Critical Thinking: How to Grow Your Child’s Mind

What kind of thinker is your child?  Does he believe everything on TV?  Does she always figure out how to get what she wants? 

Does he ask questions?  Does she go along with what her friends suggest?  You can help develop your child’s critical thinking skills by learning a few key guidelines!

Whether your child is just starting summer vacation or in the midst of the school year, parents can help keep minds active in fun ways. Critical thinking skills don’t fully develop until adolescence, but the foundations for good thinking develop in younger children.

The nonprofit Foundation for Critical Thinking cultivates core intellectual virtues that lead to fair-minded thinking.  They have identified three ways K-6 children typically think.

• Naïve Nancy doesn’t believe she needs to think because her parents do it for her! She believes most things she hears on TV, doesn’t ask questions, and goes along with what her friends decide.

• Selfish Sam thinks a lot because it gets him what he wants. He believes whatever is necessary to achieve his goals, regardless of whether it hurts others. He figures out how to get other kids to do what he wants them to do. Sam is a clever manipulator of adults and other children.

• Fair-minded Fran thinks a lot because it helps her learn. She knows she can’t always believe what people say or what she sees and hears on TV. Fran thinks about others as well as herself.  She is motivated to understand other people’s situations and attempts to put herself in their shoes.

What is Critical Thinking?

What is critical thinking? Critical thinking comprises a number of different skills that help us learn to make decisions. It is the ability to evaluate information to determine whether it is right or wrong.  To think critically about an issue or a problem means to be open-minded and consider alternative ways of looking at solutions. As children grow into pre-adolescents and teenagers, their critical thinking skills will help them make judgments independently of parents.

To be good at thinking, children must believe that thinking is fun and want to be good at it. Parents can make thinking fun throughout the academic year as well as during the summer and on vacations. Good thinkers practice thinking just like they practice basketball or soccer.

You can talk about these ways of thinking with your children by watching this video together. Afterwards, have a discussion about how they can practice being like Fair-Minded Fran. 

5 Ways to Help Kids Think Critically

The Foundation for Critical Thinking developed a short series of five “Intellectual Standards,” ways of helping elementary-aged children learn to think better.  Teach these standards to your kids, and then interact with them in ways that reinforce the five standards.

• Invite them to BE CLEAR by asking for explanations and examples when they don’t understand something.  Let children know it is okay to be confused and ask questions.

• Urge kids to BE ACCURATE, to check to see if something is true by researching the facts.

• Encourage children to BE RELEVANT by discussing other topics that are pertinent to the discussion or problem at hand.  Help them stay on track by linking related and meaningful information to the question they are trying to answer or the topic they are learning about.

• Support your child’s ability to BE LOGICAL.  Help her  see how things fit together.  Question how she came to her conclusions and whether her assumptions are correct.

• Set expectations that your child BE FAIR.  Promote empathy in his thinking processes.  Make sure he considers others when drawing conclusions.

An excellent video to share with your K-6 aged child reviews these five standards in ways that children can understand. Once parents and children speak a common language about the standards of critical thinking, employ them throughout the year and especially during the summer months!  Along with having fun, your child’s mind will learn to think critically about the world!

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Future benefits of parenting styles on academic performance

Education is the process of developing or training an individual to cope with the challenges of living. The quality of educated individuals available in any society determines its pace of development. The emergence of Western form of education brought the formal education system (that is, the school system).

According to Ojerinde (2000), the introduction of this system of education led to the type of education that is planned and provided under classroom situation by trained teachers. School is a training center to develop students into efficient social beings and to train them to further education backward and unprogressive members of the society (Sidhu, 2002). Thus, the school is an entity built by the community or society to realize desirable goals. We can say that the community builds its schools and the schools are expected to build their community by providing the human capital that will mobilize other material resources. In recent times, much has been written on the issue of education quality. 

According to Nweke (1998), Akinyemi (1998), Mamman (1998), Alkali (1999) and Atanda (2002), just to mention but a few, standards in education have been or are falling. To Ojerinde (2000), performance of students in public examinations has remained the visible evidence of falling standards. Researchers have blamed the low standards of education on some factors such as large class size, inadequate facilities, inadequate teachers, facilities, funds and library materials (Talabi 1988;Mahboob 1999; Ireogbu 2002).

School is a creation of community and students found in schools are from different homes, the home activities go a long way in determining learners’ success. For instance, Bakare (1994) advanced four causative phenomena that could affect individual scholastic achievement, these include: the child’s attitude, family, school and society. From these phenomena, parents stand in the position of the family. This shows the importance of the involvement of parents in the improvement of students’ academic achievement. 

Parental involvement includes a wide range of behaviours, but it generally refers to parents’ mode of training and investment of resources in their children’s schooling. Parents’ involvement at home can include activities such as discussion on school, helping with homework, and reading with children (Dauber, Epstein, 1993). Parental beliefs and perception have also been shown to be strong predictors of parental involvement. 

In addition, Karback (1989) opined that the more favourable children perceived their parents behaviour towards them, he more they are likely to perform successfully in school. The style of parenting adopted in different homes affects the children’s disposition. 

This can be to the development of a child or to the detriment of his or her academic career. Baumrind (1973) attempted to link family interaction to children’s cognitive competence. She postulated three family parenting styles, these are authoritative, authoritarian and permissive, which have consequences on the development and cognitive and social competence of the child. She added that these family types differ in value, behaviours, and standards of bringing up their children.

The authoritarian style of parenting has the following characteristics: parents attempt to shape, control and evaluate the behaviour and attitudes of their children in accordance with an absolute set of standards; patents emphasize obedience, respect for authority, work, trading and the preservation of order; verbal exchange between parents and child is discouraged. Baumrind’s study of preschool children found that such a mode of family interaction is associated with low levels of independence and social responsibility. 

Baumrind later described the authoritarian pattern, somewhat more formally, as being high in demand on the part of the parents and low in parental responsiveness to the child. She found that this has different consequences for girls and for boys. Girls, but not boys, who come from authoritarian families are more socially assertive. For both sexes, intrusive directiveness is associated with lower cognitive competence.

A second pattern is permissive parenting, in which parents are tolerant and accepting towards the child’s impulses, use as little punishment as possible, make few demands for mature behaviour, and allow considerable self-regulation by the child. She found the children of permissive parents as immature, lack impulse control and self-reliance, and exhibits a lack of social responsibility and independence.

Authoritative parenting is the third type described by Baumrind. This pattern contains he following elements: an expectation of mature behaviour from the child and clear setting of standards by the parents; firm enforcement of rules and standards, using commands and sanctions when necessary; encouragement of the child’s independence and individuality. She found the children of authoritative parents are mature, responsible and more independent that other children. 

They appeared to be socially responsible. In a related study, Steinberg Elmen and Mount (1989) found that the authoritative parenting facilitates adolescents academic success.

Aremu (2001) asserted that authoritarian style of child control leads to rejection, prohibitive and

compelling, and these could engender anxiety, fear and frustration in children thereby influencing their academic achievement.

However, a warm home climate, child-acceptance and loving parents are likely to produce children with much higher cognitive skills (Nwagwu, 1995). The submission of Steinberg, Elmen and Mount (1989) does not differ from this, that adolescents who describe their parents as treating them warmly, democratically and firmly are more likely than their peers to develop positive attitudes towards and beliefs about their achievement, and as a consequence, are more likely to do better in school. Corroborating this, 

Aremu (1999) found that students whose parents adopt the democratic style of parenting fare better in their performance than their counterparts, whose parents are autocratic. Goodmow (1988) and Miller (1986) have shown that positive parenting and child acceptance enhance children’s academic performance. This also makes them feel relaxed in odd circumstances, which include examination conditions (Heward 1992; Baumrind, 1988; Agbenihae, 1999). 

Similarly, Taylor (1995) found that students whose parents adopted autocratic parenting style scored lower grades in school. Also, students whose parents were permissive scored lower grades. Positive parenting does not only enhance the child’s cognitive development, it also aids in school related behaviours. 

Involving parents in the task of correcting school-related behaviour is a practice that has been used effectively in a variety of therapy approaches (Lavigueur, Paterson, Sheese and Peterson, 1973). Aremu (2001) noticed that recent studies place high premium on the importance of positive parenting. He added that a warm and positive child-parent interaction could serve as a boost to academic performance. 

From the foregoing, the importance of positive parenting, warm home climate and child acceptance in students’ academic achievement cannot be overemphasized. This study influence on child’s academic achievement would shed more light on the role played by the home in the achievement of learners.

The relevance of the home in the students’ achievement has been given little or no attention in

the previous studies. Since the school is a creation of the community and students found in schools are from different homes, the home activities go a long way in determining learners’ success.