Children's Minds

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Children’s Minds by Margaret Donaldson | Goodreads

Although influenced by his work (she even started her career at his Institut pour les Sciences de l'Education in Geneva) Margaret Donaldson is here rejecting or, at least nuancing, some of Jean Piaget's theories. Soothe and care for children when they are distressed – this helps their brains develop healthier ways to manage stress (Crowley, 2017). During pregnancy, the brain can be affected by many types of risks, such as by infectious diseases like Cytomegalovirus or Zika virus, by exposure to toxins, including from smokingor alcohol, or when pregnant mothers experience stress, trauma, or mental health conditions like depression. Regular health care during pregnancy can help prevent complications, including premature birth, which can affect the baby’s brain. Newborn screeningcan detect conditions that are potentially dangerous to the child’s brain, like phenylketonuria (PKU). If you're going through a difficult time or are struggling with how you're feeling, it can be really scary and upsetting. For older children, choose a superhero that’s popular in the setting, for example Super Daisy or Spider Man. Provide pictures of the superhero and a superhero toy. Suggest to the children that they could make a house for her/him so that he can live in the setting. If you do not have a superhero toy in your resources, improvise with dolls’ house figures. These interactions invite children to listen and to use spoken language to imagine, recall stories, predict and give each other instructions.

When you’re living with a mental health problem, or supporting someone who is, access to the right information is vital. Focus on the experience rather than have a defined outcome. Children’s responses or representation may be different to what you expected, you should welcome this. By using each of the six metaphors, separately and together, you can help parents, carers and communities understand how to build a healthy environment in which children’s brains can develop. All of these creative experiences build powerful connections within the brain, Creativity is associated with focus, independence, a willingness to explore and ingenuity. Like improving or rebuilding the architecture of a house – refurbishing rooms, strengthening foundations – the brain can also be improved and rebuilt following childhood trauma through an active process of maintenance and care from supportive, trusted adults.

(PDF) Children’s Minds, by Margaret Donaldson. Published by

Early experiences build the foundations of our brains. Like a house is built step-by-step – first laying the foundations, then creating the rooms and wiring the electrical system – our brains are built in a similar way. Just as we can lighten an overloaded lorry’s load by bringing in other lorries or moving some things by train, we can lighten parents’ and carers’ loads by providing them with appropriate support. This can help improve their capacity to care for their children (Kendall-Taylor and Stanley, 2018). For more information on all our metaphors and advice for helping healthy child brain development, take our face-to-face training Donaldson does hard lifting. She brings in numerous experiments that show how Piaget’s theories are mostly correct. He was too limiting on the ages of children for his stages of development. The results that are reported are surprising and show the reader clearly the developing mind of the child - fascinating stuff. Start talking to parents and carers about what support they need as soon as problems are identified.As good quality materials help build a strong house, positive experiences during childhood help build healthy brains. To support children’s creativity and imagination you will need to consider the range of what you offer. If you're supporting a friend or partner who is struggling with their feelings or mental health, this information is for you. Despite not reading it that long ago, I can't remember any specifics, but do remember an overall theme that suggests that children are capable of a lot more than Piaget (and others) may have initially given them credit for, and that tasks are made considerably easier for them when you place them in context and use appropriate language. This was the take home message for me really. Not really that much of a surprise I suppose, but something that I think could be easily overlooked (certainly in my case as I'm used to working with adults).

Kids Mind Skills Kids Mind Skills

The serve and return metaphor from Sharing the Brain Story looks at adult-child relationships by comparing interactions between a child and adult to rallies in a tennis match.The air traffic control system in a child’s brain is also known as ‘executive function’: the system that manages social and cognitive skills. Children depend on these emerging executive function skills as they learn to read and write, develop arithmetic skills and interact with peers (Shonkoff et al, 2011). These metaphors can be used to improve understanding of child development and give positive brain building experiences to children who have experienced trauma.

Edutopia Why Ages 2-7 Matter So Much for Brain Development | Edutopia

Some overloaded parents may be reluctant to ask for help for a number of reasons. For example, they might be worried their child will be removed from their care (National Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence and Multiple Disadvantage, 2019). Before I started my new job I wanted to try and get some idea of how children's minds work. This book was recommended to me - it's short and easy to read, and conveys a lot of information in language that is clear and easy to understand. Donaldson looks at the Piagetian theory of child development in terms of mental abilities and comprehension of concepts such as conservation, and uses examples from research to show what children are actually able to do in practice. Just as an air traffic controller can learn to manage arriving and departing flights, children can learn to manage their mental processes through practice and support. Building executive function skills In our nurseries we see the expressive arts and design part of the curriculum as an opportunity for the children to experience everything in a way that is bigger and messier. We provide a wide range of materials with lots of everything.”The remaining five metaphors - serve and return, air traffic control, toxic stress, overloaded, tipping the scales - will help you give parents and carers the tools to build strong brain architecture in children and young people. From your observations of the children engaged in self-initiated play you will have knowledge and understanding of their favourite television characters, soft toys or superheroes. Very young children may be interested in putting their toys in pieces of fabric. Playing peek-a-boo and hide and seek are good ways to extend their play, in ways that are sensitive to their needs. Over time, if the positive experiences outweigh negative ones, the scales tip towards more positive long-term outcomes for the child. We want to help all children’s scales tip towards the positive. To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface.