Growing Your Child's Mind

by

Debbie W. Wilson

The May 1999 issue of the Reader's Digest carried a fascinating story about a father and his nine-year-old son, Carlos and Agustin Carricaburu, who built a replica of a 1906 Case steam-traction engine. Under his father's guidance, young Agustin discovered creative solutions to problems they encountered in coming up with materials. More than once his mother saw him crawl under her car with a flashlight to see how parts went together. When he drove their homebuilt tractor in May 1988, Agustin immediately became the envy of the neighborhood children.

The fascinating thing about this story to me was that Agustin has Downs Syndrome. The doctors told his parents that he would probably never speak clearly, read or write, or be able to live independently. His parents determined to give him their best efforts. They proved the doctor's predictions wrong. A creative child, Agustin became fluent in Spanish and English and learned to read and write before he was six. He also learned how to nail boards together and make simple repairs.

Educational psychologist Jane Healy writes that "experience--what children do every day, the ways in which they think and respond to the world, what they learn, and the stimuli to which they decide to pay attention--shapes their brains. Not only does it change the ways in which the brain is used (functional change), but it also causes physical alterations (structural change) in neural wiring systems." (Endangered Minds: Why Our Children Don't Think, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990, p.51)

As home-schooling parents, we plan and guide our children's education. We create their environment. Most of us instinctively touch, rock, swing, talk to, and make eye contact with our babies. All of these activities help a baby's brain grow .

Language Development. Talking to a baby while you change his diapers or wash the dishes with him nearby develops his understanding of language and communication and his social learning. "(I)n one typical study, researchers found that 'frequent, responsive mother-child language interaction' was the most critical factor in raising mental ability...." (Jane Healy, Endangered Minds, p.91) By listening and talking children learn syntax, grammar, and elementary reasoning, as well as facts about the environment. Children in daycare frequently lack this strong interaction with an articulate adult who can give them a grasp of English by talking to them.

As a child grows older, read to him. Play word games as you drive to town, such as "I'm thinking of a word that rhymes with grass" or "I'm thinking of an animal that starts with the same sound as tap." Ask him for directions to go to the store. Take turns adding sentences to make a story or tell him about the crane or hospital or pretty car you are passing. Take him to the library to pick out his own books. When possible, stop what you are doing to listen to him on his level .

Language development, especially reading, provides the basis for logical thinking. When teaching a child to read, do not emphasize the phonics to the exclusion of comprehension. As you teach new letter combinations, teach what the word means and how it is used in a sentence. We played a game in which we took turns picking up the word cards we were using for phonics, reading the card, and using it in a sentence in order to earn the card. While reading aloud to your child, sometimes allow him to read the words he knows.

With story telling and reading, ask your child what happened first in the story, why a character did what he did, how your son would feel if he were in a character's position. Help him to make connections between cause and effect and recognize the sequence of events. Occasionally ask him to tell the story in his own words.

Reading builds spiritual , emotional, and social understanding when books with high values are chosen. Stories have trained millennia of children to live useful and virtuous adult lives, how to deal with problems and fears, and how to act.

Some of our family's best discussions have arisen while reading a book aloud, whether fiction or non-fiction. We have discussed history, politics, the future, the Bible, government, holiness, economics, architecture, literature, entertainment, submarine warfare and many other subjects because of something brought up in a book. Our sons have learned to debate, to reason, to defend their positions, and to apply scripture from reading.

Do not overlook discussions over meals. Listening to adults discuss the issues of the day teaches a child how to do the same. Talking together keeps a family close.

Play. Children explore the world and social relationships through play. From the baby shaking his rattle to the teenager trying to make a free throw, children's minds grow with everything they do. The best toys to stimulate mental development allow the child to use his imagination and creativity. Flipping a switch to make a car go, complete with siren and flashing light, does not use the same part of the brain as pushing a car through the sandbox and making siren noises. Sandboxes, dolls, blocks, boxes, paper and crayons, cars, and adult clothes for dress up encourage creativity.

Our society tends to structure much of a child's time. Unfortunately, children who are overstimulated face stress. Limit the structured activities so that your child has time to daydream, think, and create in his quiet times. Just as you need time to relax, so does your child.

Some children in our society do not know how to play, especially how to pretend which is often a symptom of children with mental or emotional problems. Today many children who spend a lot of time with television and computer show the same problem. This type of play encourages children to make mental pictures which children need for creativity, planning, sticking with a job until it's done. Mental imagery also ties in with a child's ability to make and use metaphors.

To encourage your child's mental imagery, you can play "make-believe" games, charades, and "Poor Pussy" . Read "Three Billy Goats Gruff" under a bridge made of cardboard or the dining room table. Have the children do the sound effects. Dress up for a period of history study or literature. Attend a historical reenactment where you can feel as well as hear the affects of the cannon's roar.

Work. Putting his toys away develops a young child's visual-spatial relationships. He learns more about how the world works: about gravity, that two toys cannot fit into the same spot, to organize his thinking.

Providing a child with his own simple tools and utensils increases his physical dexterity and develops other areas of his brain. He can learn to cook, hammer nails, measure, embroider, garden and do other activities, improving his intelligence, creativity, and practical skills.

Working beside and with parents benefits a child when the parent talks about what he is doing. If Dad figures out his next step in a project aloud, he provides a model for the child to verbalize his problems and find solutions. Observing a parent using tools teaches a child the proper way to hold those tools. A parent can help a child use a ratchet without hurting his knuckles or the trick to efficient digging with a shovel. Gradually the child moves from observation to passing Dad the tools to doing some of the simpler tasks with the tools to completing a similar task by himself.

Art and Music. Mothers have instinctively sung soft, soothing songs to babies for centuries without realizing how important music can be to the mind's development. However, a child's lack of ability in keeping rhythm corresponds with trouble in reading, writing and other skills.(Jane Healy, Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds--for Better and Worse, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998, p. 122) Singing, marching, and playing with rhythm toys build important organizational skills into the brain, skills that will affect other areas of thinking.

Recent studies have concluded that listening to Mozart improves a child's thinking. However, these same children can become overloaded and stressed with too much music, especially music with a heavy beat. Children with learning problems may be distracted because "(t)heir brains are letting in too much input because they're overwhelmed." (Dr. Susan Luddington-Hoe in Healy, Endangered Minds, p. 175)

Priscilla Vail, author of Clear and Lively Writing and Smart Kids with School Problems worries about children who listen to popular music. "Their brains are being trained to listen uncritically to lyrics that are limited to repetitive syllables or short phrases that hardly sound like English. The beat overrides the melody, and there is no beginning, no middle, and no end. That is a poor training ground for understanding language!" (Healy, Endangered Minds, p. 103)

Art, too, affects the mind. Drawing, painting, finger-painting, origami, modeling with clay, and building models help build creativity and mental imagery. In contrast, art learned on computers "tend(s) to have 'a stiffness or a flatness, a lack of richness and depth' ." (Healy, Failure to Connect, p. 165) Nature study and collecting also build creativity, mental imagery, and problem solving.

Physical Activities. Frank Lloyd Wright credited the blocks he played with as a child for his interest in building. (Healy, Failure to Connect, p.220) Handling blocks and scissors, throwing balls, running, climbing, crawling, jumping rope, building and flying model rockets build depth perception, knowledge of the way things work, and muscular coordination that are needed to grasp concepts in practical life, science and artistic studies.

Emotional Intelligence. Some people have an innate ability to understand people, to guide them, to counsel them. Our children learn about people by interacting with us, their siblings, their extended family, their friends and neighbors. We model hospitality and friendship for them. We teach them courtesy by showing it to them as well as verbally guiding them.

The Scripture helps us understand human motivations, strengths, and weaknesses. We cannot truly understand people without understanding sin.

We can also discuss why people in life and in books do what they do.

Playing the conversation ball game helps a child learn to converse, something that is increasingly missing in our society. You ask a child a question and toss him the ball. Before he can toss the ball to you or someone else, he has to answer the question and ask another or make a comment that elicits a response from another person.