Little Tyke

Brain development and positive parenting

I just finished watching an interesting episode of Scientific American Frontiers with Roman (who says, "That's my favorite show." LOL). The episode was "Make Up Your Mind," and the segment that I found relevant to this list was "Why Kids Don't Get It." It was talking about how the frontal lobes of children are still immature and unable to stop them from doing things "automatically." The experiment they did showed a 3 year old playing a game where she had to sort objects by color. Then, they switched the game and had her sort them by shape. She would automatically put the pictures in the wrong pile - sorting them by color - even though she thoroughly understood the game, sorting by shape, and could explain it to the experimenter.
Adults do the same thing. Try to read the following go to the following page, and look at the list of colors. Instead of reading the WORD, just say the COLOR of the word out loud. http://www.apa.org/science/stroop.html

Notice that it took you longer to read the list than it would take you
simply to read:

• red
• yellow
• green
• blue
• red
• blue
• yellow
• green
• blue
• red

Your frontal cortex is what stops you from doing what comes automatically, reading the WORDS, and allows you to do what you know you are supposed to be doing, reading the colors. In small children, that area of the brain is not fully developed. Dr. Diamond found that she was able to help children overcome the "weakness" by encouraging them to talk it through. That is, if the child was encouraged to say, "The shape is star," she was much more likely to sort it by shape instead of by color. Simply hearing the adult say, "Here is a star," did not help the child at all!

What are the implications for parenting? It's certainly enlightening to know how incredibly difficult it is for children to unlearn things (peeing in a diaper comes to mind) and to stop themselves from doing something that they've done before (impulse control). It may mean that teaching a child to talk him/herself through an action that doesn't come automatically could help, even though it takes more time. Helping him/her say, "I'm going to put the block down," rather than simply telling the child, "Don't throw that block at the window," or even, "Put the block down."