First comes problem solving!

If our children are to be successful, they need to learn to think. They cannot get through life having learned skills through memorization of specific content. Rote skills lead to inflexibility and to a sense of incompetence when changes occur. On the other hand, having the ability to think through a situation allows the child to be flexible and to be able to adjust to change while maintaining competence in the skill. Spontaneously solving concrete problems, such as picking up a fallen item, is the first step towards problem solving. Declarative language helps to spotlight these concrete situations for our children and then gradually over time moves them from concrete responding to more abstract thinking. For example, first responding to a concrete statement paired with visual referencing (e.g. the table is dirty) that specifically labels both the object and the condition. On the other hand, an abstract level would be a statement that alludes to the problem but does not label the components (e.g. what a mess! re a dirty table).