How to teach children to reflect
From the age of 4 or 5, children bombard adults with questions about life, death, justice, etc. All without a clear answer. This type of questions with a relative response is what teaches us that children can reflect from a very young age. Therefore, teaching them to reflect is not going to be neces
From the age of 4 or 5, children bombard adults with questions about life, death, justice, etc. All without a clear answer. This type of questions with a relative response is what teaches us that children can reflect from a very young age.
Therefore, teaching them to reflect is not going to be necessary. Children just as they breathe, or learn to walk instinctively, begin to think naturally. To do this, the adults in the child's environment (at home and at school) should motivate the child to continue thinking and doing them critically.
How to stimulate critical thinking from home
Currently, children face daily over-information in which advertising, TV, and the Internet leads them to receive stimuli without a clear answer, so they must activate their mind. From home parents can help their children to be more reflective in the following way:
- Educate the child's emotions. For children to learn to think critically, they must first understand how emotions work. Knowing how to identify them is the first step towards empathy that makes the child understand himself and others. Children learn from birth, that is why it is very important that through affection they feel that emotional and social learning is basic.
- Give confidence to the child. As parents, we must encourage the child the idea that it is special and important, capable of offering many things. The parents have to accompany the child and that he feels the trust and enough support to venture to explore to continue advancing.
- Attend your own thoughts. Encourage children to give an answer or do something before thinking about the consequences.
- Encourage creativity. Parents should prevent the child from losing curiosity about things. For this, they must provide stimuli and challenges that will lead them to learn and have fun. Developing this imaginative capacity fosters their curiosity to learn and wonder about the why of things.
- Each child has his own thought. Children have their own personality and must be respected at all times. We must allow them to have their ideas and opinions and to know how to argue. For this, we can ask you to give examples to clarify your ideas. Notice your gestures, your listening, etc. But never give the answer for them. Promote their independence and maturity avoiding the overprotection that makes the opposite happen.
The development of reflection from the school
In school, as well as at home, it is the place where the child begins to develop his thinking little by little, surpassing levels until reaching abstract thinking. The problem comes with the error that is seen today in school education, where there is a tendency to form "equal children", with the same learning and who think in the same way. It is important that there be a change in education that allows the autonomy of children, creativity and constructive and critical thinking. For this, the school should be the continuation of learning that has begun with the stimulation of thought from very early ages in the family.
