So, here's this insight:
Teach your child to consciously develop mental checklists so they know how to make and improve checklists in their minds. (Hint: put the steps on paper and run through them while revising, then memorize/habituate the new routine.)
I like to use my hand as a counting tool. I think 3 things are manageable for a young child, so I'll put up my fist and stick out my pinky and call that the step where we do what Corrina wants to do. Then I'll stick out my thumb and have that be the next step I want her to take. Usually it's something simple just to get her on track and feeling accomplished. So, when she was 4-5 it was taking our shoes off when we get in the house and putting them away properly. Something consistent that she could rely on. Something familiar to reduce anxiety and build good habits around the house or whatever teaching environment. (Which I learned from Montessori Primary - Practical Life skills.)
So the conversation would go something like this:
Corrina: Dad can we wrestle when we get home?
Dad: Absolutely. What has to happen before we can wrestle?
Corrina: Ummmm...
Dad: Okay when we get home what's the first thing we always do?
Corrina: Put away shoes!??
Dad: okay and what has to happen after we put away our shoes, before we can wrestle?
Corrina: eat dinner!
Dad: What else?
Corrina: what else?
Dad: Do the dishes...
Corrina: Brush Teeth!
Dad: Bingo!
So, then whenever she gets off track, I just hold up my hand and reiterate the process. Oftentimes, simply holding up the fingers of the items we've completed will jar her memory of the next thing we gotta check off the checklist.
As she got older and was excited to learn how to write we would make checklists on notecards. Now, I was experimenting with notecards in my business, and she saw me using them on a daily basis. It intrigued her, so we made lists for ourselves during Daddy-Daughter time.
She now knows how to use them. Even though we've gone back to the ever-convenient hand for tracking what we gotta do, she has worked with the process on paper and it is like the rings of a tree as she develops that patterning will resonate out and shape her future experience. When she is older, I expect we will revisit this, and it will not be totally foreign. Something inside her will resonate with the principles, and respond to another lesson around upgrading her checklists - both mentally and on paper.
Making checklists is something we all do anyway. They are powerful scripts running in our lives that we would do well to master. Helping our children master these scripts by teaching them how to write and improve them in their own minds feels almost like a moral obligation to me.
What do you think?
Cheers,
Craig
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