Better parenting through neuroscience

Mel Levine, a neuroscientist at the University of North Carolina, studies how children learn. In a speech this past summer, he suggests that education needs to be much more personalized and more specialized. In a speech this past summer, he talked about how kids learn, and what that suggests about how we ought to raise our kids. Some of his thoughts:

• Parents and teachers should teach kids how to learn by talking to them about what's happening in their brain as they learn, and helping them to hone key learning skills--for instance, practicing previewing skills.
  
• Parents and teachers should look for their kids strengths, and work on building those strengths rather than focusing exclusively on kids' deficits.
• "Kids who have to struggle a bit in their time in school are really getting an education that's very valuable."
• Too much success too early in life can leave kids vulnerable later on, because those kids don't learn how to cope with feelings of inadequacy.
• "Don't tell your kids to have fun in school. Say, 'I hope you have an extremely interesting day....'" Why? "Fun" has connotations of instant gratification through a relatively superficial experience. Interest develops more gradually and probes more deeply.
• The strong emphasis on visual motor ecstacy -- video games, sports, and so on -- is causing kids to have trouble expressing themselves through language, because those activities don't require kids to practice their language skills.
• Between the ages of 11 and 20, kids brains change dramatically as the most-used neural pathways get reinforced with a protective coating, and the least-used neural pathways get pruned away.
  
• "Kids ought to start working on their autobiographies starting at age six" -- that is, kids should be taught to reflect on who they are, what their affinities are, and where they're going.

You can listen to the whole talk at Minnesota Public Radio.