I said in the first chapter of this column that children will have 2 openings in the process of growing up, and systematically expound these two openings. Recently, after a period of thinking and summarizing, I have a new understanding of the child's opening, and found that the child actually has a third opening, but this opening is more special, so I ignored it before.
In order to better improve this column, I will introduce you to the third opening of the child in this chapter, and after reading it, you may understand why I ignored it before.
Before we officially introduce the third opening, let's revisit the child's first two openings.
First time
The first time you learn about the results of your child's brain development. The child's original problem that did not understand suddenly understood, do not need you to teach it twice, just a rough click of the child to understand, this is the first opening, the first opening in the boy may be more obvious.
Many parents will feel this way when tutoring their children's homework, that is, in your opinion, it is a particularly simple problem, such as 2 + 3 equals several, the child knows that it is equal to 5, but if it is changed to 5-3 equals several, the child will not know. At this time, you bother to tell the child many times, the child seems to understand, but you change the problem type of the child will not understand, some parents at this time began to go crazy, uncontrollable may be yelling at the child, doubting whether their child's brain is a problem, is not mentally retarded.
But after a while, it may be a month, it may be half a year, or even a year later, the child seems to have suddenly opened up, and when you help him with his homework, the child will easily understand, and it will not be necessary for you to spend so much effort to explain to the child.
Many of the opening tips mentioned in the opening column are this kind of opening, which is also the first opening in the child's growth process, but in fact, if you understand Piaget's cognitive development theory, you understand that this kind of opening is of little significance to parents, because this kind of opening is impossible for parents to cultivate, it is only the result of the development of children's cognitive ability.
According to Piaget's theory of cognitive development, people's cognitive development has successively gone through the perceptual motion stage, the pre-operation stage, the specific operation stage and the formal operation stage, each stage is very different, and even can be said to be an earth-shaking change, and this first opening is actually the performance of the child entering the specific operation stage.
Most children are 6 or 7 years old to start primary school, before the age of 6 or 7, the child is in the pre-computing stage, at this time the child's thinking is not reversible, there is no concept of conservation, logical thinking ability is very poor. When the child is 6 or 7 years old, the child enters the specific operation stage, the child begins to have the concept of conservation, and only then does he have the reversibility of thinking and understand reverse reasoning. This is why children all over the world basically go to primary school at the age of 6 or 7.
Don't look at such a simple problem as 2 + 3 = 5, it is very difficult for children, it requires children to think abstractly, abstract the real problem into mathematical symbols, and then understand that 2 + 3 is actually equal to 5. 2 + 3 = 5, which is actually a conservation concept. 5-3 is actually to reverse reasoning about this process, so it is difficult for children without reversible thinking to reason 5-3=2 through 2+3=5.
Now understand why the child seems to have suddenly opened up and understands everything, right? It is because their brains have not developed to this stage before, and their physiological hardware is immature, so how you tell them, they are also difficult to understand. And once their brains have matured and they have the corresponding thinking ability, they can easily understand these problems. Of course, most parents do not understand this, and in their eyes, they feel that their children are enlightened. This manifestation is more obvious in boys, because boys develop a little later, so their opening is more obvious.
And people's brain development is regular, it is difficult for you to let the child rapidly develop from the previous operation stage to the specific operation stage, so this kind of opening is of little significance to parents, mainly relying on the child's own development, parents at most is to maintain patience, and then wait for the flowers to bloom.
Second enlightenment
In the process of educating children, parents will find that children are often more bored with school, and do not control their children and do not learn at all. But some children are different, they are tired of learning at first, but one day they seem to know the importance of learning, without parental supervision and control, they also began to actively learn, at this time parents will feel that the child is enlightened, know the importance of learning.
This is the second lesson for the child, that is, the child knows the importance of learning and begins to learn on his own initiative. The second opening is also the focus of this column, and our column is mainly about how to help children open the second trick.
There are a lot of opening columns that also share how to let children open the trick for the second time, but in my opinion, the method of opening the trick they share is seriously wrong, because according to their method, the child's second opening can be unfolded at any time, and some even say that children can open the trick in primary school and kindergarten, which is completely wrong, because the second opening is regular, and it is most likely to occur in the child's adolescence.
The second lesson is that the child understands the meaning of learning, and when does it understand the meaning of learning? The most likely time to happen is puberty, because when a child enters puberty they stop seeing themselves as children and begin to see themselves as an adult. When they first enter adult society, they need to position themselves and what kind of adults they want to become. This position will allow children to find their own direction in life, and they will work in this direction.
Simply put, adolescent children will have a strong motivation to seek their own life goals, want to plan what they will do in the future, and if their goals need to be achieved through learning, then of course they will work hard to learn, so at this time the child seems to be enlightened, and they begin to learn actively. For example, when they want to be admitted to Tsinghua Peking University, they will naturally study very hard.
Although there are innate reasons for the second time, it is the manifestation of their own regular development, but external factors are also very important, through appropriate operation, can help children locate themselves as soon as possible. Unfortunately, many parents do not understand this law, nor do they understand the method, but they delay the child's second opening, so that the child always lives a muddy life. This column focuses on the second opening, teaching parents how to use scientific methods to help their children open the second trick.
Third enlightenment
Before, I thought that the child would open the trick twice, but after recent thinking and research, I found that the child still has a possible trick, which looks similar to the first trick on the surface, so I ignored it before.
What about the child's third enlightenment? That is, some children in some subjects, the original learning is confused, can not say that they do not understand at all, but at least learn more difficult. But suddenly one day, they seem to have mastered this subject, mastered the essence of this subject, and learned it very easily.
From here, this kind of opening seems to be somewhat similar to the first time, and it seems that the learning suddenly mastered the trick and became particularly relaxed, but in fact it is completely different from the first opening.
First of all, the timing of the opening is significantly different
The first enlightenment often occurs in primary school, and this third enlightenment occurs more often in junior high school or high school.
Secondly, the essence of enlightenment is also different
The first trick is the result of brain development, the brain's ability to think and process comes up, so he can process more information, so the child behaves as if he is enlightened.
And this third opening is the result of the accumulation of knowledge and experience, when the child after continuous learning, finally grasp the logic of this subject, master the thinking method of this subject, in the process of dealing with the problem feel at ease. An idiom is used to express it as "庖丁解牛".
For novice butchers, they did not master the structure of cattle, so slaughtering cattle is time-consuming and laborious, and bones and meat are not well separated. But when they became old butchers, they felt particularly convenient when they slaughtered cattle again, and the work was fast and clean.
The same is true for children's learning, when children have been continuously studied and trained, after mastering the laws of a discipline, they will solve problems with ease. Because this process is often a process of quantitative change to qualitative change, once the qualitative change is reached, the child looks as if he has suddenly opened up, and learning begins to advance by leaps and bounds.
Preview of the next chapter
To achieve the third enlightenment, continuous training is a necessary condition, but it is not that you can only immerse yourself in hard work, in fact, there are still some ways to shorten the process and help children achieve enlightenment in various subjects as soon as possible.
So how to help children to learn the trick in various subjects as soon as possible? In the next chapter, I will share some specific ways to do it with parents.