How To Support Our Children’s Critical Thinking At Home
In this article, we are going to discuss the ways in which we can improve our children’s critical thinking and how to improve their skills.
Critical thinking can be defined as the ability to reason, solve problems and make decisions. It is about thinking using logic and asking questions to find the best explanation for each event or situation.
Enhancing the critical thinking of our children is a responsibility that we must acquire as parents. But be careful, it is not about making our children inherit our opinions or copy our way of thinking. They must have their own thinking. And yes, it is possible to help children to think critically at home.
Critical thinking of our children should be a habit
Practicing critical thinking in their native environments, at home, with friends, reading texts selected by themselves, socializing …, is a useful strategy to reinforce their cognitive functions. The more they do it, the more it will seem natural to do so. In this way, they will create a habit.
No matter what they are thinking about, no matter if it is in a news story or about a video game, we must help them see that thinking critically is the best. We will try to make them know that thinking like this is the best option and to ensure that there is no need to encourage them to do so.
The importance of discussing everything
The debate is useful primarily for two reasons:
- It helps children to look for alternative explanations in their studies, good explanations to analyze the results of the reasoning they follow, or of concrete results in science, for example.
- Debating can develop children’s natural communication skills. For example, “what do you think about such and such?” You have to look for debates on topics that interest them.
The need for knowledge
Having information, obtaining knowledge, is essential in critical thinking. The more data we have about everything, the more capacity we will have to comment, judge and do. So, fostering the need to know in the family is very important.
Access to diverse and quality reading materials
We must try to ensure that our children always have access to a variety of reading materials, create a quality library for them. In addition, we must give them time to read them and discuss the reading with them.
One game we can play is asking them to make statements based on the reading, and then reason in support of those statements by looking for evidence. You can also ask them about the last book they have read and ask them to tell you what it is about, what is their favorite character, who is the main character and what situations they have faced in the story.
Help to understand
To encourage critical thinking in our children, we have to help them understand the world around us. We can work with them simple things like interpreting a news item, encouraging them to distinguish what is important in that information and what is secondary.
For this, we can read together some news that we select on a current topic appropriate to the child’s age. Next, you should write the main topic after looking for it between the two of you and, finally, write the doubts that are not resolved in the news and think and talk about them.
Play is important to support our children’s critical thinking at home
There are many games that help promote critical thinking in our children. A good game could be chess. It is also very useful in creating a growth mindset as, to be effective, a player has to consider several possible moves before selecting the best one.
With these guidelines we will be able to generate critical thinking in our children, enhancing their future autonomy and an appropriate way of solving problems.
