Raising a Thinking Preteen

April 3, 2000
Life is getting more complex for preteens, but not nearly as complicated as it will become when they start to live their own lives and make decisions away from their parents. Fortunately, 8- to 12-year-olds are generally still willing to listen, and thus parents are provided a golden opportunity to hone their children's skills for coping emotionally. After dissecting approaches that she feels don't work, Shure (Raising a Thinking Child) unveils the I Can Problem Solve (ICPS) method. She identifies ways for parents to stop lecturing and start asking the kinds of insightful questions that she believes encourages children to think for themselves. ICPS, which has been used in several school districts, relies on a five-step approach that helps children understand others' motives, learn how to listen and develop solutions for everyday conflicts with friends and family. Shure offers an abundance of games and exercises as well as case studies to show how ICPS works in many exasperatingly familiar situations, from fights with siblings to conflicts over homework to dealing with bullies and unreasonable teachers at school. Parents will also find useful suggestions and some powerful insights, such as "behavior is guided not by what children think, but how." However, implementing the dialogues and interpreting the results without the guidance of a psychologist may be more difficult than Shure has envisioned, and there are times when her enthusiasm for the approach sounds uncomfortably close to a sales pitch.