Do You Want Your Children To Be Smarter? The Snowball Effect
If you want your children to be smarter, you have to support them and provide them with the necessary tools to achieve it. To do this, you must take into account the snowball effect, do you know it? If you keep reading this article you will know a little about him.
The metaphor of the snowball is used in developmental psychology to explain that if every opportunity to improve the child’s abilities is taken advantage of, greater performance can be obtained, achieving optimal development.
All opportunities for children’s learning and growth should be taken advantage of; the first steps on the path of education are the most important.
To understand a little more about it, let’s consider the snowball itself. At first it is just a snowflake, but as it rolls down a hill, it grows larger. Maybe before you could hold it in the palm of your hand, but then when it grows so much it becomes bigger than you.
What we have to rescue from this is that each step that that little snowball takes is equivalent to each step of your child, and each step of his is a new knowledge, a new experience.
When your child is young, you teach him little by little and he gains knowledge and understanding of situations. Incorporate knowledge at home, then in the garden or at school. Also in any other environment that he shares, and through any other person who interacts with him.
Every knowledge you acquire will make you grow, just as each step the snowball took made you gather more snow and grow bigger.
So how do I make it smarter?
Intelligence is not just a matter of incorporating knowledge. Knowledge makes us wiser, but intelligence develops.
According to the psychologist Feuerstein, the human organism has the ability to change its functioning structure. This is because intelligence is an adaptive response. These changes can improve development by permanently achieving superior cognitive processes. In his words: “The human being is endowed with a plastic, flexible mind, open to change. He is endowed with a potential and a natural propensity for learning. “
Feuerstein introduces the concept of mediated learning experience (MLE), which occurs when a person mediates between the world and a human being. The mediator can be one of the parents, or the teachers.
For mediation to be effective, certain parameters must be met:
- Intentionality: the child must be aware of the changes that depend on their emotions and cognitive operations. You must realize when your motivation increases or decreases.
- Mediation of meaning: giving meaning to what you are learning greatly improves the learning experience.
- Principle of transcendence: the knowledge acquired must be applied. Transferring knowledge to other areas or experiences is very enriching.
What does this mean?
It means that we can guide our children on the path of learning. Parents and teachers alike have this difficult and important task. We must mediate between the world and children, give them our knowledge, broaden their vision, show them the way.
How can we enrich your experience?
As we have already seen, each learning of our children can generate a change in their cognitive structure. As human beings, they are flexible, open to change, and prone to learning. And we have the ability to guide them. If we act as a mediator in all situations that arise, we can make the most of them.
A situation, whether positive or negative, can result in learning.
Some advices:
- Maintain good communication with your child
- Investigate if there are any problems
- Help you identify problems
- Search with him the cause of the problem
- Let him see his responsibility in the situation generated
- Look for solutions to problems that arise
- Transform negative situations into learning
- Help them learn from their mistakes
And above all, it always allows it to develop and grow, to be flexible and adapt to the environment. Remember that in the future this will be a very important skill!
