61–70 of 142 posts
Farnam Street has a big collection of videos focused on kids: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKj_FalLDOFtiAlsQwLTayQ/vid...
https://austingwalters.com/talk-to-yourself/
IMO it’s all about giving kids time alone, Not stimulated, to learn how to think about the voice in their head. A lot of what we do is try to inject more stimulus to teach, instead (and this is similar to the Montessori school of thought) they need some time to formulate a self image and learn to reflect and build an ego (self).
That's something they already do, and most enjoy doing. We just need to guide them to question the rules in a coherent manner.
Besides critical thinking and argumentation, by letting them question your own rule, the meta skill you're demonstrating here is intellectual humility, IMO the most prized quality of a great thinker.
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I have a 7 year old in school now. The homework is pretty generic. There is not much in the way of domain-specific knowledge. We do some activities at home. Chemistry, electronics, scratch programming. Stuff that is not taught in schools. I use to live in radio shack as a kid. Putting together circuits was thrilling.
I am in no way saying you are doing this, comment is for the thread as well as you. As others have mentioned in this discussion, I think giving the child both a sense and actual control over what they work on is one of the keys. Children want to please their parents, so they might work on things that they think you would like. They are extremely good at reading people even if other actions seem uncoordinated. It is b…
I think this is known as the Pygmalion effect. It is very powerful, and we as parents/teachers have to be very careful with this.
Knowing what each of us really wants is a difficult question to answer.
I often wonder how much of what my parents were and were not shaped what I have become.
My daughter actually just taught herself to ride this past weekend. Her biggest hurdle was getting over the fear of crashing. She started out balancing for a few days before she just magically started pedaling.
The ideas I had been studying these days come from Carol Sandford. I am not sure how to summerize her work. In the case of developing a person’s (be they children, teens, or adult) capabilities, it comes in a couple ways: 1. First, linking intrinsic motivation with something meaningfully contributes to something outside of them. The catch? This is something the person chooses for themselves, based on what Sandford ca…
What books or resources from Carol Sandford have found most interesting?
But it wasn’t until I started trying to examine paradigms, or heard Sandford’s approach to growing people, that I understood why it works for indigenous families, or how it can work in the modern world. Those toddlers want to contribute something meaningful and the indigeous parents let them, growing their capacity. When the scope of the contribution expands from helping the household to helping the community, helping the society, helping the world, such a kid becomes powerful agents of meaningful change.
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I don't agree about Santa Claus fwiw. This is culture-specific, but here (Ireland) he's an integral part of Christmas, and of the excitement about Christmas that kids experience. Santa Claus is the only lie I've ever consciously told my kids. By doing so I've given them access to a great deal of joy and fun, both individual and communal. Should I have deprived them of that because I wanted be absolutely consistent, o…
No easter bunny for your kids?
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Wow that's lovely. How does one work around the stresses of daily life to replicate that?
Certainly beats me, but I think it helped that for both parents this WAS really their source of income (teaching and writing), and that they had gotten to the point that doing this stuff was also their way to cope with the stress of daily life. Like, with cooking, everyone was involved, or when they'd watch a movie, it was a family affair with a healthy amount of commentary or analysis. It's hard to explain, but its…
With my own children, I read to them, have them read to me, and allow them to pursue their own interests, which as kids under 10, are admittedly not too many or technical, although they are wanting to learn Raspberry Pi stuff. I tend to walk them through their own questions, such as having them analyze potential outcomes. At the same time, I don't want to be a helicopter parent. They play outside, largely by themselves since we live in the county. I do keep on eye on them, but they tend to build things out of wood or look for frogs and lizards. We have agreed they want to build a small-scale replica of a fire lookout tower and they will help choose parts and assist in building. One of them already wants to be in Forestry and has for the last few years. I guess my answer is to allow myself to see our comings and goings as projects that we all enjoy and help them learn along the way.
My daughter is very creative and loves to spin up ideas and stories. When she asks me a question about the universe, I throw it back at her.
“Daddy, why do flies have such thin wings? Why don’t they break?”
“Well, what do YOU think?”
She’ll then invent some explanations, we’ll have fun questioning them, and eventually look up some real answers.
My son is much more execution-minded. He usually asks questions because he wants to understand how to build something. With Legos. In Minecraft. Whatever. He’s less interested in creative word play and more interested in creative building. Sometimes I can use the same tricks as with my daughter. “How do you think it works?” With him, I can often reframe the question and make him grapple with his goal at a higher level.
“Sure, here’s how a gear box works. But what do you really want to accomplish here? Is there a better way to do this?”
I haven’t read any books, this just seems to work for us. In either case, it’s critical to encourage kids to ask questions, and to teach them how to ask effective questions.
Physical learning seems to be important. Legos, science experiments, flying kites, etc., are all great ways for kids to learn about things in a concrete way. One science experiment I did with my oldest daughter was a "Will it sink or float?" experiment that is easy to do - just get a tub of water and random house hold items (coins; cereal; piece of bread; piece of paper; etc.).
Reading to them, and stopping to ask them questions about the book. What's happening on this page? How do you think that character feels? What do you think is going to happen next?
Show your kids that they can write stories. It doesn't have to be something fancy, just a bunch of pictures on regular printer paper, each with a sentence describing what's happening. If your kids are too young to write the words themselves, you can ask them what the page should say and write it for them.
Let them be bored sometimes. When given nothing to do, kids are forced to figure something to do by themselves.
Just reading up on the "growth mindset" now, and it seems there is some recent criticism of the idea, although that stems from inability to replicate the research results, not that there is a more widely preferred alternative.