Chief Psychologist at UVM Medical Center reveals how parents can help kids develop common sense
Common sense, a trait deeply lacking in many across society, is a trainable aspect of one’s personality.
It turns out that those lacking common sense simply weren’t taught how to harness it in their younger years. In a talk with Newsweek, the lead psychologist at University of Vermont Medical Center, Dr Marlene Maron, laid out her views on how children can truly gain that seemingly innate sense of practical judgement and decision-making that a large majority of people lack in today’s world.
Along with early-childhood specialist Ann McKitrick, together they note that infants may show a preference for helpful behaviour, yet it’s only later, often in adolescence, that children begin to reason more abstractly and develop fully fledged common sense.
One of the key recommendations: allow your child to experience things for themselves. Rather than stepping in at every juncture, Maron suggests parents step back when appropriate and let children face minor failures or mistakes under safe conditions. “I would encourage parents to allow their children to experiment and learn from experience rather than do for them,” she said.
“This would mean parents cultivating capacity to tolerate distress, mistakes, and failure in their kids. Not easy. It would also entail modeling figuring things out and talking about situations as they arise that call for this kind of judgment.”
It’s through these “experiments” in life that kids begin to learn the causes and consequences of actions on their own.
McKitrick backs this up by emphasising the importance of unstructured play, peer interaction and choice-making for children. McKitrick told Newsweek: “Children who have had an opportunity to make choices for themselves, lots of open-ended play, and plenty of social interactions with children as well as adults outside the family will have the best advantage for cognitive development.
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“Parents who offer a variety of life experiences as well as ample time for unstructured play, limited screen time, lots of exploration outdoors and conversation that supports thinking will help their children develop critical thinking skills.
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