For Parents: Eight Years of a Child's Intellectual Development, Ages 4-12

Why Did I Begin Recording the Alana Videos Eight Years Ago?

I began having convos with Ryan Nohea Garcia about the education of his daughter Alana when she was three, posting them at YouTube. When she was four I began having Socratic conversations with her and posting them.

https://www.youtube.com/c/socraticmichaelstrong

She is now eleven (almost twelve), has written three books, is taking Harvard CS50, is working towards a national jiu-jutsu championship, and is confident, kind, and amazing.

Clearly the fact that he began discussing her education when she was three is evidence of father who is serious about his daughter’s education. He also became committed to a “no strollers” policy after visiting a Polynesian island where the children were strong and independent from a young age - because they were not coddled nor even carried much (they are heavy!). Without strollers, they become physically stronger.

My focus as an educator is on Socratic dialogue-asking people what they think and why. At The Socratic Experience our students engage in 2–4 hours of intellectual dialogue per day (and zero lectures - the rest of the time is problem solving and projects). But my YouTube channel is for parents.

Many people are familiar with the 30 million word gap, how children from educated families are exposed to millions more words. There is also evidence that interactions with the child, having a conversation rather than just a situation in which a child is passively hearing words, is key to intellectual development. I add to the idea that intellectual interactions, rather than merely friendly interactions, as a brain development strategy from a young age.

My earliest memories are of my father explaining electronics to me. I remember barely understanding but trying as hard as I could to do so. I compare it to my experience as an adult trying to follow Spanish convos - my Spanish is such that I can only understand if I focus and try very hard. My brain is exhausted from this after an hour or so.

But I believe this early, frequent exposure to trying hard to understand was key to my intellectual development. Grow those synapses! My work with Alana, recording our convos and posting them on YouTube, was done in the expectation that it would be valuable to show others the extraordinary intellectual development that could arise from regular Socratic dialogues from a young age.

For decades I had seen students at my schools demonstrate extraordinary intellectual growth. I had some real data, huge gains on Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA) and SAT gains. But my schools were too small for the data to have credibility- 20 students with maybe only 10 students providing consistent data across years.

There have been many small programs that have demonstrated significant gains in intellectual capacity (e.g. here, here, and here). But none of those have scaled, thus leading most people to conclude that it is impossible to improve intellectual capacity. I see it more as an issue of quality control- scaling these programs is hard, and impossible in public schools (see “The Missing Institution” for one dimension of the problem).

Note that I am not making claims about IQ. The crowd that is focused on genetic differences in IQ tends to be aggressive about insisting that any gains in cognitive ability through learning only impact the least g-loaded components of tests. Thus although both WGCTA and SAT correlate with IQ, given my tiny samples along with the issue that the gains I’ve seen may not have been on g-loaded test items leads, I don’t want to fight that fight.

But if parents want to help their child develop cognitively and find my case compelling, then by all means, let’s help parents develop their child’s minds. For me the 30 Million word gap, my experience as a child, my experience trying to understand Spanish, my decades of experience seeing children develop intellectually at my schools are enough.

If you find such intellectual development plausible, and want to help your child develop, watch an early video of Alana at age four and then a more recent one of her at eleven. Compelling? Then let’s begin.

First, the most important aspect of such intellectual development is trust and warmth.

It should be obvious to come from a place of trust and warmth, but many people who are eager for their children to be smart are doing so because of their own ego needs.

Rule #1: It is not about you.

I always engage children from a place of love, curiosity, and empathy. Why do they think what they think? I’m so curious to know!

I then pose questions that are within their experience, so I can see how they think through a problem. For a 4 year old:

Q: What is the difference between a bird and a plane.

A: The bird has feathers!

Q: So if we put feathers on a plane does it become a bird?

A: No, silly. Bird’s wings move!

Q: So if we make the plane’s wings move does it become a bird?

A: No!

Q: Why not?

A: Birds are alive! Planes are not alive!

Q: How can we tell the difference between something that is alive and something that is not?

A: (long pause as she thinks), We just know! (Getting a 4 year old to pause and think us a huge victory, by the way).

Q: What if I can’t tell the difference between. How would you help me figure it out? A: Well, birds make noises. (And so on).

As you watch the videos, note that I’m never critical nor dismissive of her responses. I’m sincerely trying to understand how she thinks. I’m not trying to get her to say “The right answer.” At the same time, I hold her to standards of reason and evidence. I’ll bring up evidence against her claims and ask her how she reconciles the evidence with her claims.

Often classroom teachers have a hard time doing this because most of them are trained to “check for understanding” and correct wrong answers. It is a much slower process to develop a child’s reasoning capacity. My goal is to get her to develop an independent judgement.

The core Socratic Experience is to know what we don’t know. If I am in control of which of her statements are accurate and which are not, then she won’t develop her own judgment. She won’t develop an internal standard for when she needs to work harder to understand and when not.

But in order for this to work, she has to trust that I’m engaging her reasoning capacity and not merely waiting to correct her. I see this relationship as key to the development of a capable mind. Jump forward to her work on Harvard CS50 and the ability to know what she doesn’t know, where she needs to pause and ask questions, where she needs to acknowledge that she doesn’t understand, is essential.

I’m an exceptionally capable autodidact. I attribute it to my Socratic Experiences at St. John’s College, where all classes are taught Socratically. By means of struggling through Aristotle, Kant, and Einstein, I learned how to figure out exactly what I know, what I don’t know, and what I need to know. Doing this over and over again with exceptionally difficult material gave me the habits of mind needed to learn new material quickly and well on my own.

So much more to say! But for now:

A). Engage your child from a young age with curiosity, empathy and love.

B). Ask questions based on their experiences. Try to get them to explain to you how they understand the world.

C). Present them with evidence that contradicts their claims. Not as a “gotcha,” but more in the spirit of, “I’m confused- if the difference between planes and birds are feathers, why wouldn’t putting feathers make a plane into a bird?”

D). Your goal is to get them to pause and think, learning to rely on their own reasoning powers. It is possible to get them to develop their own judgment from a young age.

E). Over time, this type of dialogue with your child can develop their intellect to a significant extent. I describe it as “loving your child’s mind” by giving your child’s thoughts attention and respect. And engaging them in reasoning, including calling contradictory claims to their attention, is the ultimate way to respect their mind.

This approach not only develops their cognitive abilities- it also provides them with confidence in their mind and judgment while also training them to respect reason and evidence. In an age where algorithms are training us into dependency, it is more important than ever to develop their ability to think based on their own convictions in light of reason and evidence.

In addition, this ability to evaluate claims based on their own judgment will develop them into independent thinkers capable of problem solving with other people through dialogue. I see this as an exceptionally important skill in an age of AI- both the independent judgment and the ability to engage in effective inquiry with other human beings.

See also, “Can a school make your child smarter?”