3. Are there lessons that we can learn and apply today from this extraordinary family?

May 4, 2024

1. What was their home life like?

A deep and rich family culture emanated from the parents.

Dietrich’s mother, Paula Bonhoeffer, was “the soul and spirit of the house.” She was an educator and homeschooled the children until they were 8 or 9 years old. She cared deeply about training her children in academic and critical thinking. She also gave them a firm foundation in biblical thinking. She taught them the fundamentals of Christian faith, spurred them intellectually, and created family traditions. She came from a lineage of pastors and theologians, but her faith was highly personal and practical. She believed in a faith that was evident in daily life.

Karl Bonhoeffer, the father, spurred the family intellectually. He was at the head of his field in Germany, holding a chair position at the University and also director of the hospital for nervous diseases. He was both highly logical and intellectual, but interestingly also had “a genuine respect for the limits of reason.” Despite his own numerous accomplishments, he taught his family to value humility and simplicity.

He fully supported his wife’s training and teaching of their children in Christian life. Karl also shaped the types of thinking and communicating in the Bonhoeffer house. “There was a strong atmosphere in his home against fuzzy thinking” AND sloppy speech. If the children had something they wanted to say, they were expected to say it, but with carefully chosen words. He expected well thought out answers and respectful discourse at all times. The children “loved and respected him in a way that made them eager to gain his approval…”

Together, the Bonhoeffer parents were a force to be reckoned with. They had a solid marriage (they were apart less than a month their entire 50 years of marriage), they each brought their personal and professional strengths into their home, and they also used humor. They had high expectations of their children, but also showed kindness and fair judgment. Their heritage cultivated a rich family culture: “The family trees of Karl & Paula Bonhoeffer are… so laden with figures of accomplishment that one might expect future generations to be burdened by it all. But the welter of wonderfulness that was their heritage seems to have been a boon, one that buoyed them up so that each child seems not only to have stood on the shoulders of giants, but also to have danced on them.”

But, the house was NOT always serious!

The parents gave the children younger years of wholesome, free FUN. They dug caves, climbed trees, put up tents, and played in the garden. They skated on a makeshift ice rink their father made for them in the yard. They changed an outbuilding into a zoo and created a room in the house for a museum of their nature collections and another for a workshop.

Music was an important part of the Bonhoeffer family culture. Their children, especially Dietrich, arranged and composed. They were “a deeply musical family” and held “musical evenings” each Saturday night. On these ritual evenings, which went on for many years, each child had to present something. They invited family and friends and gave performances for special occasions like birthdays, going away parties, or holidays.

Connection was highly valued. Family members and friends visited often, and Dietrich remained so close to his parents and family that he called them often. He consulted his parents before big decisions throughout his life.

“The Bonhoeffers were that terribly rare thing: a genuinely happy family…”

2. What was their education like?

It’s difficult to distinguish descriptions of the Bonhoeffer home from the Bonhoeffer education because they were so inextricably intertwined. They received a diverse mix of formal AND informal education that taught them to think academically, critically, and biblically.

Homeschooling & Classical Education

The Bonhoeffer children were homeschooled in their early years. Paula was “openly distrustful of the German public schools and their Prussian educational methods” and believed that she should care for them during their earliest years. While at home they memorized poems, hymns, folk songs, created plays, performed puppet theater, and dived deeply into topics of their own interest.

Later, the children attended a local school that used a classical education model. A classical education is based on a three part model that builds upon a child’s learning capacity over time. The early years are spent absorbing information and laying the foundation for advanced studies. The middle school years focus on logic and argument, and in high school the focus is rhetoric–learning to express themselves through writing and speaking with excellence and originality. A classical education views all knowledge as interrelated and works to integrate different subject matters. This philosophy heavily emphasizes history, and highlights ancient Greek and Roman cultures due to their prolific influence on the modern world. Classical education even stems from these cultures, where thinkers like Aristotle and Plato taught that education should develop the whole person, including moral virtues and intellect. The school the Bonhoeffer children attended learned classical history, art, literature, and even used pictures of the Roman forum for classroom decoration.

The values of a classical education were matched in the Bonhoeffer home. Close mindedness wasn’t tolerated–they came to decisions based on evidence and thoughtful discussion. They were also taught to control their emotions: “Emotionalism, like sloppy communication, was thought to be self-indulgent.” Both parents modeled a sense of perspective, of staying cool and not emotionally reacting to a new thought or point of view. They didn’t ascribe to a single political viewpoint, they “seemed to have the best of what we might today think of as conservative AND liberal values, of traditional AND progressive ones.”

Biblical Thinking & Daily Christian Living

All of the Bonhoeffer children were educated in biblical thinking and daily Christian living. The Bonhoeffer’s Christianity was “mostly of the homegrown variety.” Their normal, everyday life included bible readings and hymn singing. Paula taught the children to revere God’s word, and tried to read bible stories straight from the actual text, only using illustrated children’s versions for an occasional picture. Her faith was also evident in the values that she and her husband cultivated: “Exhibiting selflessness, expressing generosity, and helping others were central to the family culture.”

Their mother’s faith “spoke for itself, it lived in actions and was evident in the way she put others before herself and taught her children to do the same. There was no place for false piety or any king of bogus religiosity in our home.” Her influence on Dietrich’s theology and walk with God was so profound that Metaxis suggests that Dietrich’s famous idea of “cheap grace” may have originated in her humble example.

Essentially, the Bonhoeffer’s taught their family the basic tenets of the Christian faith AND how to live them out practically. The same intellectual culture of respectful discourse and thoughtful argument included topics of theology and the Word, so the children learned to reason and evaluate their biblical ideas to the same extent as discussions of any other topic.

3. Are there lessons that we can learn and apply today from this extraordinary family?

Absolutely! While we live in a different era, there are timeless approaches to a home learning environment that are low cost and high impact that we can apply from the Bonhoeffer family. I think this biography’s description of Dietrich’s upbringing resonated so deeply with me, because it mirrors many of the education values I share through Thriving Little Thinkers:

High expectations are beneficial when they are paired with connection and the right amount of support. High expectations abounded in the Bonhoeffer family, but there was also love, respect, and humor. We know from modern day research that connection is critical for young children to feel safe and secure to learn grow and challenge themselves. They effectively “scaffolded” for their children; they created an optimal learning zone by building a loving, supportive family environment in which they knew their children and challenged them appropriately.
Parents are ultimately responsible for their child’s education in character AND academics. The Bonhoeffers did not relinquish spiritual training of their children to the church. They didn’t assume that the public schools were the best option available to them, nor did they rely only on homeschooling for the entirety of their children’s education. They thoughtfully considered their children’s needs and made decisions based on that, not on convenience. They made intentional choices about education opportunities.
Modeling is a crucial part of raising biblical, academic, and critical thinkers. The Bonhoeffers modeled great character and intellect. Not only did their parents model what they wanted for their children, the family was immersed in a community of extended family and friends that esteemed the values they taught their children. So not only were the parents modeling Christian living, moral values, and intellectual pursuits, other adults in their life were doing the same. While some might call it social pressure to perform, there is a great amount of neurophysiological and psychological evidence behind the draw to adapt to your given group or tribe. Truly, more is caught than taught.
Play is essential for raising focused, thriving little thinkers. It is beneficial for our children to become engrossed in a task–and the most typical flow experience for children is PLAY! The children’s play was described as intense and happened for long expanses of time. They had a rural summer home with no electricity where they spent time reading and “dug trenches and went for hikes in the vast pine woods to search for wild strawberries, onions, and mushrooms.” They performed plays in the evenings, ball games, guessing games, sang songs, and enjoyed nature. One home had an acre of gardens and grounds where they played, explored, planted, and even raised animals.
Raising thinkers doesn’t require you to break the bank. Some of the most high impact activities for building brains actually cost little to nothing. The Bonhoeffers climbed trees, played in the garden, read books, and performed their own plays. They didn’t have the “latest and greatest” of a learning toy or computer program. The children learned by exploration and play under the guidance of engaged adults.
Biblical thinking is tied to critical thinking and academic thinking. Dietrich and his family often discussed theology and biblical ideas about Christian living at the dinner table. Biblical thinking sees academic and critical thinking through a biblical lens–understanding that God gave us our brains and all forms of thinking as ways to know and love him better. While many people separate theology from education (rooted in our division of church and state funded educational programs), our theology and understanding of the gospel give meaning to our thoughts and the actions we take based on those thoughts.
- Academic thinking supports biblical thinking. Knowing how to read the bible, understand numbers, memorize and meditate on important biblical content, grasp historical context, understand translations–all of these require a basic academic foundation. Biblical literacy, gospel fluency, and memorizing scripture are necessarily tied to academic thinking skills. But academic thinking isn’t an end point.
- Critical thinking supports biblical thinking. “…Bonhoeffer was no mere academic. For him, ideas and beliefs were nothing if they did not relate to the world of reality outside one’s mind.” It’s one thing to read a text and it’s another thing to evaluate text, compare and contrast with cultural ideas, and apply that truth to today’s dilemma. “In our increasingly secular society, young people are exposed to a plethora of ideas that counter the truths of the Bible. They need critical thinking skills to discern falsehood and make reasoned arguments for their faith (2 Cor 10:5).” Sophia Auld. 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 tells us to “Test all things; hold fast to what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.” So how do we “test all things?” By wisely comparing and contrasting the ideas of the world and the truths of God’s words.

A few caveats on context

I am NOT saying that every family needs to use the Bonhoeffer household as an ideal or checklist of how to raise successful children. I’m simply intrigued that the methods infusing their home life and education life were not at odds but each fueled the other and in turn the environment was rich, fertile soil for raising thinkers of great character.

There are a few caveats to the Bonhoeffer lifestyle, neither negative or positive, but context for understanding the learning environment:

They lived before the advancement of technology that so easily ransacks modern day households and derails focused attention or sustained thinking. Social media and internet use today in our homes is difficult to curtail for both adults and children. The result is a downward trend in our ability to focus well, a critical foundation for thinking well and solving problems. While it is still possible to create homes where our children’s focus isn’t derailed by shiny digital distractions, it is an added layer of parental consideration that the Bonhoeffers didn’t have to consider.
The household help included a governess, nursemaid, a housemaid, parlor maid, and cook. This likely provided Mrs. Bonhoeffer with more time to plan, educate, and guide the household culture. A household staff isn’t possible for most families I know, but it also doesn’t negate the high quality of the environment. The richness of learning described in their home can be done without a posse of helpers and it certainly doesn’t require immense wealth.
The Bonhoeffer children had impactful learning experiences beyond their childhood. As parents, I think it is important to remember that our children are heavily influenced by our investment in their home life but what they choose to do with it is beyond our grasp. It isn’t always feasible for us to take our school aged children overseas on an immersive cultural expedition or attend monthly arts performances when you’re on a tight budget. We can, however, light a fire of curiosity that propels them forward to create their own lifelong learning experiences. After leaving home, the Bonhoeffer children chose to pursue additional lifelong learning through travel, expansive reading, writing, interesting job opportunities, discussion groups, playing instruments, exposing themselves to culture through ballets, operas, plays, etc. These self-initiated opportunities undoubtedly impacted the great outcomes of their professional and personal lives.
And finally, the Bonhoeffers were immersed in a rich like-minded community of family and friends that esteemed the many of the same values they taught their children. Being immersed in a like minded community is possible today, but not always as common. For those involved in a local church this environment can be more easily attained, but in terms of valuing intellectual thought and high moral values, our post modern society can be very isolating indeed. It is difficult, but worth the effort to find a like minded community for yourself and your family.

Conclusion

Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer were parents strong in faith, intellect, and personal character. They had a strong marriage. They valued education not for vanity but for understanding. They valued discourse and evidence-based reasoning and decision making. They valued service to others. Most of all, they valued their family.

A strong marriage of two individuals of character can create a household that shapes the values AND intellect of its members.

References

Metaxas, E. (2010). Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Thomas Nelson Inc.

Auld, S. (2019). Critical and Creative Thinking: An Essential Skill for Every Student https://www.acc.edu.au/blog/critical-thinking-essential-skill/

For FREE LEGO RESOURCES straight to your inbox, click here!

#1

5 Ways LEGO® Bricks Promote Learning

I had no idea how much y’all love LEGOs! This post ranked first in pageviews for 2024, with almost double the views of #2.

This post explains how LEGO® bricks are a high impact and high value educational toy so that parents or grandparents aiming for play-based learning can invest in quality tools. Not just toys–tools to help them grow and learn to think.

# 2

ChatGPT: A Practical Guide for Curious Parents

Open AI released chatGPT in November 2022 and the education world responded in force, both with excitement and with deep concern. 2023 could easily be labeled the year AI disrupted…frankly every market it has touched.

This post encourages parents to approach AI with both curiosity and caution, to determine how to best leverage these tools AND how to train our children to do so. It’s the first in a two part series on chatGPT, the second being #4 of the top posts this year.

Don’t forget to grab the FREE PRINTABLE DISCUSSION GUIDE!

# 3

Modeling: How to Shape Brains and Behavior for Better

Every evidence-based parenting book I’ve read mentions modeling. But is it really as simple as “monkey see, monkey do?” And can it be used for more than just behavior modification? Can you use modeling to shape thinking processes? Mindset? What about modeling values?

This post explains the concept of modeling, the underlying brain research behind it, and empowers parents to be agents of change. As Charles Spurgeon once said: “Train up a child in the way he should go–but be sure you go that way yourself.”

#4

Thinking Skills to Help Your Child Thrive in the Era of ChatGPT

In light of AI’s impact on education, what thinking skills are essential now, more than ever? How do we teach our children those skills?

This post debunks the argument that thinking skills are obsolete and encourages parents to build up cognitive skills that are even more necessary in this digital, evolving world.

Put critical thinking skills into practice right away by grabbing the FREE STUDENT WORKBOOK: Smart Kids Chat Smarter that walks you the C.R.A.A.P. test for evaluating ChatGPT output!

#5

H omeschool in Under 1 Hour: Brain-Friendly Kindergarten Curriculum Picks

There are a million ways for parents to invest in their child’s education. We have chosen to homeschool our Kindergartener this year with specific brain-friendly curriculum and an everyday learning lifestyle for the entire family.

Whether you are homeschooling, public schooling, private schooling, or something in between, this post provides ideas for a lifestyle of learning and plenty of resources to explore.

There you have it! The top 5 posts of Thriving Little Thinkers for 2023. I pray that when you come to thrivinglittlethinkers.com you receive practical help and inspiration for raising little thinkers. Don’t forget to subscribe!

Cheering you on,

Homeschool in Under 1 Hour: Brain-Friendly Kindergarten Curriculum Picks^Featured

December 4, 2023

1054

There are a million ways to do Kindergarten. Public school, private school, university-model, co-op, distance learning, and more. We’ve decided on homeschool for our Kindergartener this year (which worked out well with the timing of our recent move). Schooling with 3 under 5 in an apartment is challenging, but it actually takes up less than an hour of our day and is a beautiful part of our family culture. And less than one hour a day?! This gives us immense freedom to explore, play, experiment, and enjoy our days together.

How do we get this done in under an hour?

Learning is all day in everyday life. “Doing school” for under an hour a day by no means limits our learning to that one hour! We are always learning. We work on building good habits, we cook, read loads of books, play board games, get as much outside play as we can, and constantly learn how to interact with others in loving, respectful ways. Education has been described as “… an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life” (Charlotte Mason, an education reformer). That means my children are constantly learning from the environment they are immersed in.
Quality over quantity. We prioritize our most important subjects: bible, reading, and math. Anything else we accomplish is just gravy! This helps us to prioritize focused attention to our main subjects rather than expect a long school session with multiple subjects for little brains with short attention spans. Being able to focus is an academic skill (and life skill) just as important as our core subjects.
School time is anytime. Formal “school time” for our Kindergartener can happen during naps, after the boys go to bed, or even on the go! Our gym offers a very generous childcare time, so occasionally I can finish my workout, pick up our Kindergartener early, and knock out a reading lesson in the cafe area before we pick up the boys. At home, school can look like coloring at the table next to us, or playing with bowls of rice and scoops on the floor, or sometimes participating with scaled down counting or sorting activities that apply to our work that day.
Family style learning (everyone participates). While formal lessons are reserved for our Kindergartener, we have a family style learning time when we all learn together, focused on the same content at the same time. Specifically, we utilize something called Morning Time. Morning Time is an intentional time when everyone in the family can come together and learn about specific priorities for your family. A typical Morning Time includes bible reading, hymns, and catechism. But it can expand to include the arts, read alouds, and any other subject that you want to start your day with.
- We use Brighter Day Press’s Morning Time curriculum that included the topics and resources I wanted for our family, was open and go (requires little to no prep), and adaptable to my kid’s ages. I highly recommend both Morning Time Volume I, or Volume II if you want to start Morning Time but you don’t know where to begin.

Kindergarten Curriculum Picks

I only use 3 specific tools for Kindergarten formal schooling: 1) All About Reading, 2) Secret Stories and 3). Right Start Math

All About Reading, Level 1 (20 minutes a day)

What it is: All About Reading (AAR) is phonics based, lightly scripted, highly visual, interactive reading program. It includes a Teacher’s Manual, student activity book, 3 texts filled with decodable stories, letter and sound cards, and letter tiles (or the letter tiles app).

Is it Brain Friendly? Check! AAR is a brain friendly reading program. It is multisensory, which means your student employs multiple senses during each lesson (hearing, sight, and touch) to enhance learning and improve retention. By activating different brain pathways, neural connections are strengthened and learning is deeply wired. As a researcher and educator with a neuro background, I love finding programs like this that tap into brain based learning principles.

What I love about it:

It’s not workbook centered. Workbook based phonics curriculums are great for fun extra work but they demand fine muscle coordination. Many 4 year olds and 5 year olds have not developed the fine motor skills necessary to do the pencil work necessary to complete handwriting assignments. Does that mean we don’t work on handwriting? By no means! We have a fun handwriting book that we use because my daughter is physically capable of correct pencil holding. But my 4 year old son? He listens and soaks up much of the phonics we review and will likely be capable of reading much sooner than he is able to write legibly. That’s okay! We will work on handwriting more extensively when it is developmentally appropriate.
It’s not just brain friendly, it’s EASY to follow. Once you’ve set up your activity pages, it is open and go! I first heard about AAR from April Stevenson at thefivegirlschoolhouse.com and @fivegirlschoolhouse on Instagram. She has saved stories about how she sets up her AAR binders of activity sheets so that they are easy and able to be re–used for multiple children. I followed her instructions on binder set up to the letter (pun intended).
The Teacher’s Manual is an easy to read, wealth of information. It includes specific tips, tricks, background information, and the “why” behind the lessons. The appendix includes lists of games, activities, snacks and rewards, and creative word play for even more reading fun.

The Secret Stories (combined with AAR)

“The teachers at my school can’t stop talking about Secret Stories“ my friend and elementary teacher raved. I had never heard of it before. I dug deeper into this program and the more I’ve learned, the more I want to share it!

What it is: “Secret Stories are the secret sounds that some letters make when they get together.” The Secret Stories are a brain-based phonics tool created by teacher Katie Gardener. It is not an independent phonics program–it is used as an adjunct to whatever reading program you choose.

There are many rules in the English language and many many many exceptions to the rules. Letters make one sound in this scenario, a different sound in this scenario, and wait, ANOTHER sound when they get together with this other letter. This leads to confusion and an emphasis on sight words rather than the decoding skills needed to master phonetic based reading. When your child asks “But WHY do those letters make that sound when they are next to each other?” Do you find yourself saying “They just do” and get frustrated at the arbitrary rules? The Secret Stories are a set of stories that explain all of these why’s.

Here’s an example:

“These two love to ride the train down the track, chugging along as they go- “CH-CH-CH-CH! CH-CH-CH-CH!” And that’s the sound they make (church, chin, chew)

BUT…sometimes they pretend to be the train conductor and make his hard C (or K) sound instead! (choir, schedule, ache)

Brain Friendly? Check! “Secret Stories® aligns phonics instruction with how our brains actually learn best, engaging more neural pathways for stronger learner connections and easier skill retrieval. Weaving abstract letter sounds into stories makes them interesting, activating the brain’s positive emotional state and hooking the information into a strong memory-holding template.” —Katie Gardener (Educator and creator of The Secret Stories)

What I love about it:

It fits seamlessly with many phonics based reading programs. We combine Secret Stories flashcards with our All About Reading Level 1 curriculum and love to point out the “secrets” we find while we work.
Visual cues. If it’s easy on the eyes, it’s easy on the brain. The flashcards and posters are a big part of The Secret Stories program, because they provide visual prompts for that letter combination. They can reference the visuals while reading and writing, giving them a big boost in competence, comprehension, and confidence.
The Facebook Support Group has FREE file uploads to help you incorporate the secret stories! Check it out here: Science of Reading meets Science of Learning with Secret Stories Phonics. The group is monitored by the creator Katie Gardener and is full of educators who share their experiences and ideas. We use a free version of the Word Collection Book, found in the files of the group, as a way for my kids to look out for “secrets” in the words they see every day. When they find it, we get their collection book, turn to the page for that particular secret, and then record the new word.

RightStart Math, Level A (20 minutes)

I learned about RightStart Math from a master’s prepared teacher at a homeschool development event. The talk was all about teaching math with an integrated and holistic approach. She taught at a rigorous school which mandated an older, established math curriculum (Saxon Math). She taught from Saxon, and her children who attended the school were also required to use it. But the part that grabbed my attention was that she personally supplemented her children’s math at home with RightStart Mathematics. Instead of “drowning in math worksheets” she and her boys played math games, made shapes, and had fun working their way through the concepts. As a professional educator, she wanted her own children to have RightStart.

What is it? An evidence-based, comprehensive math program that emphasizes visualization of quantities, discourages rote counting (simply reciting numbers in sequential order vs. determining quantity), and provides visual strategies (mental images) for memorizing math facts. Understanding is emphasized over completion. It focuses on chunking in base groups of 5 and 10, a hallmark of common core math education. It balances both conceptual teaching and procedural practice with a Montessori-like approach.

Brain Friendly? Check! Remember, If it’s easy on the eyes, it’s easy on the brain. Children (and adults) thrive on visual representation when learning new concepts. RightStart Math is heavily focused on visual representations and physical manipulatives to understand core math concepts. In fact, RightStart does NOT emphasize counting as a primary way of learning math. It heavily utilizes games for practicing math concepts and learning math facts which increase motivation and interest-led learning. RightStart also prioritizes problem solving. And, because it’s a multisensory program, it uses visuals, songs, and touching physical manipulatives to learn in a more holistic (and effective) way.

What I love about it:

It’s not workbook centered. I’ve already mentioned the developmental pitfalls of an early workbook focus (see above under All About Reading). RightStart Level A is a hands-on program, so it is not directly tied to a student’s ability to write. Since math is inherently practical and embedded in our everyday life, I want to provide a conceptual understanding and foundation first. Will we add more paperwork as we progress? Absolutely! And as the levels progress, RightStart incorporates more worksheets for review. But for beginners, particularly in Level A, it is an interactive approach.
It promotes independent thinking, a hallmark of raising a competent adult.
- The National Research Council published a report on the future of mathematics education called Everybody Counts. Here’s what they have to say about thinking and math: “More than most other school subjects, mathematics offers special opportunities for children to learn the power of thought as distinct from the power of authority. This is a very important lesson to learn, an essential step in the emergency of independent thinking.”
- Here is an example of this principle on pg. 3 of Level A:
  - “Place 3 objects on one tray and 2 objects on a second tray. Ask the child if she agrees that there are 3 objects on each tray. It is very important that the child feel free to disagree with you during math time. After a short discussion about the number of objects, add one more object and then ask her if she agrees that they now both have 3.”
It emphasizes games! “Games are to math as books are to reading” —Dr. Joan Cotter, creator of RightStart Math. There are math games incorporated into Level A AND a separate book of math games that many teachers have told me they utilize in their classrooms or homeschools. A plethora of research studies in the past two decades have highlighted the benefits of math games. Using math games to reinforce learning can:

Takeaway

Total time for “formal” academic work: 40 minutes a day. If we add in our Morning Time as a family, we reach 1 hour a day! Even if we add extras we can finish quickly and practice focusing well. I prefer homeschooling with a few, carefully chosen, evidence-based, high quality curriculums. We do occasionally supplement with fun add-ons, but our core subjects are laying a firm foundation for future work. In review, here are our core curriculums: 1) All about Reading, 2) Secret Stories, and 3) Right Start Math. Too add beauty and truth we add Morning Time. For fun handwriting work we use A Reason for Handwriting. These are supported by an everyday learning lifestyle.

For FREE exclusive tips on raising a thinker, CLICK HERE! You’ll get an email from us once a month with tips, resources, and ideas.

in Brain Basics

Moving to a New State with Kids: 5 Brain-Friendly Transition Tips^Featured

November 1, 2023

1473

Thriving Little Thinkers has moved to Indiana!

My family of 5 just moved from Birmingham to Indianapolis for a work relocation. To call it a major adjustment would be an understatement. While there are exciting parts about moving to and exploring a new part of the country, these are big changes and can often show up in behavior, mindset, and even physical symptoms of stress or anxiety in our children.

What does neuroscience have to do with new beginnings?

Moving is inherently stressful for adults and kiddos alike. Stress and good thinking don’t go together.

When you are stressed your body releases hormones associated with a fight or flight response and inhibits your access to the part of the brain that does deep thinking. This makes sense–if you see a grizzly bear charging at you, it’s not the best time to stop and have a deep thinking session! No, you want your survival instincts to takeover and react quickly, often before you even realize you’ve started moving away from the threat.

Changes in environment, routine, or caregivers can cause these types of stress responses in our kids. As prepared adults, we can provide avenues to explore that discomfort and work through it so that our children gain skills for inevitable future challenges.

I’ve been utilizing brain based and budget friendly techniques for helping our kids through this transition. You can help your kids through transition too, without breaking the bank! All you need is some scratch paper, a sharpie, and some coffee.

Here are 5 brain-friendly transition tips:

1. Anticipate and recognize signs of stress. Address them as quickly as possible.

Changes in routine, their environment, and even our own stresses as parents can all contribute to a child’s stress. Don’t be surprised when you need to leave a library or park due to behavioral issues soon after a major transition (Hi! It’s me…this has happened to us multiple times in the past two weeks).

Have you ever wondered “What were they thinking?” Well, during stressful times they are NOT thinking. Stress limits our ability to inhibit impulses, think critically or solve problems. Couple that with already limited social skills and a small vocabular in a tiny body and it’s no wonder we see such behavioral issues during transition.

Model a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset. Be intentional in how you convey stressful situations to your child (or even around your child). Do you treat this transition time as the worst possible thing that has ever happened to your family? Or do you acknowledge the hard while highlighting the good? Managing your own stress will help you to assist your child.

2. Use your words with intention.

Speak honestly about what is happening, but don’t provide unnecessary details. Less words and more plain speech.

“Our things will be ride in the moving truck and we will ride in our van.”

“We will sleep in our new room tonight.”

“We are visiting our new doctor this afternoon.”

Speak positively about the move. We talked about our “big adventure” of moving and shared our excitement about exploring new places. There are great brain benefits to having adventures (Read 3 Ways That Adventures Change Our Thinking). Enthusiasm is contagious just like anxiety is contagious. Your child will likely look to you to see how to react to new things.

When our child brought up any anxieties about the move, we acknowledged them and discussed them plainly and honestly. We also provided appropriate reframing when necessary.

3. Make connections between the “old” and “new.”

“Making multiple connections is a skills that becomes possible during the later preschool and early school-age years and beyond as the prefrontal cortex of children’s brains mature. It calls on executive functions of the brain, including working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility.” Ellen Galinsky, Mind in the Making

Notice what is different and what is the same. (There is a great Daniel Tiger song for this!) As we made trips for house and apartment shopping in Indiana, we pointed out thinngs around us and asked “Different or the same?” We strongly highlighted the things that wouldn’t change such as God, His Word, and our family. And our kids were PUMPED to know that there is a Chick-fil-a because, ya know, priorities. They noticed that there were still parks, libraries, grocery stores, and houses even if they weren’t identical to the ones in Alabama.

We took this game a step further and documented some of their connections on a piece of white paper and posted in the old house and in our new apartment. This idea of taking their ideas and making them visually accessible leads to the next tip:

4. As much as possible, make things VISIBLE!

We have made three visual charts to make transition thinking visible during this moving process. We’ve made 1) a different vs. same chart, 2) a questions list, and 3) an Indiana bucket list of things we’d like to do here.

Simply taking their observations and questions and documenting them has helped eased their anxiety, given a reference point when a question is repeated, and helped my kindergartener begin to play with visual organization of ideas.

My children’s questions are not very complicated, but when unanswered they can create stress and anxiety. My five year old mentioned that she is having “lots of thoughts” about our new house and that she “keeps thinking about it all day and all night.” I asked her what the thoughts were about and it turns out she has some anxiety and worry over her place in our new house and the lack of knowledge about where it will be and what it will look like.

“Where will I sleep?” “Where will my brother sleep?” “Who will get to keep the bunk beds?”

“Will my stuff come there, too?” “Will things stay in storage?”

“Will we keep moving again and again?”

We added these questions to our chart “What ?’s do you have?” and answered the ones we could. For the questions we didn’t know the answers to, since we haven’t found a new house, we were honest and told her that we would find that out together when the time comes.

Hilariously, our three year old’s questions have been almost all about food. “Will we get Rick Krispie Treats there? Do they have Chick-fil-a there? Can we bring our oatmeal packets for breakfast?” I assured him that we will continue to feed him all the things.

Another time we prioritized visuals was when packing up their bedrooms. I asked each child to come to their room with me and explained “We are packing up your things so that they can come with us. I want you to see me put them in the boxes, and I want you to help me box them as well, so that you know where your things are going. All of the boxes will go on the truck and daddy will drive the truck to Indiana. You can keep it all, we are just sending it on the truck. Even if you can’t see it once it is packed up, it isn’t “gone.”

Simply allowing them to visually see where their things were going put them so much more at ease.

5. Introduce multiple perspectives.

Seeing multiple perspectives is a hallmark of critical thinking. And by teaching your child to consider multiple perspectives in a situation uses multiple executive functions of the brain, building up the brain’s “muscles” that make critical thinking possible.

“Perspective taking calls on many of the executive functions of the brain. It requires inhibitory control, or inhibiting our own thoughts and feelings to consider the perspectives of others; cognitive flexibility to see a situation in different ways; and reflection, or the ability to consider someone else’s thinking alongside our own.” Ellen Galinsky, Mind in the Making

My daughter asked me why someone else would want an “old home” from us (I’ve been referring to our Alabama home as the “old house” and our apartment as our “new home”.) She was taking me literally, and thought “old” was a negative term. So I explained that the house was our previous house, and that it would be “new” to the people who bought it even if it wasn’t brand new. It would be new because they haven’t experienced living in that home yet. She made the connection, and asked if there would be people moving out of our new home and that we would be moving into their “old” home? YES! Absolutely.

Takeaway

Even during times of stressful transition, parents can empower their children to think logically and critically. It can be done in everyday moments, without spending all your hard earned money.

Looking for more?

Get a FREE MONTHLY TIP for building up your child’s thinking skills, straight to your inbox. No strings attached!

Read more about your child’s brain and challenges:

in Brain Basics, Critical

How to Help Your Child Navigate Challenges: A Parent’s Guide to the Zone of Proximal Development^Featured

September 1, 2023

1040

Ever heard the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears?

Just like Goldilocks searching for that “just right” porridge, your child’s learning journey can benefit from finding the “just right” zone. It’s called the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), and it’s like the sweet spot where learning magic happens.

The zone is a realm of optimal learning where your child isn’t just absorbing facts– they are conquering captivating challenges and fueling a passion for discovery.

Creating a learning environment with developmentally appropriate challenges is crucial for growing minds. But how do you know if a task is to hard? Too easy? Can they accomplish it by themselves or do they need help? And how much help should you provide?

This post will help parents like you to harness the power of the Zone of Proximal Development and cultivate a challenge-driven education right in the heart of your home. It’s a guide to creating a zone of low cost learning in everyday life.

What is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)?
Under the Hood: What’s Happening In the Brain?
How does learning about the ZPD help parents?
Offer targeted support
Takeaway
Reference

Parents can create safe learning zones at home, that provide both challenge AND support, at no cost. Creating the optimal learning environment takes intentionality, not money. It’s much more about our parenting demeanor and coaching than any tangible school supply.

A prepared, responsive parent can harness the ZPD by providing appropriate challenges and support for their child along the way. This can yield high impact outcomes of problem solving, understanding how to utilize resources, confidence, and building a love for lifelong learning.

1. What is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)?

Think of ZPD as the optimal learning zone for your child, which lies in the space between what a child can do independently and what they can achieve with appropriate guidance. Picture it as the realm of “just right” challenges – not too easy to be mundane, and not too difficult to be discouraging. It’s within this zone that cognitive magic happens, where children stretch their capabilities, solve problems, and thrive.

The ZPD is a learning concept developed by psychologist Lev Vygotsky¹. Vygotsky emphasized the concept of a “stretch zone” where learners experience a motivating level of challenge while feeling emotionally supported and secure. The stretch zone or ZPD isn’t the same for every child. Each unique individual will need challenges specific to their abilities. Additionally, the stretch zone involves challenges that often require assistance. In the context of ZPD, this help is called scaffolding.

Scaffolding

Have you ever seen a building renovation with support structures lining the walls? These temporary, removable structures are called scaffolding. On work sites, scaffolding is put in the exact place where work needs to occur, to provide both safety and support for the workers, and then it is removed when the work is done.

In ZPD, scaffolding is the support and safety parents provide to their children to help navigate through challenging tasks. The key is to provide the right amount of assistance, neither too much nor too little, so that children can gradually own and apply the skills on their own.

TRANSLATION: scaffolding is helping your child to do something with the least possible amount of intervention. Instead of rescuing them from a challenge, you support them through their challenge.

2. Under the Hood: What’s Happening In the Brain?

Recent research has provided remarkable insights into the neurobiological underpinnings of the ZPD². Neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to adapt and rewire itself, is a key player. As children engage in activities within their ZPD, the brain forms and strengthens specific neural pathways associated with the task. This strengthening, known as neural reinforcement, enhances connections between relevant neurons.

Neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin also come into play. These chemicals are essential for motivation, mood regulation, and overall learning. A positive learning experience within the ZPD can trigger the release of these neurotransmitters, creating an environment conducive to cognitive growth.

When your child is operating in their ZPD, their brain is in a sweet spot for growth, too.

3. What’s the benefit of ZPD for parents?

Understanding the ZPD equips parents with powerful tools to create optimal learning environments at home:

Tailored Learning: Recognizing your child’s ZPD allows you to tailor learning experiences to match their developmental stage. This prevents frustration from tasks that are too difficult and boredom from tasks that are too easy. It ensures that learning remains engaging and achievable.
Independent Thinking: Scaffolding within the ZPD is designed to be gradually withdrawn as your child gains proficiency. This nurtures their independence and problem-solving skills, enabling them to rely on their own abilities and strategies.
Stress Management: The ZPD helps parents understand the impact of stressors on their child’s brain and thinking skills.
- Take a look at the image of ZPD again, and focus on the right sided area where children cannot achieve the task at hand. It surpasses their current capabilities or resources. When a task is beyond the child, and scaffolding or support from a parent is not available, your child can experience stress to the point that they cannot think or work effectively. Cortisol, a stress hormone, is linked to the fight or flight response. When your child is in fight or flight, they can’t access the part of their brain (the prefrontal cortex) that helps them make decisions or plan.
- By providing appropriate support and guidance, parents can mitigate the potentially destructive effects of stress and create an environment that fosters healthy cognitive development.

Parent as Coach

The ZPD encourages parents to take a coaching approach. Rather than solving problems for your child, encourage them to think critically, explore alternative solutions, and take ownership of their learning journey. This approach instills a sense of responsibility and independence, qualities that are invaluable in all aspects of life.

Parents play a pivotal role in guiding their children through the stretch zone. Just as a coach guides athletes through training, parents coach their children through learning challenges. It’s important to remember that appropriately challenging work should indeed be challenging⁴. Challenges mean struggles and sometimes parents are uncomfortable with the idea letting their child struggle or feel frustration. However, navigating struggles is essential for genuine growth to occur.

4. Offer targeted support

Select activities that intrigue your child and encourage active participation. Opt for tasks that spark their curiosity and require some effort but are still within their reach.

When your child encounters a challenge, offer targeted support without solving the problem outright. Ask probing questions to stimulate their critical thinking and guide them toward potential solutions³.

For instance, if your child is struggling with a math problem, instead of immediately providing the solution, you might ask a guiding question that steers them towards the correct course. “I wonder if you could check your answer by working backwards.” “Have you tried a different approach?” These questions foster critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and the ability to tackle challenges independently.

5. Takeaway

Parents hold the power to build a safe learning environment at home. Recognizing your child’s capabilities and personality allows you to tailor learning experiences that match their developmental stage. This individualized approach respects their pace of development, setting realistic expectations while nurturing independent thinking.

Empower your child’s learning journey by connecting them with resources that support autonomy and discovery. Help them anticipate challenges and brainstorm resources they can turn to when faced with difficulties. Tailor learning experiences by reflecting on your teaching styles, strengths, and opportunities for facilitating student-directed learning. Create conditions that encourage ownership, problem-solving, and the development of growth mindsets.

While assistance in the ZPD is crucial, it’s not a guarantee of learning. Effective scaffolding strikes a delicate balance, allowing children to navigate challenges and develop problem-solving skills without rescuing them from their struggles.

Looking for more?

Get a FREE MONTHLY TIP for building up your child’s thinking skills, straight to your inbox. No strings attached!

Check out these related posts:

6. References

1. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes.

2. Goldberg (2022). Growing brains, nurturing minds–Neuroscience as an educational tool to support students’ development as life-long learners. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9775149/pdf/brainsci-12-01622.pdf

3. Wass & Golding (2014). Sharpening a tool for teaching: the zone of proximal development. Teaching in Higher Education, 19(6), 671-684. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13562517.2014.901958

4. Lynch (2019). Challenge is a Part of Learning. Education Digest 85(2), 51-56. https://0-web-s-ebscohost-com.vulcan.bham.lib.al.us/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=20&sid=4025f0fb-9d22-41b9-9bff-9a6553fd962e%40redis

Struggle Stories: Using The Brain’s Love of Books to Build A Growth Mindset^Featured

August 1, 2023

849

Do you want to teach your son to persevere through solving a problem?

Do you want your daughter to bounce back from setbacks?

Our brains love stories AND our brains loving having examples (i.e., models) to follow. This post explains the concept of struggle stories, a low cost & high impact tool for parents to build growth mindset in their children by using storybook characters to model resilience and perseverance.

Low Cost & High Impact
What is a struggle story?
Can struggle stories help preschoolers increase persistence in difficult tasks?
Try This
Takeaway

Struggle stories: a low cost & high impact idea for building resilience and perseverance

Using storybooks is a highly economical way to introduce and reinforce values (like resilience or perseverance) or mindsets (like growth mindset) to our children.

Many of these books are available through local public libraries, making access completely cost free for families.

Research shows that students with growth mindset, who believe that they can achieve through incremental persistent progress rather than talent, perform better than their counterparts with fixed mindsets across academic subjects.

But academics are only part of the picture–using struggle stories to build resilience helps prepare a child for the inevitable challenges that she will face in everyday life.

2. What is a struggle story?

In the Little House on the Prairie series, Laura Ingalls and her family overcome frigid winters, rushing waters, famine, and illness as they create a home and a life in the American pioneer era. In the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling, young Harry overcomes evil while facing manipulative adults, giant trolls, and significant peer bullying. In The Swiss Family Robinson, a family survives a shipwreck and learns to thrive on a remote island while facing wild animals, lack of resources, and even fighting off pirates.

Reading aloud stories like these to our children have profound benefits, even beyond neurochemical advantages. Stories with adventures like these don’t just capture the imagination–the characters exemplify a growth mindset. A growth mindset is a perspective that encourages persistence in incremental progress, no matter the starting point.

Modeling a growth mindset is important, especially from parents and caregivers who can display a living example of trying hard things and persistently moving forward. However, when personal models of growth mindset aren’t readily available in homes or in the classroom, storybooks that share tales of persistence to novel tasks can be readily used as narrative models at little to no cost (Hachigian, 2020).

In her recent dissertation at Columbia University, Amy Hachigian conducted a research study to determine if preschoolers could listen to storybooks (specifically struggle stories) and then demonstrate persistence on difficult tasks. Hachigian defined struggle stories as books that “demonstrate how sustained effort towards a difficult task and the use of multiple problem-solving strategies are essential to goal-achievement despite moments of set-back or failure.”

3. Can struggle stories help preschoolers increase persistence on difficult tasks?

Here’s how Hachigian conducted her research study:

She developed original struggle story books and read them to young children. Two groups of children participated: one group heard struggle stories and one group heard non-struggle stories.
For the group that heard struggle stories, some used roleplay to reinforce the learning and the others heard the reader provide specific praise for the character’s display of persistence.
Then, the researchers gave all participants challenging tasks (puzzles, search and finds, or shape sorters) and measured their time spent attempting to complete them (to measure persistence).

Her findings?

The children that showed significantly higher persistence on challenging tasks were the “...children who heard researchers praise characters throughout each reading of the struggle narratives…”

She did NOT find differences in persistence between the students who heard struggle stories vs. non-struggle stories. Further, roleplaying after hearing struggle stories was not an effective approach in this particular study. But something special happened when vicarious praise was used to reinforce perseverance while reading a struggle story.

Our brains follow models & keep what is reinforced

In the post Modeling How to Shape Brains & Behavior for Better, I mentioned the roles of observational learning and social learning theory. Essentially, these two theories support the use of struggle stories to teach children character values like persistence or resilience. Children observe what adults and peers are doing around them and they encode the behavior. But, some of the behavior is more likely to be encoded if it is reinforced. Reinforcement can be positive (i.e. praise, reward) or negative (i.e., critique, punishment).

The power of modeling and reinforcement means that parents (or characters in a narrative) can model desired behavior and can also reinforce the desired behavior. Even children at very young ages can “…learn messages from their environment and can generalize the value of persistence to novel tasks” (Hachigian, 2020).

There is a difference between praising the process and praising the outcome, though. If our desire is to build growth mindset, we want to highlight and praise the model’s incremental steps toward success despite failure, adversity, or hardship. We want to focus on and praised effort-based success, not an outcome. This is called process praise. For example, instead of saying “Good job” when your child showed you their castle of blocks, you could say “You worked hard to rebuild this several times.”

What about persistence with an impossible task?

An interesting caveat from Hachigian’s study: children showed demonstrated persistence on challenging tasks but NOT on a clearly impossible task. Children were given a shape sorter task in which a new shape presented could not possibly fit in the holes provided. Most participants correctly recognized this task as impossible and didn’t waste their efforts. This is an important consideration as we help our children to develop persistence. Fruitless persistence for an unattainable outcome is unproductive.

We want our children to persevere in finding a solution…when finding a solution is possible.

4. Try This!

Find struggle stories!
- Use your local library
  - Ask the children’s librarian to help you identify struggle stories that are age appropriate. Choose stories that involve a task or problem that your child can relate to (persistence in school, the sport they play, or instrument they are learning, etc.)
- Save time by downloading my FREE CURATED LIST OF STRUGGLE STORIES!
  - Use this list as a starting point for finding picture books AND chapter books you can read aloud to your children. It also includes a free quick guide about struggle stories and the best ways to use them!
Read the struggle story more than once!
- Repeated exposure (at least twice) to books increases vocabulary comprehension and aids content retention.
Verbally reinforce the growth mindset of the storybook character (process praise).
- As you read aloud, vicariously praise the efforts of the character in the story who tried multiple ways to solve hard problems or endured difficult circumstances (Hachigian, 2020). This reinforces the behavior of sustained effort despite difficulty.
  - “Wow, Harry didn’t give up even when he was scared.”
  - “Rosie was so persistent! She kept building even though she didn’t know how it would turn out.”
  - “I noticed that he tried four different ways to solve the problem.”
  - “I liked how Laura’s family kept trying, with good attitudes, even when things got hard.”
Ask your child open ended questions about the struggle story.
- Who was persistent in the story? Tell me more about that character.
- Why do you think they chose that solution?
- What kind of problems do you think the character will encounter?
- What kinds of tools could they use?
- What would you do in that situation?

6 Takeaway

In her dissertation study, Hachiagian concluded that struggle storybooks alone may not increase persistence. However, “…vicarious praise may play a critical role in how effectively children learn from struggle stories and, in turn, how children apply these learnings to situations where persistence is required to succeed.” (pg. 57-58, Hachigian, 2020).

Parents and teachers can consider using vicarious process praise, specifically focused on the efforts and problem solving of characters, while reading storybooks aloud.

Don’t use struggle stories as an isolated tool.

Model growth mindset at home, read struggle stories while praising persistence, and encourage failure as a stepping stone to success. These strategies collectively enhance the building of a growth mindset.

Grab the printable PDF BOOK LIST of curated struggle stories you can read and use, today!

Do you need more resources for helping your child build resilience and perseverance? Check out these related posts:

References

Bauer (2021). The Neuroscience of Storytelling. Neuroleadership.com https://neuroleadership.com/your-brain-at-work/the-neuroscience-of-storytelling/ Accessed 6_15_23

Hachigian (2020). Persisting Preschoolers: Using Storybooks to Increase Persistence on Difficult Tasks (a dissertation). Retrieved from: https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/d8-amkd-9p19

Growth Mindset: Helping Your Child Embrace Failure to Achieve Success^Featured

July 5, 2023

3 Comments

690

“This is too hard!”

“I can’t.”

“Will you do it, please?”

Do these phrases sound familiar?

When facing challenges, some children seem devastated over a small setback. Others rebound quickly and tackle a problem with tenacity.

Why do children respond so differently to frustration? And how can we build up our children’s grit and resilience to handle the many problems they will face over the course of their lives?

This post explains growth mindset as a crucial part of building resilient thinkers and lifelong learners. Read on to find out what it is, what’s going on in the brain, and what you can do today to build up a growth mindset in your children.

Contents

Defining growth mindset and fixed mindset
What’s going on in the brain? (Under the hood)
What can parents do? (Try it Today)
Takeaway

1. What is growth mindset?

Our thoughts and self talk create mindsets about who we are and what we are capable of doing.

In the words of Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can or you can’t—you’re right.”

In 2006, Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University released her book Mindset (2006), detailing her research of children’s mindsets about intelligence. Essentially, she studied children’s views of intelligence as either a fixed trait that could not be changed or a quality that could be grown and improved. She coined these perspectives as either a 1) fixed mindset or 2) growth mindset.

A fixed mindset:

A fixed mindset sees intelligence or success as things you either have or you don’t. People with fixed mindsets fear failure, evade challenges, and avoid mistakes. (Pawlina & Stanford, 2011)
A person with a fixed mindset sees an obstacle in the road as an immovable barrier and may struggle to see the path around it.

A growth mindset:

The cornerstone of growth mindset is that intelligence is not something you are–intelligence is a quality that can be grown with hard work on challenging problems. It’s the idea that anyone can learn and grow no matter how much you know or whether or not you’ve been told you are “smart.” It’s a positive attitude toward effort and improvement toward learning, no matter the individual starting point (Dweck, 2008; Pawlina & Stanford, 2011; Ng, 2018; Goldberg, 2022; Shaw, 2022)
A person with a growth mindset sees a mistake as a challenge and opportunity.
A person with a growth mindset sees an obstacle in the road as a chance to forge a new path or create their own solution.
A student with a growth mindset views progress as
incremental, not instant.

A student with a fixed mindset may see themselves as “a math person” and another person as “not a math person.” or “I’m just not a good reader” and see another student as “naturally good at that.”

A student with a growth mindset doesn’t see themselves as “good” or “bad” at a particular academic subject. They see themselves as a learner who is always improving with incremental steps through focused effort. That simple shift in mindset can help a student with a growth mindset succeed across multiple subject areas or academic skills.

A student with a **growth mindset** views progress as
**incremental**, not instant.

According to Dweck, when you build a growth mindset in your child:

you build their ability to “bounce back” from setbacks
you teach them that incremental growth is how we learn across our entire lifetime
you embolden them to not fear failure
you give them vision to see mistakes as opportunities

Much of the research on growth mindsets in the last two decades have focused on student self reports or observations of student behavior. However, there are connections between growth mindset and what neuroscientists know about the brain’s structure and function.

2. What’s going on in your child’s brain?

If we were to lift up the hood and see what’s happening in your child’s brain…

…we would see different pathways throughout the brain that are created by learning and training experiences. Those pathways are strengthened (reinforced) through repeated practice, and infrequently used pathways aren’t prioritized and sometimes even pruned (removed).

Neurons (the cells that are the basic units/building blocks of the nervous system) are like the links in a chain that create the pathways in our minds. The reinforcement of frequently used neuronal pathways in the brain is easily summarized by this popular phrase:

Neurons that fire together, wire together.

This is called neuroplasticity–the brain’s ability to change and adapt. The brain isn’t a static organ that sits in your skull, unchanging, throughout your life. It changes its own internal structure by forming neural connections based on experiences with the environment around us.

So…what’s the connection? If a growth mindset is how we view our capacity to change and grow, and neuroplasticity is what is happening to our brains on a micro level…how are these two concepts linked?

Neuroplasticity enables a growth mindset.

Neuroplasticity, the changing structure and function of the pathways in our brains, provides a physical foundation for developing and expanding our cognitive abilities.

Your child’s brain is physically wired to change and adapt while learning from experience. And that means that your child, through their own mindset, can directly influence their personal learning and brain growth.

While it is possible and beneficial to develop growth mindsets in adulthood, young children and school aged children are in an especially fruitful season of brain development. Their changing brains are ripe for building mindset and expanding their cognitive capacities.

“During the first two and a half decades of life, the human brain is a construction site and learning processes direct its shaping through experience-dependent neuroplasticity.” (Goldberg, 2022)

What kind of experiences can construct growth mindset and take advantage of this developmental season of brain construction? Let’s talk about that next.

3. What can parents do? You can try this today:

You can build a growth mindset in your child by modeling it, teaching them about what their brain is capable of, and using the power of the word “yet.”

1. Model it! Mind your own mindset.

Your growth mindset as a parent (or lack thereof) has direct implications for your child’s views of mistakes and success. Research has shown that parents and teachers greatly influence student growth mindset and performance.
- Children see and follow. That means if you have a negative view of failure or you only look for instant results after one attempt at solving a problem, your children will follow in your footsteps. Likewise, if they see you persevere through challenges with focus, or learn a new skill through tiny baby steps of growth, they will follow.
- If you want to change your child’s outlook, change what they see—that starts with what they see in you as their parent.
Tell stories of your own ups and downs. This not only provides a model of resilience, the brain is wired for stories and uses narrative to file and retrieve information more easily.
Let your child see you make mistakes, or tell them about times when you’ve failed. But don’t stop there! Let them see you handle the mistake and move forward. Tell them not just about times that you failed, but how you were thinking and how you took action and tried again.

2. Brain Chat! Teach them what their brain can do.

Explaining your brain’s capacity to grow and change with experience and mistakes is crucial for building resilience and perseverance. It’s empowering for students to know that their brains are wired to learn, especially for children who have previously seen themselves in a fixed mindset. It can be a mind opening experience to demonstrate that each of their brains have capacity to build new and difficult skills.
“…inducing a growth mindset by teaching neuroplasticity has an overall positive effect on motivation, achievement, and brain activity.” (Sarasin et al., 2018).
For preschool and elementary aged students, the book Your Fantastic Elastic Brain is of my favorites for introducing the concept of brain based growth:

3. Say YET! Reframe struggles with one powerful word.

Reframing is a strategy for shifting a person’s perspective in a positive way. The goal is to provide your child with language that shifts negative or limiting self-talk to growth oriented views.
- You can change your own words to support a growth mindset, and you can directly challenge words of a fixed mindset in your child.
One of the easiest and simplest ways to reframe is to use the word yet.
- “If a student calls me over with a problem and says, “I can’t do this,” I make sure to reframe their initial statement to “I can’t do this…yet” before I help them. “ (Shaw, 2022)
- YET is a powerful word that communicates to your child that you are optimistic about their success in the future and it also doesn’t let your child back away from the problem altogether. Use the word YET along with your support and encouragement to help your child persevere through learning challenges.

4. Takeaways

Talk about struggles as a normal part of life and not things to be feared.

Building a growth mindset is a crucial skill for lifelong learning, because if your child can apply himself to anything with effort and practice, and stick with it, he can grow and learn. What skill could be more applicable for preparing him for the challenges of the future, and for everyday life?

Looking for more?

Get a FREE MONTHLY TIP for building up your child’s thinking skills, straight to your inbox. No strings attached!

Simply sign up for the monthly newsletter and we will send you low cost, high impact ideas for teaching your child to think. We love helping you set them up for success!

5. References

Carol Dweck (2008). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

Pawlina & Stanford (2011). Preschoolers Grow Their Brains: Shifting Mindsets for Greater Resiliency & Better Problem Solving. Young Children, Sept 2011 pg. 30-35 from the National Association for the Education of Young Children

Ng (2018) The Neuroscience of Growth Mindset and Intrinsic Motivation. Brain Sci. 2018 Feb; 8(2): 20 doi: 10.3390/brainsci8020020

Goldberg (2022). Growing Brains, Nurturing Minds–Neuroscience as an educational tool to support student’s development as lifelong learners. Brain Sci. 2022 12(12). https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12121622

Shaw (2022). Growth Mindset Pedagogy in the Classroom [Masterʼs thesis, Bethel University]. Spark Repository.

Deak (2010). Your Fantastic Elastic Brain: A Growth Mindset Book for Kids to Stretch & Shape Their Brains. Sourcebooks, Inc.

in Brain Basics

Reading Aloud and Your Child’s Brain: Engage the Powerful Science Behind the Magic^Featured

June 1, 2023

1020

Did you know that reading aloud to your child causes changes in brain activity?

Did you know that even if your child knows how to read for themselves, there are still benefits to reading aloud to independent readers?

If you only have time to choose one activity to prioritize with your child, choose reading together. Reading aloud to your children is a low cost and high impact activity across all ages and stages.

“Reading every day with children can’t guarantee perfect outcomes for any family—not in grades, not in happiness, not in relationships. But it is as close to a miracle product as we can buy, and it doesn’t cost a nickel. “–Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction

Reading aloud to our children costs time and attention but no money. While our time as parents is certainly valuable, it is well spent given the neurochemical benefits available in this activity. We don’t even have to purchase anything. New books aren’t required–there are cognitive benefits from re-reading favorites. Local libraries or free little libraries provide numerous book choices at no cost to you.

Reading aloud is backed by neuroscience as an ideal activity for enhancing cognitive development. It supports communications between the brain of the speaker and brain of the listener and fosters bonding.

It isn’t just about building a bigger vocabulary–you are building up their brains.

Outline

What happens inside the brain when you read aloud?
1. Neural coupling/mirror neurons
2. Oxytocin
Try this today
Takeaways
References

1. What happens inside the brain when you read aloud?

There is communication occurring between brains when someone is telling a story and someone is listening. Underlying neural systems connect our brains with our child’s brains in incredible ways when we read aloud to them.

Brain science has documented incredible reactions to reading aloud, including the following:

Brain mirroring of the reader and listener (two independent brains activated in the same areas)
Release of important neurochemicals (brain chemicals)

When One Brain Mirrors Another

The alignment of brain processes between speaker and listener may be key in how brains receive information while reading aloud.

“The act of reading together secures people to one another, creating order and connection, as if we were quilt squares tacked together with threads made of stories. That’s not just another metaphor, as a team of neuroscientists at Princeton has discovered. Even as reader and listener are enjoying their bouquet of neurochemicals … their brain activity is synchronizing, creating literal order and connection in a process known as neural coupling.” ― Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction

Neural coupling is an occurrence when the activity in one brain mirrors the activity in another brain.

In a 2010 study, researchers placed both a speaker and a listener pair in functional MRI (fMRI) machines. They watched to see which parts of the brain were activated during storytelling (Stephens, Silbert, & Hasson, 2010). Essentially, they wanted to see which sections of the brain would “light up” on the scans.

The speaker’s brain during storytelling was coupled with the listener’s brain–the same areas of the brain were lighting up in both brains while reading aloud occurred. The researchers described the coupling of the two brains as “widespread” and “extensive,” but its important to note that areas were lighting up that are typically associated with the mirror neuron system.

The mirror neuron system is made up of special brain cells that help us to act like those around us. Our mirror neurons are hard at work helping us to learn by observation and by action. They help us imitate behaviors for social communication and even help us to make guesses about intentions behind someone’s actions. Scientists believe that mirror neurons are an integral component of understanding what other people might be thinking or feeling–the foundation of empathy. Empathy is an important part of our brain’s response to narrative. Mirror neurons are a key part of empathizing with characters and their goals (Miall, 2009).

Another key part of our brain’s empathetic response to narrative is oxytocin (Zak, 2013).

What is oxytocin and what does it have to do with reading aloud?

Oxytocin is a chemical produced by the brain that is associated with bonding. Oxytocin is important for developing secure parent-child relationships, particularly in the early years. It is produced through contact and interaction with engaged parents (Scatliffe, Casavant, Vittner, & Cong, 2019)

Oxytocin promotes attachment. When we read aloud to our children, giving them focused contact and interaction, bonding occurs on multiple levels.

We bond not just emotionally but neurochemically.

In a recent study, researchers measured oxytocin levels and cortisol levels (a stress hormone) in children staying in a hospital. They compared a control group of children to a group of children who were read aloud stories during their hospital stay and found that just one storytelling session had significant impacts. The children had higher oxytocin levels, lower cortisol levels (less stress hormone), and reported less pain compared to the control group. The researchers concluded that reading aloud is a low cost intervention for improved well being (Brockington et al., 2021).

2. Try it today

Read one picture book aloud with your children today.

Pick the time that is best for you. Our family enjoys read alouds during breakfast while kids are seated and eating. We also download free children’s audiobooks from our local library and listen in the car during errands and roadtrips. I turn to read alouds during the day when things get “crazy” and the children need a calming activity–I invite an overstimulated child into my lap for snuggles and a story. Reading aloud is also perfect for pre-nap or pre-bedtime routines to provide calm connection.

Associate reading aloud with something positive. If you treat reading as a chore, your children will see it as a chore. Try reading aloud with a flashlight or lantern. Introduce a special snack or drink (popcorn, hot chocolate, apple cider, a fruit tray, cookies, etc.).

Utilize resources like storytime at local libraries or bookstores or audiobooks to provide varied read aloud experiences. Ask grandparents, aunts and uncles, nannies, or other trusted adults to read aloud during their visits. For a screen free audiobook experience for young learners, Yoto players are a modern alternative to books on tape. Yoto players are specifically designed for children and ad-free.

3. Takeaways

There is communication occurring between brains when someone is telling a story and someone is listening. Underlying neural mechanisms connect our brains with our child’s brains in incredible ways when we read aloud to them.

Reading to your child is not going to break the bank but it is certainly going to stimulate positive changes in your child’s brain.

For more exclusive brain based ideas, click here and subscribe!

4. References

Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction
Stephens, Silbert, & Hasson (2010). Speaker-listener neural coupling underlies successful communication https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1008662107
Skov, M., Vartanian, O., Martindale, C., & Berleant, A. (2009). Neuroaesthetics (1st ed.). Routledge. Ch. 11 by David S. Miall Neuroaesthetics of LIterary Reading (https://sites.duke.edu/flaubertsbrain/files/2012/09/Miall_Neuroaesthetics-of-Literary-Reading.pdf)
Scatliffe, Casavant, Vittner, & Cong (2019). Oxytocin and early parent-infant interactions: a systematic review https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6838998/
Brockington et al (2021). Storytelling increases oxytocin and positive emotions and decreases cortisol and pain in hospitalized children https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2018

in Academic, Brain Basics, Critical, Resources

5 Thinking Skills to Help Your Child Thrive in the Era of ChatGPT^Featured

May 1, 2023