Critical thinking is important for us to help our teens develop. Sherri's blog about finding ways to help your teen develop this skill through game playing and other strategies is an excellent way to help your teen sharpen those thinking skills.
What we as parents do to help our teens critically think about the tragedies we face? The terrible tragedy of the Arizona shooting is in all of our media outlets - your teen probably has seen or heard of the murder and injury of the Congresswoman and others in Arizona. How do we apply critical thinking to this tragedy?
Let your teen tell you what he or she thinks about this tragedy. Ask him how he feels about this horrible event. After he expresses his thoughts and feelings, ask him why he think this happened. Ask him what he thinks about the intern who rapidly attended to the Congresswoman and why his actions were important. Ask him how he would handle being in such a situation. We don't want to discuss these painful events with our teens, but helping them process this and helping them think about what they would do in a crisis situation such as this is important. By talking through such a tragic event and helping your teen think about this critically you are not only helping him learn how to continue thinking even when he has sad or fearful thinking, you are helping him be prepared for crises.
Tonight I ask for all of us to pray for the families of the people who were killed or injured in this tragedy.
Dr. Debra
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