Kelso Helps Kids Practice Problem Solving Skills

When I was teaching elementary school out in Hillsoboro I ran across a copy of a handout that I found very helpful with young kids. It was a black line drawing of the choice wheel above. On it are eight options that visually illustrate what kids can do when they run into problems interacting with other children. I could tell immediately that it was going to be helpful so I did what many new elementary school teachers would do in such a situation: I laminated it. When kids would come in from recess upset about an interaction they experienced on the playground, that they weren't included in a game they wanted to play, that someone had called them a name or an older kid took their ball, rather than me telling them about possible options, I often would have them take a look at the Kelso's Choice wheel. Suggestions, like "Walk away" or "Apologize" were illustrated, which left kids able to choose an option that seemed to fit. If you've read much of my other stuff, you know that I'm a big advocate of shared control with children and of collaborative problem solving to give kids practice making decisions. Often we'd talk about how they might "experiment" with the option they chose, which took the pressure off from kids feeling like the suggestion had to work. The experience left the kids feeling good about the choices they made about how to go about getting recess to be a more enjoyable experience for themselves rather than walking away feeling that the teacher had solved their problem. You know the saying about teaching to fish rather than simply giving a fish.

Often in my work with parents and children playground, neighborhood or these days, playdate interactions come up fairly often. I found myself wishing I had that old laminated Kelso's Wheel. After a little looking around on Google I found that Kelso is alive and thriving. He is now available in color and can come along with a complete curriculum and materials package for schools. I got in touch with Diane Hipp, one of Kelso's co-creators (the other is Barbara Clark), and she was kind enough to allow let me use Kelso's Choice wheel with permission as a handout in my work with parents and children. I'm glad to have Kelso officially available. He's helped me assist a good number of kids to master social skills that can otherwise be might have been much more challenging to learn.

Check out their website. If your child's school doesn't have a conflict management curriculum, you might send them Kelso's way at KelsosChoice.Net http://enjoyparenting.blogspot.com/2008/03/kelso-helps-kids-with-decision-making.html

Thought: Learning How to Make Decisions is Like Learning a Language

Learning how to think about choices and make decisions is also a lot like learning to play a musical instrument, like learning how to do woodworking or how to ride a bicycle. The common connection with all of these is that we don't learn them primarily by having someone lecture us or tell us about them. We learn decision making skills by actually doing the messy work of making decisions...and then by enjoying, or coping with the results.

Mark Twain wisely said, "Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions."

It can be hard for us to let our kids have experiences that result from us supporting their developmentally appropriate decision making. We badly want our kids to do well. This can be a very tough world. We have tons more experience than our kids do. It is hard not to want to jump in and do the decision making for them so we can ensure that it gets done right.

The trick is to find things that our kids can handle making decisions about on their own and can handle living with the consequences of. We, of course, can't in good conscience give kids decisions about whether or not to go to school or whether to have vegetables or Skittles as a side dish. An appropriate decision for a four year old might be, "Would you like to wear your coat or carry it?" For a teen it could be "Would it better for you to have your chores done by Wednesday night or by Friday night each week? For all kids above four years old, it can be about how they spend their weekly allowance. Allowance is a wonderful teacher about decision making. You can see how this concept overlaps nicely with shared control.

Another important piece is how we respond when they've gotten themselves into a problem with a decision they've made. Here we can link back to a previous idea. This is a great time for us to show some empathy. The bigger the problem, the more important that our empathy has some depth. A big help here is reminding ourselves that even though the better decision looked like a no-brainer to us, our kids have at least a couple decades less of life experience. Also they are different people with their own profiles of strengths and challenges. So things that might have been easy for us to decide when we were our kids' age might be tougher for them.

Give it a try. Make sure to begin with choices that are going to be easier for you to let your child live with. If we give them the power to make the decision, and then swoop in and rescue them, we send a powerful message that we don't believe that they are capable. And these unstated messages have a way of being far more persuasive than the ones we say directly. The good news is that whenever we are able to provide empathy and support to help them cope with the results of their decision, we send an equally powerful message that they are the sort of kids who can handle making decisions and who can learn from their mistakes. That is one of the irreplaceable gifts that we can give to our kids.