Savvy Life Skill: Critical Thinking

Developing your child's critical thinking skills is one of your top priorities as a dad. But before you sign up for pre-natal S.A.T. class or buy "Nuclear Physics for Dummies," you should realize that teaching good critical thinking is an easy process that only requires talking, playing, and interacting with your child. So you can put away your protractor and graphing calculator. Just remember the following tips, and you will ensure that your child will develop great critical thinking:

1. Realize that the early years are the most important for development. Your baby might not be able to fully understand your in-depth analysis of the Cowboy's Cover 2 defense but that doesn't mean her brain isn't working yet. In fact, the first few years are when your baby develops the neural connections that will last a lifetime: a person develops 50% of their ability to learn in their first four years of life, and another 30% by age 8. So don't think you can skimp on those early critical years, and make it up by teaching your kid calculus in high school.
   
   
2. Talk to your child. A lot. Language is highly correlated with critical thinking, and children develop language faster when they are surrounded by it. Studies on baby talk are mixed. Pre-speech baby talk ("goo goo gah gah") is a good way to interact with your child and teach communication skills like call and response. But "Is baby hungry for a bity baby baa baa?" is probably less effective for teaching language than simply saying "Are you hungry for your bottle?" Could you learn French if your teacher only responded to you in the broken half-French, half-English that you were spewing? Talk with your normal vocabulary, and your child will learn language skills faster, and improve critical thinking.
   
   
3. Help your child learn through playing. Research shows that children develop better mental skills when they learn through interaction. Plopping your kid in front of a "Learning your alphabet" DVD or putting them on the floor with some blocks is less effective than teaching them yourself. So put down your newspaper, get on the floor, start singing your ABC's, and build some block towers.
   
   
4. Children learn best though diverse learning experiences. The more unique pieces of information a brain learns to process, the better it becomes at processing new information. So to make children better critical thinkers, they should come in contact with a wide variety of experiences and problems at an early age. Don't just play in your living room every day. Go to the zoo, museums, the beach, the park, and the mall. And during playtime try activities that require motor skills, sights, sounds, and touch. For older kids, include counting, reading, make-believe, and object naming.
   
   
5. If you spend a whole lot of money on toys, your child will be successful. Just kidding. Despite the rapid increase in baby genius toys, no good research shows that certain educational toys help your child develop critical thinking skills. Some experts argue that basic music ability can increase math and science scores, so perhaps parents should buy a toy piano or sign their kids up for violin class. But overall, you just want to find ways that allow your children to explore their many skills and abilities. This may include toys or it may not. Building mud castles requires motor skills, touch, vision, imagination, and planning -- and it will only cost you a bath.
   
   
6. Struggling is not always a bad thing. Studies show that a child that struggles to solve a problem but eventually masters it develops confidence and improves critical thinking. No one is saying you should let your kid cry on the floor because she can't figure out how to open her new jack-in-the-box. But perhaps spending a few extra minutes encouraging your child and helping her explore the jack-in-the-box might boost intelligence and confidence.
   
   
7. Encourage decision making. Picking out a pair of pants may seem easy to you, but brain research shows that making a simple decision is a complex mental exercise that requires weighing actions, costs, and benefits (in other words, you should be proud of yourself if you are currently wearing pants). So give your child the chance to make decisions, talk about the decision-making process, and let your child see how you make rational decisions. By learning to make decisions, your kid will be challenged to solve difficult critical thinking problems while having fun and feeling independent.

Finally, realize that the most important thing for your child's critical thinking skills is . . . you! As one expert said, "the irreducible core of the environment of early development is people." Babies develop best when they are surrounded by language, stimulation, and interaction that are provided by people. Spend time every day playing, talking, and having fun, and your baby is bound to naturally develop critical thinking.