Supporting Your Child with their Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinking skills are going to be key for your child’s development, with a lot of these skills built in schools (like this boys school in London) and in activity clubs. We as parents can also help our children develop their ability to think for themselves and make key decisions. Here are some top tips you could try.

Give your child a lot of different problems to solve

Having your child manage their problem solving skills will help them figure out how to think for themselves and give themselves time to come up with a solution. These can be really easy, quick problems, but they could also be more complex issues that can take a lot longer to sort out.

Ask your child open-ended questions

Being open with the questions you ask your child will help them understand different concepts and use them to strengthen their skills. Give your child that opportunity to talk to you freely, and ask your child often what they think of certain things. There may be some things your child is really keen to explore, and helps them pick up lots of different skills they can use to think more critically.

Test your child’s skills in a number of different ways

Provide a space for your child to pick up lots of different skills. Activities like arts and crafts, sports, team-based events and heaps of other examples will give your child a lot of chances to pick up on their critical thinking. These different “tests” will allow your child to try out lots of different ways of handling their decision making skills, an essential development of their own thinking abilities.

Let your child fail

Making mistakes is a big part of all development, but it means that your child has to understand what it means to fail. It can be tricky for them to comprehend, but it’s also a good way of teaching your child that we’re not all perfect.

Try not to intervene too much

Your child will only be able to learn if they can figure things out for themselves. Having too much parental intervention can impact your child’s skills; they’re going to be relying on you to handle their issues instead of giving them the platform to try for themselves.

Your child should be able to handle things without too much guidance, so let them have a go, and only jump in if you see your child clearly struggling.

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