H. Fischer
Teenage is a phase where your child’s brain starts developing at a rapid pace. There is a lot of new information that the brain receives that leads to its overall growth and development. During this time, training the brain the right way can set your children up for real-life challenges and opportunities that they will receive in the future. Instilling the right skills is crucial during this stage. Some of these skills include critical thinking and problem solving. Let’s see how you can develop critical thinking and problem solving skills in your teenage children.
Importance of Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
The importance of critical thinking and problem solving skills cannot be undermined in today’s world. Even the employers today require their employees and team to possess requisite skills apart from just the technical knowledge and qualifications. Here’s why problem solving and critical thinking skills are important in today’s world:
- Enhances the decision making capabilities
- Boosts the innovation and creativity
- Develops confidence and independence
- Improves the academic performance
- Prepares for real world challenges
- Promotes teamwork and collaboration
Quick Tips to Build Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills in Teens
Following are some of the crucial tips that can help you develop critical thinking and problem solving skills during the teenage years:
- Encourage Questioning: Parents should always encourage their children to ask more questions. This boosts their confidence, enhances their curiosity and gives them a new perspective towards life and problems.
- Provide Real World Problems to Solve: The more problems you solve, the more your mind develops. Therefore, giving teens more problems to solve will open up their minds, sharpen them and force them to have critical thinking.
- Strategy Games, Puzzles, Brain Teasers: Strategy games, puzzles and brain teasers are some of the most effective ways to unlock the brain’s potential and develop out-of-box and critical thinking. It sharpens the brain to a great extent.
- Reading & Reflection: Reading gives new perspectives and is one of the most important habits that you can imbibe in your child. Authors share their years of experience through books and reading is the fastest and most effective way to learn from the experience of others. Always remember, a single book holds the capacity to change your life forever.
- Accepting Multiple Perspectives: Diverse perspectives bring in a lot of wisdom that is critical when you witness challenging situations. However, it is important to accept diverse perspectives and accept that different opinions and perspectives can co-exist. It is not always black and white or right and wrong.
- Room for Trial & Error: Learnings come from experiences. To gain experience, it is important to try different things. You should always promote your children to try out different things and have the chance to fail, learn, try again and then taste victory. There should always be room for trial and error.
Are You Doing What’s Required?
As a parent, you play a prominent role in developing the right skills in your children, with problem-solving and critical thinking as one of the most important ones. Making your child future-ready as well as ready for the world is important if you want them to become highly successful. Following the above steps can help you instil those skills in your children.
Further, sending your children to the right schools is important as schools provide them with the right opportunity to develop the soft and real-world skills. If you too are searching for the right school for your child, Schoogle is the platform you need. It contains information relating to all the schools in your locality and city, including board, medium, fees, amenities, facilities etc. You can seamlessly search and compare the best school for your child!
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