Learn To Think

Education is not easy and learning to think is even less so. Since both things take effort and dedication, and in most cases we weren’t taught them in childhood, we don’t know how to teach them to our own children.

To learn to think, the first thing to do is to consider that our children are capable of doing it, because despite their young age, they have the capacity to develop their logic, their reasoning and their strategies, as necessary in life as they are. learn to make decisions.

Forcing to obey does not educate

Contrary to what we are used to hearing, forcing to obey does not educate.

It only serves us to generate submission and to make sure everything is under control when we kids do as they are told.

A domestic animal can be asked to obey, since it does not think, and its training must go through obedience in exchange for a reward or recognition.

However, our children, as human beings, and even though they are small, have the capacity to think, to understand and to reason.

They therefore have the right to be themselves, with their ideas, their convictions and their reasoning, even when we do not agree.

The difficulty of educating without submission

Without a doubt, if we see it from the perspective of the adult educator, it is much more difficult to educate without enforcing obedience, doing it through respect, valuing and teaching children to think.

In childhood, we have the capacity to absorb everything around us, and we get a sense of the world, adapted to our age.

This means that if we teach our children to obey, and to stay under this restriction all the time, they will repeat it as adults.

The educated child will manage his situations with authoritarianism and imposition, inflicting punishments if he is not obeyed.

This is why education is very difficult, especially when one wishes to teach the child to think, to understand, to draw his own conclusions and reflections.

Dedication, time and stimulation

Learning to think takes dedication, time, patience, method and strategies.

For this, we need a reflective, respectful and loving attitude, so that the stimulation leads to good results.

Without a doubt, these results mean allowing the child to grow up emotionally healthy, to feel loved, respected and listened to.

Thus, he will be sure of himself and strong to face the adversities of life when he is an adult, knowing how to think and make the right decisions.

How to learn to think?

To learn to think, it is important to take into account a series of strategies at the educational level which, on a daily basis, will allow the child to define himself in front of life and in front of us, by understanding the world and which is beneficial for him and for his life path.

Always being able to count on our love, support and closeness. These strategies are:

• First of all, to show and express to our child that he is the most important for us in life, by transmitting to him the tenderness, love and recognition he deserves for his surpassing, his learning and his development.
• Offer him the opportunity to follow his own path, that is to say not to give him ready-made things, to allow him to do it, even if he may be wrong, and that we have to rectify it later .
• Communication and language are fundamental. Here, we are referring to the verbal but also the non-verbal and the emotional. It is very important to speak to him in a clear, simple and tender way.
• Faced with his reasoning and his small decisions, it is good to listen, to explain the consequences of these, and sometimes even to let him experience the consequences of his own convictions , so that, thanks to the experience, he draws his own conclusions and learnings.

• Support him, be positive about his little successes and discoveries, and motivate him to learn important things, such as hygiene habits, studies, behaviors etc.

It is important to find agreements, consensus, so that from communication, understanding and negotiation, children are part of the decisions, norms and values ​​that we want to teach them, and in short, of their own life, thinking only of what makes them dream.

In this way, our children will grow emotionally, have more self-confidence and be able to make their own decisions in life.