Growing Flexible Thinkers
Cognitive adaptability is the antidote to rigid thinking. This is a skill that is required of us across contexts, and one that becomes increasingly important as our children grow and move into progressively complex social and academic environments.
Mental flexibility is a skill that can be explicitly taught and fostered. Here are some tips:
When we notice rigid thinking occurring with our children, we can first aim to validate and empathize before attempting to teach about the myriad shades of gray that exist in the world and among the perspectives and experiences of others. While our first impulse may be to use logic or reasoning to explain away a child’s black and white thinking, it’s likely only after we’ve connected with curiosity and understanding that they will be open to receiving an alternative viewpoint.
We can narrate perspective-taking within our own daily experience. For example: “I noticed that gentleman was really grumpy with me in line—maybe he’s having an extra hard day.”
Similarly, we can take naturally occurring opportunities to model flexibility: “Look at all of this traffic! We’re going to drive home a different way even though it wasn’t what we had planned” or, “There were no fresh berries at the store…it won’t be quite the same, but we can use frozen berries in our recipe today.” Being intentional about our responses to unexpected events allows us to demonstrate what we’d like our children to see, hear, and learn.
And, we won’t always have a scripted response to the curve balls that get thrown our way. That’s ok, too. Our children need to see that we are not perfect, and we can acknowledge that we are still constantly growing and striving; so not only can we model helpful responses, but we can also sportscast our thought process in front of our children as a way to have them know that we are doing the best we can in any given moment–even when we miss the mark. Note that this applies for the smaller things; during times of true distress, they need to know that we have it under control and that there is a calm and clear captain of the ship.