How I Help My Son Strengthen His Critical Thinking Muscle
The other day, I finished a fantastic new book by Julie Bogart Raising Critical Thinkers: A Parent's Guide to Growing Wise Kids in the Digital Age, and it’s had me thinking a lot about how I’ve been trying to teach my son critical thinking skills for years now. Fortunately, it seems to be working, and he makes far more good decisions than bad ones. As I’ve mentioned before, without being prompted, he’s deleted TikTok, he’s in National Junior Honor Society, has great relationships with friends online and offline, and is pretty happy on a regular basis. For fellow parents out there, I wanted to take a break from social commentary and just discuss what I do with my son to help improve his critical thinking.
Aside from Julie Bogart’s book, a Twitter reply really made me want to write this. When I wrote my review of Julie’s book, I tweeted this out:
And this is extremely true. My girlfriend and I love watching documentaries about cults, MLMs, and conspiracy theorists. Throughout each series or film, we constantly pause and talk to each other. At the risk of sounding like a victim blamer, there are countless red flags along the way that could have prevented getting sucked in. And don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of trauma and attachment styles can make a person more prone to getting lured in, but this is why I think everyone should try therapy sooner rather than later.
In response to my tweet, someone replied with this:
Mr. Tasty3141 is 100% correct. Parenting isn’t easy, and you can’t just “make” your kid start thinking critically. When I was working in addiction treatment and teaching clients the benefits of mindfulness, I’d often explain how we teach focused attention all wrong to our children. I’d ask, “How many times when you were younger did you have a teacher, parent, or adult say, ‘Focus!’?” I’d ask them what that even means, and how do you do that? It’s a silly demand when you think about it because it’s not something we just turn on or off. It’s something we need to practice. Just like critical thinking, it’s a muscle that needs to be strengthened through repetition.
But, before we get started, I want to take a moment to give a ton of credit to my son’s mom. We split up when I was still in my addiction, but fortunately, we’ve had an amazing relationship where we co-parent since I got sober back in 2012. One thing I love that she’s said to my son, Dillon, since he was really young is, “Make good decisions.” Any time she’d drop him off to play with friends or go to a birthday party, she’d simply say, “Make good decisions.” It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s huge. At the forefront of my son’s mind has always been to think before taking action, and I credit a lot of that to her.
Since I’m the mental health guy, we’ve had a good system where she handles a lot of the school stuff with him, and I handle the mental health side. We obviously do both, but doing this has allowed us to handle both intellectual and emotional intelligence equally.
So, what are my personal methods for helping my son strengthen his critical thinking muscle? Well, it started with mindfulness.
Mindfulness
I didn’t discover mindfulness meditation until I was about three years sober, and it changed my life. When I started reading books about it, I was in California visiting family, and I found out one of my cousins actually worked for an organization that brings mindfulness into schools by training teachers so they can teach kids. She gave me some of their courses for free, and that’s when I decided to teach my son.
He was only about five or six years old at the time, but that’s the perfect time to start. Some of my original YouTube videos were showing how I teach my son simple practices. He learned breathing exercises, mindful listening, and more. We’d practice mindfulness in the car while listening to music and focusing on individual instruments. When we’d go for walks, we’d say out loud what we were noticing with our different senses.
My son used to be extremely emotional at that age. He had so much empathy that I’d get worried. I remember one time he started crying just thinking about a kid at his school who didn’t get ice cream because they were late. If we’d watch movies where a kid was sad, he’d get sad. He’d also get really nervous about school or sports even though he did great.
Mindfulness helped him a ton with emotional regulation, and it’s stuck with him ever since even though we don’t practice as much. He’s 13 now, and I can ask him, “What’s mindfulness?”, and he’ll reply with, “Noticing what’s happening right now.” It taught him to accept emotions rather than running from them or instantly acting upon them.
As far as critical thinking goes, making decisions based on emotions can lead to bad consequences. But more importantly, mindfulness helps with impulse control. He takes his time and knows he doesn’t have to decide anything in the moment. Far too many bad decisions are made because we don’t just take five minutes to pause and reflect.
Rules of Thumb
I was debating on writing about this, but then I realized it’s probably the most important thing you can teach a child. Have some rules of thumb. Have rules that are drilled into their head that they remember when it’s time to make decisions.
The first, crucial rule of thumb I taught him was if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Like other kids, he loves Fortnite, and not to brag, but him and I were playing it before Battle Royale. He’s an OG Fortnite player. Well, on YouTube there are so many scams trying to trick kids that it’d make your head explode. There are a ton of videos with colorful thumbnails and all-caps titles like “GET 1,000,000 V-BUCKS FOR FREE!”, and scammers do this for just about every game. My son used to come across them and run to me asking for my email and all these other things.
The “too good to be true” thing has some other strategies involved as well.
We often suck at making decisions by ourselves, so I taught him to read the comments. I’d have him look at the YouTube comments and see if people said it worked or if it was a scam. After reading like three comments, he’d realize it was bogus.
Now that he’s older, he has money. His birthday is on New Year’s Eve, so it’s right after Christmas. This means that he has a ton of money around that time and could easily blow it by getting scammed. But fortunately, since he has this rule of thumb and knows how to research, to this day, he hasn’t been scammed.
He also knows he can ask me anything and talk to me about anything. Since he was younger, if he was at his mom’s, he’d call me if something seemed suspicious. He’d call and say, “Dad, I saw this video but it seems too good to be true. The comments are mixed. Could you look at it and tell me what you think?”
It’s helped him a ton, and I can’t tell you how many stories he’s told me about his friends getting scammed or falling for videos that say, “MAKE $1,000 REAL DOLLARS IN ROBLOX!” (there are a lot of clickbait videos just to get views and money as well). Now, my son teaches his friends how to avoid getting scammed.
And if you don’t think this is important, watch any documentary about cults, MLMs, or scams.
My girlfriend and I just watched the new Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler. A great rule of thumb is, “Don’t jump into a serious relationship too quickly.” I feel bad for the women, but it’s never a good idea to go on a private jet with someone out of the country on a first date and move in with them within a month. Rules of thumb will save your ass.
Ask Questions
I’m always asking my son questions to strengthen his critical thinking muscle. We watch a lot of movies and TV series together. It’s normal in our home to pause and talk during episodes or after episodes. He and I also overcame our fear of horror movies because of my lovely girlfriend. When we’re watching, I’ll be like, “Dillon, what would you do in this zombie apocalypse?” or, “Would you go in that dark basement by yourself?”
I ask follow-up questions as well. I want him to understand how and why he came to that conclusion. Most of the time I just listen and let him talk through it without giving my opinion unless he asks. If I think he’s way off or said something that would be a terrible decision, I’ll present some other options like, “What about doing this? Would that work? Why or why not?”
This is something so simple we can all do with our kids. Even if it’s not about movies or TV, when they tell you about school or friends, ask questions. If they come to you with problems, ask what they think they should do.
Teach Them to Google
One of my favorite, cliché sayings is, “Catch a fish for a man, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he can eat for a lifetime.” I’m not kidding when I tell you that since my son was probably about six or seven, I’ve made him Google or YouTube stuff. Just about every answer you need on how to do something is out there. He’s learned how to fix his XBox and deal with other issues. Now, he loves watching tutorials on doing stuff.
I do this so he can be more independent. As I mentioned, he knows he can ask me anything, but he doesn’t do it for stuff he can figure out on his own. If he asks me a question that I think he’s smart enough to figure out, I’ll nudge him in the direction of finding answers. Today, he teaches me stuff, and it’s awesome.
We’ve recently really found the joy of custom Lego builds, and he’ll text me videos and techniques, and I love it. I teach him, he teaches me, and it’s great.
Play Video Games
I just had to throw this in here. If you think video games are a waste of time, you’re 1000% wrong, and it’s not even a debate. My son’s favorite game of all time is Zelda: Breath of the Wild. That game came out years ago, and I’d watch him play for hours. There are so many puzzles and problems to solve that it’s mind-blowing. There are over 120 shrine locations in that game, and each one has a puzzle to solve. I’d watch him playing and have no clue how he’d solve it, and you’d just see the gears turning in his head as he tested things and found solutions.
Yes, video games can be a mindless waste of time, but they can also improve problem-solving skills.
And if you want to argue with me, you have to read two books first:
Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal
Getting Gamers: The Psychology of Video Games and Their Impact on the People who Play Them by Jamie Madigan
Take Perspectives
Although I don’t read fiction, studies show that reading fiction helps with perspective-taking. Something else we do with movies and TV is try and get inside a character’s head. “Why do you think Captain America did that?” or “What would happen if Spider-Man made this other choice instead?”
It’s not just with movies either; we do it with real life. I remember when he was younger and first encountered some bullies, I’d ask him why he thinks the bully did that. What we should all learn at a young age is the attribution bias:
In psychology, an attribution bias or attributional bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors. People constantly make attributions—judgements and assumptions about why people behave in certain ways.
Basically, we justify our actions while thinking others are bad, stupid, mean, etc.
I’d give him alternate explanations for bullies. I said, “Dillon, you have a great life. You have parents and a family who loves you. You have toys and video games. You have a lot of friends, and things are great. What if that kid has parents who don’t play with him or buy him things? What if he’s actually sad and angry about his life?”
I’d tell him that it doesn’t justify the bully’s actions, but it helped him have a different view of the situation. Since then, he’s empathized with bullies a bit more, and he’s always the first one to befriend a kid who gets bullied as well.
Enjoy Failure
If you know me at all, you know I hate the culture wars and coddling of our kids. I have zero control over the world, so I focus on helping my son become resilient. I do this by teaching him to enjoy failure. I let him screw up in low-stakes situations so he can learn from it. It helps him cut himself some slack and know that it’s okay to be wrong.
When he was younger, he’d used to get really upset, but now it’s different. Something that I learned when I got sober is what I teach my son; There are no losses. There are just learning experiences.
In a world with extreme polarization and full-grown college-educated adults falling for conspiracy theories and misinformation, I sometimes think that we’re all just a lost cause. But something we can do is teach the younger generation as early as possible to become critical thinkers.
Hopefully you gained something from this piece, and if you end up reading those books and want to debate the video game thing, my email is TheRewiredSoul@gmail.com .
I’m currently writing a book about how we’re manipulated by the news, social media, technology, advertisers, and each other. It dives into the psychological history of manipulation, our biases, tribalism, and more.
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