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Ask HN: Teaching kids how to think?
71–80 of 142 posts
Re: Ask HN: Teaching kids how to think?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
This will end up being a personal decision that each parent makes. Much like the previous commenter, my wife and I made a conscious decision to separate myth from fact. Everything fictional is in "stories." I never want to be in the position where I consciously lie to my son, so Santa Claus is very clearly a story. That said, we can do all sorts of fun imaginative things with story characters because we know they are…
You and your son can do fun imaginative things, but I suspect he will not be able to fully share in the fantasy world that other kids who believe in Santa inhabit. But that's fine, it's your decision - parenthood (like everything) is all about tradeoffs like this
Re: Ask HN: Teaching kids how to think?
#73Mine are in that age range. Here’s what I try.
* When they ask a question, I often say “I don’t know” in order to stimulate a discussion rather than just telling them the answer, and also to make it clear it’s OK not to know things.
* As well as “I don’t know”, I might also ask them why they think something and whether they would like to do a test or experiment to help them find out. I’m not talking science experiments really - questions like “Why is your shirt always tucked in?” I would answer by trying to put some action on them, like saying “Why don’t you try some different styles and see which one is best and then I might change my mind?”.
* I ask them questions about everyday situations even when I wouldn’t expect them to have any sensible answer (e.g. “what do you think I should write in this email to my boss?”), just to help broaden their understanding of the world and to demonstrate seeking advice and input from others.
* I sometimes throw them out into the garden and tell them to do whatever they like. Make-believe, bash rocks, whatever. As long as they are forced to entertain themselves!
* I let them watch YouTube on the TV (supervised), but I set the PIN as a solution to a puzzle. Turns out they like solving the puzzles as much as watching YouTube trash.
* On the theme of trash content consumption, I don’t ban it but try to talk about it (aside from setting some reasonable time limits), guiding the conversation towards questioning why they would want to spend their time on that. And you know what, sometimes they happen upon something cool and I let them change my mind and we watch it together.
* I tell lots of bedtime stories that I make up as we go along, letting them decide some things as we go. Strangely, eldest loves this but youngest is indifferent and would rather hear something familiar.
* Recognizing that they are still young kids and still letting them be kids and not expecting them to be debate prodigies or other tiger parent nonsense.
Re: Ask HN: Teaching kids how to think?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
This will end up being a personal decision that each parent makes. Much like the previous commenter, my wife and I made a conscious decision to separate myth from fact. Everything fictional is in "stories." I never want to be in the position where I consciously lie to my son, so Santa Claus is very clearly a story. That said, we can do all sorts of fun imaginative things with story characters because we know they are…
> I never want to be in the position where I consciously lie to my son, so Santa Claus is very clearly a story. I find this interesting: do you believe there is something intrinsically bad in the lies? Normally, I would think they lead to lack of trust, but I don't seem to remember children losing trust in their parents when they discovered _they_ are really Santa Claus. I mean, it seems to me that not all un-truths…
I'm not the person you asked, but I could see there being harm in lying to children about how reality works. When children are first growing up, they have no clue about the nature of reality, of what is and is not possible, but their brains are constantly gobbling up data on what the world is like. From this, one forms concepts of how things relate to each other. Ideally as they do this, there are no contradictions between their concepts, or they're worked out over time, but in lying to a child and feeding them this false information, you are introducing contradictions into their concepts and distorting their view of reality. And one's view of reality directly relates to their ability to interact with it in a self-beneficial way.
Now I can't say that this will actually have much of an effect, like I said, we can naturally work out these contradictions over time, but I think this is why one should not lie to children in general.
Like you say, not all untruths are created equal. It could be quite easy for them to fix their concepts once they realize it is a lie, but perhaps it could have some lingering effects. I can't say. I'm not a psychologist and each individual, and their mind, is different.
Re: Ask HN: Teaching kids how to think?
#75Thinking requires forming hypotheses and ideas, which is an act of the imagination. Probably the most important thing is to help stimulate a child's imagination and support their curiosity.
In a situation that requires thinking, encourage the child to come up with more than one idea. Praise every idea.
Re: Ask HN: Teaching kids how to think?
#76My kids are still young (11,7,4) so we'll see how it turns out, but we've got a strong culture of asking questions in our house. I do it so frequently that when we sit down at the table I often get asked "can we do questions".
Sometimes they request specific questions (so they can show off what they've learned) and I lob them softballs (addition, geography, and other stuff they are learning about in schools often shows up). But sometimes I like to explore deeper questions that don't have clear answers. For example:
- Why are some people rich and some people poor
- What is justice?
- What does it mean to be a good man?
- Who should pay your teachers?
and so on.
A lot of the source topics are covered in classical books, particularly Plato's Republic (a dialogue where they go about conjuring up an ideal society), but I find that the kids will quickly take it in their own direction.
Honestly it's one of the more enjoyable things I get to do with the kids.
Re: Ask HN: Teaching kids how to think?
#77Farnam Street has a big collection of videos focused on kids: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKj_FalLDOFtiAlsQwLTayQ/vid...
I often try to explain mental models to her using some of the material from FS. We have covered Inversion, Second Order Thinking, Occam's razor
Occam's razor is a really fantastic concept for a kid to learn early on!
Re: Ask HN: Teaching kids how to think?
#78I had the pleasure to spend a few years with an incredibly creative family, in all domains (family unit consisted of nobel prize winner, renowned academics, award winning authors, artists), and the one thing which always stood out to me was how they had such a deep culture of rewarding curiosity, thinking, and exploration. I have no idea how conscious it was on the family's part, but it seemed like everyone in that f…
In my experience (raising my own children and being engaged with a bunch of parents at the same stage of child rearing) I observed that all of the children were very aware that there were things they didn't know. What is more they wanted to know things and that desire expressed itself as questions and curiosity.
As a family we have had two activities that have really bound us together, one is my wife's insistence that we always had dinner together, and camping. We also had a used copy of the World Book encyclopedia in a bookshelf near the dinner table, as a series of the Time-Life books on various topics, as well as various popular desktop references like the Scientific American Science Desk Reference.
At dinner we would talk about things. All sorts of things. And when we wanted details of a thing we would look it up in the encyclopedia and read aloud from it to share that knowledge. Anything could trigger a wide ranging conversation, from why to police officers give people tickets to people crossing the street to why are there parrots living in Sunnyvale, to how do cellular phones work. And model both learning new things as well has how to find things in available sources. We are fortunate to live within walking distance of the library so the kids could check out a wide variety of books.
My wife would often "auction off" the last tasty thing (generally one of her rolls which are super yummy) with an open ended question, best answer wins the treat.
Camping was sort of like dinner++ in that there are things to do while camping, like hiking and fishing and whittling different shapes out of sticks, but there was also a lot of time to just talk about things without the distraction of phones or computers or day to day things.
All of those things to feed curiosity, provide the time to explore the questions and answers, and try to understand things about the world around us.
For our family this worked out well. I don't know if it would work for every family of course. Feeding curiosity is something my parents did and I simply modeled it to my children.
Re: Ask HN: Teaching kids how to think?
#79Re: Ask HN: Teaching kids how to think?
#80I make up outrageous stuff all the time and will only come clean after some pressuring from the kids. Either it's worked wonders or my 6-year old is just a natural because she takes nothing for granted! Her teacher tried to show her that it's ok to make mistakes because it's a natural part of learning. She said "Look at your little brother; he can't walk yet but he's trying and trying and falling all the time. But ev…
That was awesome. She was being truthful, to say the least. :D