Ep 8. Raising Successful Kids Skill #3 - Flexible Thinking

Welcome back, mamas. I am thrilled that we are still in the middle of our five part series of executive functioning skills. We can practice with our kids every day that will set them up for success in the real world.  Today, we are talking about flexible thinking, skill number three out of the top five that I handpicked as the most important and the easiest to work into our everyday interactions with our kids.

Why is flexible thinking so important?

Well, think about it.  We can tend to be very rigid, have a plan, and when the plan goes south, we often do too. Especially as really focused, engaged moms.  We tend to be high achievers and set big goals, look at the steps that get us there, and then get really off the rails when it doesn't go that way, because we're smart and we know these things, but we can't predict the world.

We have to be able to flex and have flexible thinking. And so, it's a skill that we need our kids to practice from a very young age. Because remember, they're beautiful little brains between the age of birth and five develop and grow to 85 percent of its full size.  Let me say that again.  85 percent of foundational brain growth happens by five years old.

And how has that happened? It's not just size.  It's the neural pathways. It's the connections, and the paths, and the patterns, and the ‘when this happens, then this happens’, and the ‘if this doesn't happen, then I need to engage my problem solving skills’.

In order to create a similar outcome, flexible thinking is the foundation for problem solving.

In teaching, it's called critical thinking. Can your child deal with what's happening right in front of them and come up with a plan to get started on their own? So let's practice it with them. If we create an environment for them where everything is so routine and everything is so predictable that the outcome never changes, they have no opportunity to practice flexible thinking.

They have no opportunity to practice problem solving. I'm not saying we create big, chaotic, crisis filled problems. They will show themselves in your everyday interactions.  And it can be as simple as a three step plan and telling them you don't know what order we're going to do it in. Alright, so here's a great example.

You have a toddler and your toddlers love routine and structure and order, right? They like to feel that safe space where they know inside that box everything's going to be okay. And that's awesome. We need to create that for them. But you can say to them, well, let me back up, tell you a story. I always tell you a story, right?

Got a little excited, a little ahead of myself. My girls are 17 and 19. So I've grown girls and it is a promised land I will share with you another day. But when my 19 year old was little, a little toddler, one, one and a half, two, it was incredibly apparent how rigid her thinking was.  And she would fall completely apart if things didn't go according to the order of the plan that she had decided in her head.

I couldn't read her mind. It was going to be. Can you relate? You have kids like that? It's hard, right? You feel like you're always playing defense. What's going on in there? Am I going to mess it up? And then they fall apart. So, here's what I did. I would start to create plans and tell her what they were and then change up the order.

Okay, my kid, today we are getting in the car and we're going to the bank, the post office, and the grocery store. We're doing three things when we go out in the world. See how I laid it out for her? She feels safe right now.  There is a plan. It is three things. I know what those three things are.  And then once we got in the car, I said, “Hmm, I don't know what order we'll do them in. We will go to the bank. We will go to the post office. And we will go to the grocery store. But maybe we'll do something first, and then change our minds. And do the other one a different time”.  Now, she's kind of squirmy, but I'm in this with her. I'm giving her the information and we would go about doing what we needed to do and every step of the way. It was like living in an episode of Dora, okay? I don't know if Dora the Explorer is still, uh, as influential as she was 19 years ago, but I had to revisit that plan. “Oh, we went to the bank. We did it. I had thought I'd go to the post office next, but actually let's go to the grocery store instead”.

Teaching flexible thinking inside a safe container where I was holding her up and she knew it would be okay. That is a toddler example. I can definitely address your infants and your preschoolers examples. If you need that, please reach out. I would also really like to share with you that as an adult, my amazing kiddo is a very flexible thinker.

She still likes to have a plan. That is who she is. Remember, we talked about this in early episodes, that nature, who you are, that grounds her. We talked about that with me too. Remember that episode where I talked about going up to Maine and being told I couldn't plan the trip? We were gonna go fly by the seat of our pants?

Who we are matters.

She still likes to have a good plan, but when it doesn't go to plan, my 19 year old can stop, not panic, think critically, see it for what it is, and make a new one.  And that is the goal.  Flexible thinking, look for opportunities. Now maybe you have a flexible thinker, maybe one of your kiddo's natural gifts and attributes in the world is that they flow wherever the wind blows, that kid glows. Wherever the wind blows, that kid goes. Awesome, right now, maybe that's not a skill that needs you to be supporting it with opportunities to learn. But I'll tell you, be prepared, it can change as they go through different ages and stages and develop and learning leaps.

You might find all of a sudden they do need you to support that. So constantly observing where they are, what's coming easily to them, and what they need support with is your job. And then if you need support supporting them, that's my job.  As always, I want to invite you to join us in the virtual village, a safe online community just for you. Conscious moms like you. Everybody in there is doing the same work. We support each other and hold each other up.

Next week we will be talking about your child's sense of self, how to support a healthy sense of identity! See you then!