It’s been a year since I launched Thriving Little Thinkers! Since then we’ve published 14 posts, had thousands of page views, hundreds of email subscribers, and hosted two giveaways. Thank you for joining me on this adventure!
This list includes posts with the most page views in 2023 on Thriving Little Thinkers. I was honestly surprised at the #1 post and I’m excited to share more content like it in the coming year. If you have specific questions or topics about raising thinkers that you’d like to see on the blog in 2024, please comment on this post or email [email protected].
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.
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.
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.”
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!
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!
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.
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 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:
ch
“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.
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:
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.
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.
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Read more about your child’s brain and challenges:
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.
Contents
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.
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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.
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.)
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.
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 agrowth 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.
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?
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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 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?
Neural coupling/mirror neurons
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.
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
Are you a parent of young children? Have you been thinking “ChatGPT isn’t even on my radar. I don’t need to worry about that yet.“
Even if you have preschoolers or elementary aged children, this is a valuable post for you. There are simple, low cost, high impact ideas to build teachable thinking skills now that could improve their ability to navigate generative AI, later.
Check out the infographic for specific ways to teach these crucial thinking skills and adjust them to match your specific child’s age and capability.
Or…
Are you a parent of tweens or teens?
You may have heard about ChatGPT from your student’s school or teacher. Some middle school and high schools have banned this tech from their campuses and others have embraced it as part of the modern day classroom.
If you are already familiar with ChatGPT, read on and learn more about teachable thinking skills we can build up in our teens and tweens, whether they are currently using ChatGPT or not.
In light of ChatGPT and its capabilities, do our kids still need thinking skills apart from AI?
What thinking skills are essential now, more than ever?
Executive functioning
Information literacy
Asking the right questions
Communication
Ethical thinking
How do we teach those skills?
Infographic
Takeaways
References
1. In light of ChatGPT and its capabilities, do our kids still need thinking skills apart from AI?
Are thinking skills obsolete?
I’ve heard an argument that our children won’t need to learn to do basic cognitive tasks, such as remembering, classifying, summarizing, interpreting, or even comparing or contrasting, because generative AI is capable. ChatGPT can tell you the right answers and formulate responses for you… so why teach our children those things?
I think this argument assumes 1) that the AI is capable of quality output every single time (which is already suspect1) and 2) that the AI will always be readily accessible (high user volumes sometimes render the service unavailable, and paywalls may limit inclusion of varying socioeconomic groups).
But, for the sake of argument, even if generative AI can perform a function accurately and is easily accessible—does omitting the training of thinking skills benefit your child in any way?
Products vs. processes
Now more than ever, our children absolutely need thinking skills and the ability to communicate, apart from AI. They need the skills to navigate the digital world well.
Generative AI generates a product or outcome. Teaching our children to think means we are developing their thinking processes.
A reliance on generative AI can potentially lead to a decrease in thinking skills because it provides quick solutions and generates ideas without the user needing to engage in the cognitive processes that are involved in creating those solutions or ideas.
We aren’t training child robots capable of spitting out answers. We are cultivating minds with the ability to thoughtfully consider ideas and articulately respond.
The allure of a shortcut is certainly present, given the sheer number of ways we can access generative AI. But I don’t want my children to always choose the easy route with a chatbot. The reason and voice of chatGPT could potentially be helpful, but I don’t want it to replace their own.
2. What thinking skills are essential now, more than ever?
Executive functioning
Information literacy
Asking the right questions
Communication
Ethical thinking
Some overlap, but all are important for navigating digital experiences.
1. Executive Functioning
Executive functioning is a foundation for effective thinking skills–a set of underlying cognitive processes. Executive function involves regulating and controlling the other cognitive functions of the brain like attention, memory, self-control, or problem solving. Executive function is like an air traffic controller who is managing the coming and going of planes in multiple lanes at the same time.2
By regulating thoughts, emotions, and actions, students can focus on what they are learning. Generative AI like ChatGPT can provide a wealth of information and entertainment, making distraction almost effortless. Therefore, students need to develop the ability to stay focused on the task at hand and avoid getting sidetracked.
2. Information literacy
Information literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, and use information effectively. Information literacy isn’t just a thinking skill–it’s a life skill crucial for navigating the age of digital information as it becomes more and more difficult to differentiate between credible and non-credible sources.
Lack of information literacy skills can contribute to the spread of false information and can lead to poor decision making when there is inaccurate or incomplete information. Using low quality AI responses could lead to academic, professional, or personal consequences.
Asking the right questions is both an art and a foundational thinking skill. Asking the right questions involves identifying gaps in knowledge or understanding, and exploring different perspectives. The way a question is asked will determine what information ChatGPT provides.
You will get completely different answers from ChatGPT if you ask “What is a thinking skill?” vs. “What are the most important thinking skills that parents can teach their children and how can they do this in a low cost way?”
Which of those questions would provide you with the most useful information?
4. Communication
Communication, the way we share ideas with others, is both a thinking skill and a social skill. Our brains think of what we want to say and how to say it in ways that other people can understand.
It is easier than ever to replace communication with AI generated responses. ChatGPT is excellent when crafting an email, but will your teen be able to respond face to face in a verbal exchange with their supervisor at work? Communication is essential for success in all relationships, whether at home, school, play, or in the workforce.
If students are over reliant on AI to communicate for them, they may not develop and hone the skills needed to speak clearly and effectively on their own.
5. Ethical thinking
Ethical thinking is examination of values and beliefs and making decisions in line with those values and beliefs. Using AI with integrity will require consideration of complex ethical issues.
Students (and teachers) must recognize that their own values may not be reflected in ChatGPT or in the way other people utilize it. Without ethical thinking skills, students may not appreciate the responsibility for the content they generate with the help of chatGPT. They will also need to identify biases and stereotypes, and even respond to inappropriate or harmful information.
3. How do we teach these skills?
Use these tips as a starting point for building up cognitive elements like executive function and honing skills in information literacy, communication, asking the right questions, and thinking ethically.
You’ll notice that modeling, reflection, and exploration are key components of teaching any key thinking skills. For more on modeling, check out the post Modeling: How to Shape Brains & Behavior For Better.
4. Takeaways
There are ethical, moral, and philosophical implications for using generative AI and as it changes and its application spreads, our children need to be able to use it with integrity and skill.
ChatGPT should not be used to replace thinking skills, it should be used to enhance them.
In the era of ChatGPT, thinking skills are more important than ever. There is currently no research stating that chatGPT can reduce thinking skills in young students, because good research takes time, and there hasn’t been enough time since its release to conduct high quality research. However, like any technological tool, it’s the way in which it is used that has the greatest impact.
I’m hopeful that in the coming months and years, we will see research specifically exploring the benefits and risks of using generative AI, particularly in education. I’m hopeful that we will see research based “best practices” for using ChatGPT with young learners. I’m hopeful that we will see studies of ChatGPT’s impact on brain function that are longitudinal (observing the same participants and variables over a long period of time, sometimes for years).
I’m cautiously optimistic.
The way we interact with generative AI like ChatGPT is evolving and will be different a year from now.
But today, with the information available to me, I’m focusing on teaching thinking skills that can prepare my children for whatever ChatGPT has in store for us.
Looking for more?
Put these skills into practice right away with your middle or high school student by grabbing the free student workbook Smart Kids Chat Smarter that walks you the C.R.A.A.P. test for evaluating ChatGPT output.
Watching our children is often like looking in a mirror and seeing our own words and actions reflected back to us.
Have you ever said something around little listening ears and then cringed when you heard it repeated to a teacher or grandparent?
For better or worse (and sometimes hilarious), our children are watching and listening. Every action they watch and every word they hear is filed away in their little brains. Their brains are developmentally wired to absorb the information around them.
As parents, we are the primary source of information on how to live. Our children take the information on how we live and use it to form mental frameworks and cognitive shortcuts.We see the outcomes in their words and actions–that often look like our own.
This post explains the concept of modeling: a high impact strategy for parents who want to positively shape a child’s values, thoughts, and ultimately behaviors.
This post is also a reminder of the influence we carry in our homes. The goal of this post is to empower parents to 1) be aware of what we are modeling and 2) determine if our model is helping or hurting our efforts to build what we want to see in our children.
I hope that rather than feeling discouraged, that some reflective thinking on your current model of parenting leaves you empowered to make positive changes.
Contents:
Little Brains as Mirrors
What is a Model? See and Follow
Changing the Model
Try This
Takeaways
Modeling: A Low Cost & High Impact Idea for Shaping Your Child’s Brain
Let’s be honest, modeling costs no money at all, but it absolutely costs time and effort. All acts of intentionality cost us something.
But modeling the character and behaviors we want our children to embody as they grow is immensely valuable to you and to your child.
Instead of spending energy and time trying to un-do unwanted behaviors and attitudes, you can invest your time and effort modeling desired values and behaviors. Build up excellent habits instead of trying to tear down established patterns. There is a reason that most intervention programs in the early childhood years are focused on education and training of parents—if we, the parents, don’t change, nothing will.
Little Brains as Mirrors
Little brains are mirrors. What they see, they reflect back in action or behavior. We see this in both neurobiological research and in psychology.
Neurobiological learning
There is a system of special brain cells that helps us to learn from and act like those around us. This system is called the mirror neuron system and it helps the brain to mirror what we observe. Given the general familiarity with the phrase “monkey see, monkey do,” it’s interesting that mirror neuron systems were actually first discovered in monkeys in 1992. Since then, it has been extensively researched in humans.
Scientists now view “the mirror mechanism as a basic principle of brain function.”1
Research of mirror neurons in humans shows that people often map an observed action in their brain’s motor systems. However, “the emotional context and the internal state of the observers (i.e. knowledge, motivation, emotion, etc.)” greatly shape the way that happens1
Psychological theory
There is an important theory called social learning theory, created by Albert Bandura, that has profoundly impacted views on cognitive development in both children and adults. Essentially, social learning theory hypothesizes that “new patterns of behavior are acquired through direct experience or by observing the behavior of others.” 2
Observational learning is one of the key ideas Bandura explored. Observational learning suggests that a child may encode the behavior of models around them. Context matters in observational learning, and the encoding of behavior is influenced by reinforcement (positive or negative; internal or external) and by consideration of whether or not we want to imitate what we observe.
The basic principle of this theory is that we often learn, encode, and act based on observations.
If brains are mirrors, what does this mean for us as parents?
Your child’s brain needs something to mirror. The brain is looking for a MODEL. What is a model?
A model is: “A standard or example for imitation and comparison.” 3
A model is what our children see, imitate, and follow.
Learning from models in their environment is a cognitive shortcut for the learning process. The brain likes to conserve power by taking shortcuts. Instead of learning everything in life from direct experience, they can also learn from watching you navigate a challenge. This saves brain energy. They observe your experience, learn a response, and can use that data if they face a similar situation in the future.
See and Follow
Your child will learn from models around them, no matter what. Their brains areseeing and following, by design.
Regardless if the modeling is passive or intentional…
children see and follow.
As a parent, you have an especially influential role in your child’s life. By simple proximity alone, doing life together in the same environment, you are molding your child’s brain.
As a parent you are a model. If a model is an example for imitation and comparison, then your behaviors are a standard they will compare themselves to and imitate.Your behaviors will help them formulate assumptions about your values, and they will often encode those as standards to live by.
The “See and Follow” wiring doesn’t often look like formal education. Children primarily learn through experiences within the environment of home and family life. This is called informal education and it plays a valuable role in learning. In particular, watching and taking part in activities within the family are cornerstones in informal education4. Much of what our children learn from occurs in the daily life and routines we repeatedly practice.
In the book Thrivers, educational researcher Dr. Michele Borba encourages parents to model 7 teachable traits that help children flourish in life, beyond just academic performance: “Be the example of what you want your child to learn.”5 She describes modeling as the best way to impart these essential thriving skills, because the “best lessons are always natural and included in daily lives…model, discuss, and prioritize them until your children adopt them as an indelible part of their makeup.”5
Charlotte Mason, a British educator and advocate for quality in childhood education, spoke of the impact of parent’s modeling: “Every day, every hour, parents are either passively or actively forming habits in their children upon which, more than upon anything else, future character and conduct depend.”6
What we model for our children goes beyond actions and habits, extending into mental health. Even anxiety is influenced by modeling and environment.
When parents model anxious behaviors or communicate anxious thoughts to their children, the children report higher anxiety levels, more anxious thoughts, and demonstrate avoidance behaviors7. “Numerous pathways and mechanisms” like genetics, environment, and personality contribute to transmission of anxiety from parent to child, and the parent model is one of those mechanisms. 8
On a positive note, when parents model gratitude, children express gratitude more frequently.9 When parents model healthy eating, children have higher quality diets.10 When parents model financial skills, children accumulate less debt and less problematic spending.11
What our children see and hear from us, what we as parents model, is only one of the many factors that form child behavior, but it is a particularly influential one. Our children see and follow, or see and “soak up” as James Clear articulates in his book Atomic Habits: “We soak up the qualities and practices of those around us.”12
What are my children soaking up?
Changing the Model
If kids see and follow, then we must change what they see…and the best way to change your child’s values or behavior is to change your own.
Across different disciplines, researchers agree that changing the behavior of the parent influences the behavior of the child. Interventions for problems like childhood anxiety,13 mental health disparities,14 or even publicly funded early childhood intervention programs15 are not exclusively aiming at the children—they include interventions for the parents. That’s right–changing the model to potentially change the outcomes. Usually these interventions are education or training to provide the grownups in the child’s environment the information needed to help the child succeed.
What we model will not guarantee a certain outcome. But what we model will absolutely influence the outcome.
Parents as Agents of Change
Becoming aware of what we are modeling is the first step to changing our own behavior.
We become like the people we spend the most time with. For your children, that is often you, the parent. Do you want them to become more like you?
If they responded the way you did to a broken boundary, would they be proud? If your son spoke to a person in authority the way you do, would you be honored or ashamed?
Maybe you’re thinking over the type of model you provide and you realize there are some areas where your children are thriving. Fantastic! Or, maybe right now you are thinking about areas in which you could shift your actions and change what your children see.
I want to clarify that the goal of modeling is not to be a perfect parent. Modeling perfection is not possible. That’s not demonstrating reality for our children because there are no perfect people and no perfect model.
I also don’t want you to feel overwhelmed or defeated by the sheer weight of your influence. I want to empower you to 1) be aware of what you are modeling and 2) determine if that is helping or hurting your efforts to build the character and behaviors you want to see in your family.
Try This Today
Consider these questions
What are me kids soaking up from me?
Am I providing a living example of my own expectations?
What have I copied from my own parents’ models?
Choose one thing
Pick one single thing you’d like to focus on today to provide a better model for your child(ren).
Picking more than one area to work on will lead to overwhelm, not forward movement.
Consider the area you have chosen to focus on. Is what you are modeling in that area helping or hurting your efforts in teaching your children?
Example: My 5 year old has been grumpy and irritated when I ask her to do something. I noticed that when I am interrupted in a household task, I huff and respond with an irritated tone and unkind face. She learned her response from me.
Write it down.
Write down exactly what you want to model for your child in that focus area.
Example: When my children interrupt me and I am in the middle of a task, I will either 1) remind them gently that I can help as soon as I’m finished with the task or 2) calmly and respectfully ask them what they need and then patiently and kindly meet that need.
Sometimes, getting help is one of the best models you can provide.
Seeking counseling for your own mental health struggles, confessing a bad attitude, or asking for forgiveness from a child you’ve hurt provides a realistic model of what it looks like to parent in this crazy world. It’s not realistic to model perfection. Yet, it is wise to acknowledge and model a desire for growth and healing. Sometimes, we need to get help.
In The Whole Brain Child, Dr. Daniel Siegel and Dr. Tina Payne Bryson describe the incredible gift of parental growth: “As children develop, their brains “mirror” their parent’s brain. In other words, the parent’s own growth and development, or lack of those, impact the child’s brain. As parents become more aware and emotionally healthy, their children reap the reward and move toward health as well. That means that integrating and cultivating your own brain is one of the most loving and generous gifts you can give your children.”16
Takeaways
Be aware of what you are modeling.
Determine if your model is helping or hurting your efforts to build the character and behaviors you want to see in your family.
Be a living example of your own expectations.
All of this may sound like “pressure” on parents to be the perfect model. The impact of parents on our child’s brain may sound overwhelming and weighty. But it is also empowering! Parents are agents of change. This doesn’t mean that our children are little carbon copies that will do exactly as we do and say. Not at all! They still have unique personalities, temperaments, passions, and individualism. Yet, it is essential to acknowledge that children are highly influenced by what they see and hear from their parents and environment. Dr. Michele Borba summarizes this well: “…if we want our children to thrive, then we must alter our parenting. It starts by looking inward at ourselves, and then turning our lens to our children.”5
The goal of this post is to 1) share cautious optimism about the use of chatGPT as a learning tool and 2) provide practical tools for curious parents who want to help their children navigate this new technology.
This is the first in a 2 part series about ChatGPT and generative AI. Check back May 1, 2023 to get Part 2 or sign up to get a link in your inbox when it’s released.
Let’s explore this ultramodern, hyped technology together…
Contents:
What is ChatGPT?
Why should parents care?
Is ChatGPT an educational tool that parents can use?
Takeaway: A logical approach to ChatGPT
1. What is ChatGPT?
Artificial intelligence (AI), the creation of intelligent computer programs using science and engineering1 is not a new concept. It is the backbone of modern computing advances. Evolutions in AI capability have led to generative AI–computational models that produce “human like text” 2 that is “convincingly fluent”3 and even images or videos.
Generative AI has been used predominantly in research or academic contexts.
Until, on November 30, 2022, when a California-based company named Open AI released something called chatGPT, initially free, for public use. ChatGPT is form of generative AI. It allows users to enter text prompts and receive responses in personal language.
It’s basically a conversational exchange of information between you (or your child) and an intelligent bot.
ChatGPT is one of the most powerful, largest language processing AI models the world has ever seen.2
Since its release, the world has been abuzz with both excitement… and concern. And similar products are being released from competitors around the world, in a vast array of applications.
Simply put, even though it isn’t the only form of generative AI, the public interest in and acceptance of chatGPT has changed things. We will see ripple effects of generative AI moving more swiftly across many different disciplines.
2. Why should parents care?
ChatGPT has implications for the structure of education, the creation of novel academic work, and academic integrity.
LIke chatGPT, generative AI is becoming more easily accessible. Understanding how it works and training students how to use it is important for parents, because as AIs role expands, students are highly likely to encounter programs like chatGPT any time they go online.
How we respond to questions or comments from our children about generative AI matters. Your knowledge of chatGPT and similar AI and the way you speak about it reflects your own thinking processes. Children take note of the thoughts and opinions of respected adults. This means as parents, we must watch our words and consider how we communicate with our children about this new technology.
ChatGPT is here to stay. How do parents move forward?
By learning basic information about what chatGPT is and how to use it intentionally, parents can mitigate fear and demonstrate curiosity.
A lack of knowledge can sometimes lead to fear. Fear of the unknown can lead to controlling behavior to minimize a perceived threat. For a parent who is unfamiliar with generative AI and only sees news articles with polarizing descriptions about the potential malicious uses of new tech, there may be a temptation to deny its existence or control every aspect of its use.
As a parent, you can’t control the algorithm that directs a chatbot. But, you can prepare the child who is going to use it, by exploring it together and teaching them strategies to use it wisely and successfully.
3. Is chatGPT an educational tool that parents can use?
Yes…with cautionand oversight.
One of the reasons for the massive reaction and excitement for chatGPT is because of its expansive utility. It is a clever and useful tool. “History has shown us that when used appropriately and with discretion, technologies generally enhance education rather than detract from it”(emphasis mine).4
Here are a few of the many ways it can be used in education:
Ask the right questions
When working with chatGPT or similar AI, the prompt given by the user initiates the entire conversation. So working with chatGPT is a great way to introduce the importance of asking great questions, and determining how to frame the prompt.
Use chatGPT to dive deeper into a topic that you already have some familiarity with and see if it provides new insights or novel resources you haven’t previously considered
Spark a flame
Use chatGPT to explore a novel topic your child or student is interested in
So yes, chatGPT is a tool. BUT…some tools are dangerous if you put them in the hands of a novice.
A scalpel in the hands of a surgeon can carve out cancer and change someone’s life. A scalpel in the hands of a toddler could lead to danger and injury. A hammer wielded by a carpenter can create a work of art. A hammer in the hands of a novice with no guidance isn’t going to produce a quality outcome and will probably cause frustration and confusion.
And, a tool is only helpful if it is suited to your task. A hammer isn’t the best choice if you need a screwdriver or a chainsaw. ChatGPT is a tool, but it may not be useful if it doesn’t bring value to you (or your child’s) particular work.
Amidst the frenzy over chatGPT, there are also many concerns. Here are a few to consider:
Misinformation
There is no guarantee that the information provided by generative AI is accurate, because it pulls from potentially inaccurate internet sources. The human-like tone and plausible response can lead to a tendency to believe the information provided, whether it is actually true or not.
Bias
Generative AI has produced racial, political, and gender bias in responses.5
ChatGPT’s training data is “likely to encompass the entirety of the web” which includes inherent biases from authors and content creators because all humans are biased.
While all learning processes are susceptible to bias, there is concern for the algorithms behind generative AI and their potential for programmed bias. There is a push for OpenAI to make their programming transparent for ethical oversight to mitigate this risk.
Plagiarism
There are currently no references in the responses of chatGPT, and the program’s parent company and others are working to generate new software to detect text generated by AI. There are concerns for academic integrity and the ability of students to find workarounds to assignments using chatGPT. Some schools are banning chatGPT from campus and others are embracing it as part of the modern classroom environment.
Given the potential problems with chatGPT, along with its numerous uses, parents would be wise to approach the conversations about this tool with both curiosity and caution.
In his book Digital Minimalism, computer scientist Cal Newport describes a common sense approach to “decide what [digital] tools to use, for what purposes, and under what conditions.“6 He states “Technology is intrinsically neither good nor bad.” Technology is a tool. This way of thinking “…is not a rejection of technology or a reactionary act of skepticism; it is, by contrast, an embrace of the immense value these new tools can offer…if we’re willing to do the hard work of figuring out how to best leverage them on behalf of the things we truly care about.“7
4. Takeaways: A logical approach to ChatGPT
If you are a parent who is unfamiliar with ChatGPT, here are some things to thoughtfully consider as you explore new tech:
Model curiosity and wisdom as you learn about ChatGPT and process questions with your child.
When you read about ChatGPT in the news or hear about it from friends or family, take notes of what words they choose to describe it. Pay special attention to polarized thinking (the use of all or nothing or black and white thinking) or fear based language. Polarized thinking labels concepts as all good or all bad. In reality, there are usually shades of gray when evaluating something new. If you only say that it’s the best thing since sliced bread, or in contrast, completely ban it from your household, then you are modeling and promoting polarized thinking.
Set up structured learning experiences to foster experimentation with ChatGPT for you and your child in a hands on-way.
Whether it’s sparking the flame of a new academic interest, learning the art of asking great questions, or evaluating the quality of information that AI provides, there are ways to use ChatGPT intentionally and productively.
Summary
Parents can approach chatGPT with cautious optimism as they commit to learning more about this new and popular tool.
There are both benefits and concerns to using generative AI.
Start an open ended conversation with your student about chatGPT and how they can use it with integrity. Use the printable discussion guide to get started.
