Helping 9-12 year olds develop critical thinking skills

Psychotherapist Jonathan Nadlman, MFT, shares advice for parents how to help your 9-12 year old child develop strong critical thinking skills
How To Help 9-12 Year Olds Develop Critical Thinking Skills
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Helping 9-12 year olds develop critical thinking skills

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One of the important things that happens to our kids around nine or 10 is I think it is Piaget that called it exquisitely sequential developmental milestone where something called critical thinking and deductive reasoning shows up. And their brain is afforded a whole new dimension in terms of problem solving and in terms of reasoning. Our job as parents is to witness it so that by the time they make it to 12 or 13, we are ready to start letting go of problem solving for them and that we are to meet them where they are capable of creating their own decisions. Now, that doesn´t mean that they are going to make the best decisions but our job at that stage is to watch the process and question the process. How did you make that decision? Even if you that decision seems foolish, engage their process because that is the tool they are learning how to use and come 13, 14 and 15, we want them using it well. So we have to give them the rope, the space to be able to make those decisions, to be able to test our their theories and their principles and their ways of landing on a particular decision.

Psychotherapist Jonathan Nadlman, MFT, shares advice for parents how to help your 9-12 year old child develop strong critical thinking skills

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Jonathan Nadlman, MFT

Psychotherapist

Jonathan Nadlman, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice since 1995, and has been counseling adults, couples, young people and their families for twenty-four years.  For the past seven years, he has been teaching Human Development and puberty as a rite-of-passage at many independent schools. Jonathan was the supervising therapist at Pacific Hills Middle and High School for six years. In addition, he is a facilitator of rites-of-passage workshops for adolescents teens and adults.  When he is not working, he can be found trying to change wood into art, learning his djembe, or in the garden with his wife and seven year old daughter. Or on occasion, if there's a swell, riding the California surf.

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