THINKING AND READING: A VERITABLE TOOL TO CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT

    Reading time: 2 Minutes

    Thinking is something we do every day and often without being consciously aware of what we are doing. Yet something will happen to make us stop and becomes curious and alert to the fact that we are thinking or need to think. 

    Most people or even teens see reading as decoding process with the reader trying to process each letter in turn or even trying to produce some appropriate sounds. 

    It is worthy to note that Children between the ages of 6 to 12 develop the ability to think in concrete ways such as how combine, separate, order and transform objects and actions as this period marks the beginning of more complex thinking process including abstract thinking. 

    Thinking is the capacity to reflect, reason and draw reasonable conclusion based on our experiences, knowledge and insight and that is what makes us human and has enabled us to communicate, create, build, advance and become civilized. 

    Thinking encompasses so many aspects of who our children are and what they do, from observing, learning, remembering, questioning and judging to innovating, arguing, deciding and acting.

    Although technology has played a bigger role in the lives of our children as their skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved immensely. 

    Learners have changed as a result of their exposure to technology as reading for pleasure has declined drastically among young people in recent decades, emphasis thinking and engages the imagination in a way. 

    There is no doubt as mentioned earlier that all the new technologies led by the internet are shaping the way teens think in ways obvious and subtle, deliberate, advantageous and detrimental. 

    The uncertain reality is that with this new technological frontier in its infancy and development emerging at a rapid pace. So whether technology helps or hurts in the development of your children’s thinking depends solely on what specific technology used and how and what frequency it is used. 

    The thinking process requires prior knowledge and below are some of what reading does to Children’s reasoning faculty:

    It expands reader’s attention span

     It increases children’s reasoning capacity

    It rewires the brain to reason effectively 

    It heightened brain connectivity  

    Reading enhances a child’s concentration etc.  

    Critical thinking is essential life skill and parent should also take note that reading also to children or pre – scholars before bedtime doesn’t mean they are likely to learn much and reason aptly about letters or even how to read words but will only help boost their reading and thinking abilities which will be of great advantages to their learning-reading and thinking skills. 

    Adejola Adeyemi Crown writes from Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria.