One of the most positive parenting experiences you can share with your preschooler is teaching them resourcefulness. Resourcefulness combines several ideas, such as having many solutions to a single challenge. Another aspect of resourcefulness is succeeding with what you have. Once you teach children to think of themselves as resourceful, you will enjoy many positive parenting moments just sitting back and reveling in the results.
Responsibility
Accepting personal responsibility for results is part of being resourceful. This will have huge dividends in later years with school work, team sports and close relationships. When you help your child analyze successes and failures, focus on a few key questions:
- What did you do to solve the challenge?
- Why did you pick that solution?
- Did it work?
- If it did not work, what else can you do?
Karen Stephens, director of the Illinois State University Child Care Center, writes that your child’s failures are learning opportunities to be more resourceful:
“...offer support, ‘If that didn’t work, try something else; you’ll get it.’ Encourage reasonable risk-taking that fuels creativity.”
Responsive
At Kids Konnect we encourage resourcefulness. You, too, can teach your preschooler how to break down any challenge, following the expertise of mathematics educator George Polya:
- Understand the problem
- Devise a plan
- Carry out the plan
- Look back—If your plan worked, great! If it didn't, look back and try again!
- Extend your thinking—How could your plan work elsewhere?
Resourceful children will organize themselves, but persevere when their plan fails.
Resources
Being resourceful literally means “full of resources,” which means being creative about getting, reusing and recycling everything, from ideas to plastic bottles. Positive parenting means not looking at what you and your child don't have, but at what things you do have that can help you.
Dr. Tim Elmore at Growing Leaders points out that giving children too many resources makes them unresourceful. They need never use their imaginations or solve complex problems if solutions are readily at hand.
How do you encourage resourcefulness in your child? We at Kids Konnect want to hear from you! Please suggest some ideas in the space below.