carlosdanielponce4@gmail.com – Page 22 – Families and Work Institute

July 21, 2025August 24, 2025

Focus and Self Control . . . Maybe as Important as IQ

By Ellen Galinsky

Boosting Life Skills, From the Field

Focus and Self Control . . . Maybe as Important as IQ

Jeanne Brooks-Gunn of Columbia University and a group of other academics reviewed six studies that followed children over time, offering a rare opportunity to evaluate what kinds of skills or knowledge acquired early in life matter most to children’s later success. They compared children’s school achievement in math and reading between the ages of eight and thirteen to assessments of these same children when they were between ages four and six.

What did they conclude? Out of literally hundreds of analyses, only three skills that children had when they entered school were strongly related to their later success in reading and math. Two are obvious: the children who had good math and reading skills when they entered school had good math and reading skills years later.

But the third skill is less obvious. It was attention skills—the more penetrating our attention, the richer and deeper our learning. As Brooks-Gunn says:

Attention skills allow children to focus on something in a way that maximizes the information they get out of it.

Adele Diamond of the University of British Columbia has been a pioneer in studying what scientists call the executive functions of the brain—because these are the brain functions we use to manage our attention, our emotions, and our behavior in pursuit of our goals. She believes that executive functions predict children’s success as well as—if not better than—IQ tests:

Executive functions are different than what people usually think of when they think of IQ. Typical traditional IQ tests measure what’s called crystallized intelligence, which is mostly your recall of what you’ve already learned—like what’s the meaning of this word, or what’s the capital of that country? What executive functions tap is your ability to use what you already know—to be creative with it, to problem-solve with it—so it’s very related to fluid intelligence, because that requires reasoning and using information. There’s a big overlap between fluid intelligence and executive functions.

Executive functions, which emerge during the preschool years and don’t fully mature until early adulthood, appear to have a bearing on school success, too:

If you look at what predicts how well children will do later in school, more and more evidence is showing that executive functions—working memory and inhibition—actually predict success better than IQ tests.

Philip David Zelazo of the University of Minnesota, also a leading researcher studying executive functions of the brain, sees more of an overlap between IQ and executive functions. For example, we might not do well on an IQ test because we’re distracted and can’t pay attention. Also, having a good working memory matters in both IQ and executive functions. Like Diamond, Zelazo notes that executive functions enable us to use our knowledge:

If you ask what is the difference between these two constructs, I think it would be that it is possible to have knowledge of what one’s supposed to do—but for various reasons to have difficulty acting in light of that knowledge.

Executive functions take place in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. I love the term that Stanislas Dehaene uses to describe this part of the brain—a global neuronal workspace:

It’s a theoretical construct, but the human brain contains a set of areas that are much more tightly interconnected to each other—like hubs in airports.

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for the ability to exchange information across the high-level areas of the brain, Dehaene says, so that our behavior can be guided by our accumulated knowledge.

That’s the beauty and the purpose of executive functions: they enable us to control ourselves, to reflect deeply, and to consider things from multiple points of view.

July 21, 2025August 24, 2025

Perspective Taking: Reducing Conflict in Children: Lessons from Larry Aber

By Ellen Galinsky

Boosting Life Skills, Latest Research

J. Lawrence (Larry) Aber’s studies provide important insights into reducing conflict and aggression in children, an issue of great importance in our conflict-laden world. But I am also sharing his story because it illustrates the principle that in research—as in life—there can be many missteps before the right path is found.

In fact, this is one of the things that I most love about conducting research myself: it is an adventure. Like scaling a mountain peak or kayaking in rough waters, the researcher sets out on a journey, armed with experience and knowledge, but never fully knowing what he or she might find. Sometimes the path is clear, but usually it’s fraught with uncertainty, unexpected challenges, and wrong turns.

The experiences of Larry Aber of New York University illustrate this point. In studying aggression in children, Larry Aber had findings from his and others’ research, but they weren’t very strong findings. So he too kept looking.

Aber has been especially interested in aggression in younger children because it can escalate into greater aggression during the teen and adult years—and interfere with children’s learning. He wanted to know: What are the roots of aggression in children? When in a child’s life is aggression likely to flare up? Does it continue to escalate or can it be prevented, and if so, how? In other words, can more constructive ways of dealing with conflict be taught? He says:

Children who get in fights with other children, children who disobey—who are constantly in conflict with other children and teachers—are on a path where they’re not learning now and they’re going to learn less in the future.

The focus of the early research was that children who were aggressive simply hadn’t learned constructive ways to solve problems. As Aber says: When one child pushes another, the early thinking was that children who responded aggressively to that push had an impoverished repertoire of options—they only knew how to push back or to push harder.

As a result, there were 20 years of attempts to improve children’s “repertoire” of problem-solving skills. Did these efforts yield results? Yes, but “only a little bit,” according to Aber. So the question became why.

Building on the prior laboratory work of Kenneth Dodge, Aber and his colleagues began to investigate what goes on in children’s minds when they are provoked. To do so, they asked children how they would respond to ambiguous hypothetical situations—such as one child bumping into another in a school cafeteria and spilling a drink on the second child. Which children would decide to push back harder? And which children would decide to use other problem-solving skills, and why?

They discovered a missing link, a link they call an “appraisal process.” In the spilled-drink scenario above, for example, the child who has been bumped makes an immediate assessment of the situation, such as: Maybe this kid doesn’t like me? Maybe this kid is trying to hurt me? For the children who assume that others are out to get them, having skills to handle conflict are relatively worthless. They have what researchers call “a hostile attribution bias.” These words are a mouthful, but what they mean is that some children immediately interpret ambiguous situations as hostile. When there isn’t enough information to be certain, they jump to conclusions.

Given this insight, efforts to curb aggression in children of all ages have moved to include what Larry Aber calls “attributional retraining;” that is, helping children step back when something happens to them and make sense of the situation. Teachers using this approach help children gain perspective on the situation, to realize that they don’t have enough information to know why they were bumped, and to look for clues to understand whether this was an accident or a hostile act.

Larry Aber and his colleagues have experimented with how teachers can teach appraisal skills in order to reduce aggression. Their research holds many lessons.

In their first studies, they followed children from the first through the sixth grades in the New York City public schools. They picked this period in childhood because they’ve found that aggression can escalate during this time. Initially, they evaluated a curriculum called the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP), developed by Educators for Social Responsibility. This curriculum teaches children appraisal skills—how to figure out someone else’s intention. It also shows children that they have choices about how they handle conflict and gives them skills for making those choices in their everyday lives. Not surprisingly, Aber found that the more RCCP lessons children were taught, the more competently they handled conflict.

But Aber suspected that the results could be even stronger, so they began work on a second series of evaluation studies in the New York public schools with a successor program to RCCP called the 4 Rs Program—Reading, Writing, Respect and Resolution. This program doesn’t separate teaching children to handle conflict from other kinds of academic teaching; it combines what I see as social, emotional and intellectual (SEI) skills. Each unit is based on a children’s book selected for its literary quality and its relevance to the theme.

Through discussions, writing exercises and role-play, children explore the meaning of the book, learn how to appraise complex situations and then are taught how to resolve conflicts in these situations.

The early results of this research are even more promising. Children are less likely to jump to conclusions about others’ behavior. Their mental health is better. And the reading scores for those who initially showed the most substantial behavioral problems have improved.

Aber’s research further confirms that children need to learn how to figure out the intent and perspectives of others when they’re in conflicts. Once you’ve helped children do that, as he puts it, “you’ve opened the gate to them using problem-solving skills—that also needed to be developed.” He says: “That is an issue of learning; it is not just a side affair. That affects the environment in which children learn.”

This story is taken from Mind in the Making.

July 21, 2025August 24, 2025

When to Teach Letters, Colors and Numbers to Babie

By Ellen Galinsky

Boosting Life Skills

When should I start teaching letters, colors and numbers to my nine-month-old daughter?

First of all, what a wondrous time! Children are born learning and, in these early years, you are laying the foundation for their lifelong learning.

Noting that the brain grows from one pound to its full size in the first five to six years of life, neuroscientist Sam Wang of Princeton University compares brain development to building a house:

A baby’s brain is like a house that’s being built. If you think about all the things that babies have happen to them—we feed them, we love them, we talk to them, they have other experiences with other kids, whatever it is that they encounter—all of those are learning experiences. So, there’s this constant construction project where babies and small children are putting together the basic foundations for who they are going to become later.

Because babies learn so much in these early years—with 700 trillion connections among the neurons in the brain being formed during that time—you’re not alone in wondering when and how to teach kids about letters, colors and numbers.

Even very young children can learn to memorize the names of numbers, letters and colors. What’s important is that they don’t just memorize the words, which they may do to please adults, with little to no understanding of what these concepts mean. When you use everyday moments to help children understand the concepts of colors, letters and numbers, they learn what these ideas mean, and they learn the life skill of Making Connections.

Making Connections is at the heart of learning—figuring out what’s the same and what’s different—and sorting these things into categories. Making unusual connections is at the core of creativity. In a world where people can “Google” information, people who can see connections are able to go beyond knowing information to using this information well.

Be a partner in your child’s explorations and play.

During the early years, kids learn by touching, tasting and playing with everything around them. Get involved, but let your child take the lead in choosing activities and objects that interest her. Instead of taking over or telling your child what to do, be a guide.

Roberta Golinkoff of the University of Delaware and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek of Temple University have found that children learn more when their parents are involved in what they do:

When a parent joins in, we call it “guided play,” and it always elevates the level of play. So, parents shouldn’t feel like they have to stay out and let the kids play on their own—they should join in, but they can’t be the boss. They have to follow the child’s lead and talk about the kind of things that the child is interested in.

This is where you can add concepts naturally, such as letters, colors and numbers. For example, you can say:

“You are playing with the yellow duck in the bath.”
“I gave you two pieces of banana.”

Even though your child at nine months is just making sounds as a step into learning to talk, she hears and increasingly understands what you are saying. Over time, she will begin to understand these and other more abstract concepts.

Build on your child’s interests.

Sam Wang states that the key to learning is play.

Play is where active learning takes place—where the baby is engaged or the child is engaged and just wants more and more of that. As long as that element of fun and play are present, then that enhances learning.

Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington adds:

As I’ve watched my own child grow, there are various times and various things that light her up. As parents and as caretakers of a whole generation of kids, we have to be tuned into that engagement process.

What makes your baby’s eyes light up? Karen Wynn of Yale University finds that adults promote children’s learning on the deepest level when they tap into children’s passion and enthusiasm, then build on it.

The best way to do that is through back and forth conversations. ‘Take Turns Talk’ are conversations, with and without words.

Pay attention to where your baby is looking or pointing and describe it: “Do you see the big yellow school bus? Beep beep!” Children are more likely to learn the names of things that they find interesting.
Add on to your child’s ideas. Watch her play closely and see if you can help her take it even further. If your child is stacking objects, provide a choice of two different things to add on top: “Do you want the blue cup or the orange one? You chose the orange cup to stack next. You now have two cups. Let’s see what happens!”

Extend your child’s early understanding of big ideas.

A series of studies over the past three decades has found that early foundations of knowledge and skills emerge in babies’ first months of life. Elizabeth Spelke of Harvard University describes these as core cognitive capacities that “come online” before they could possibly have been taught, and these capacities need developing.

As amazing as it may seem, babies are born with an ability to grasp many big ideas like numbers, space, objects, even people! These are the foundations upon which children build learning as they grow and develop.

Listen carefully to your words when you guide your child’s play. One of the things you do—maybe without even being aware of it—is help your child make connections. In a sentence as simple as: “Look at the big red fire truck,” you help your child connect her experiences to ideas like space, size, numbers and colors.
Play finger games or sing songs and nursery rhymes that use numbers and rhyming like “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe” or “The Ants Go Marching.”
Talk about math everyday. For instance, when you change your child’s diaper or wash her in the bath, count her fingers and toes. Talk about amounts like “more” and “less” and ideas like “empty” and “full” during meal times.
When watching your child play or helping her get dressed, talk about how her body is moving, using words like “up,” “down.” This helps her develop her sense of space, a skill she’ll need later for science and math learning.

As your child grows into her second year and begins to understand these big ideas even more, don’t be surprised if the learning is uneven. Your child may be able to sing a number song and say all of the numbers in order, but if you ask how many pretzels you are holding in your hand, she may say: “two, five.” Or, your child may get stuck on a certain color. Whenever you say the word color, your child may say: “yellow.” Learning these big ideas takes time, but when learned in everyday ways, they’ll have a much deeper meaning.

Create a supportive environment for learning.

Children learn what they see and live, so it’s up to you to create an environment where words, reading, listening and learning are important. Take time in your everyday routines to:

Point out signs, letters and numbers at home and on the go. Show your child different street signs or traffic symbols: “There’s the red stop sign. It tells all of the cars to stop.” This helps her make connections between letters, words and what they stand for, an important piece of early literacy learning.
Tell stories and sing songs. Encourage your child’s love of language by using lots of descriptive words, telling favorite stories over and over, and exploring the rhythm and music of song. Make a family story time part of your day.

July 21, 2025August 24, 2025

Mind in the Making: Transforming Communities with Science and Heart

By Erin Ramsey, Former Senior Manager, Mind in the Making at the Bezos Family Foundation

Community Engagement, From the Field

For seven years, I’ve shared the brain science of Mind in the Making (MITM) with people from all walks of life. Thus far, approximately 100,000 educators, community leaders, families and professionals from education, libraries, medical facilities, museums, nonprofits, law enforcement, mental health, churches, prisons and more have participated in the MITM Learning Modules.

These Learning Modules lead with science, combining deep research focused on executive function skills, with signature science-fueled learning. The training provides opportunities for adults to examine themselves, the research and the actions they can take to promote effective learning in themselves and in children. The training is based on the book, Mind in the Making: Seven Essential Life Skills that help adults understand and encourage the critical executive function-based skills children need to thrive.

No matter how many groups I work with—regardless of the varied reasons they begin the journey—it’s been so gratifying to see the connections forged among individuals and communities who attend the trainings.

Why is this so gratifying? Because it’s rare to create a platform and an experience where people with high levels of education and people with very little education learn from each other, where different cultures and ethnicities come together and feel empowered by each other, and where various professions and points of influence in children’s lives converge on commonalities rather than on our differences.

MITM provides a rare instance where individuals take the time to reflect about their own Life Skills and how they want to move forward while applying the science in their own lives.

Our process engages families, communities and sectors in new ways, in a true cross-sector collaboration. This is community building and as a bonus, we level the playing field and give states and communities ways to join forces and accomplish change together.

Also inspiring: the decisions people make, the goals they set and the perspectives they gain. Some of my favorites include when the connection between the science and Life Skills help people set goals that put the research into daily practice. Self-directed, real-life application becomes a game changer. For example, this happens when a co-worker decides to work on Focus and Self Control by practicing being a better listener instead of trying to fix something or interject ideas. Or when a parent or caretaker decides to ask more questions to improve Perspective Taking skills. Or when the teacher steps back and reflects upon the relationships with families in a new light that leads to improved Communicating skills.

Another favorite part of the learning journey for me is witnessing the paradigm shift among participants who learn that we can only set goals for ourselves, not for children or other adults. It is powerful when adults put the actions and desired outcomes on themselves. For instance, instead of a teacher asking young children to sit and listen to develop Focus and Self Control, the teacher sets a goal grounded in research: play more skill games and teach strategies to promote Focus and Self Control. Children benefit when we begin with adults.

I particularly love how the Life Skills empower people to look at themselves and at children with a genuine and effective strength-based lens. The Life Skills and strategies to promote the Life Skills provide space for participants to remember that if they are struggling, they are not innately flawed or “at fault” or “bad parents.” These skills can be developed with strategies and practice, and MITM provides the science, strategies and practice.

Keeping the love of learning alive for adults and children—the mission at the heart of Mind in the Making—is what keeps me passionate about this work. It boils down to our humanness while building on a solid foundation of effective teaching and learning, science, child development and goal setting. We connect the science and the communities so people can keep or reignite their love of learning to help children do the same.

Mind in the Making and all the people I have worked with have been gifts beyond description. Bringing the science and heart together is a winning combination that transforms lives.

July 21, 2025August 24, 2025

When Should We Begin Promoting Focus and Self Control?

By Ellen Galinsky and the MITM Team

Boosting Life Skills

When Should We Begin Promoting Focus and Self Control?

The skill of focus and self control begins to develop in the early childhood years, but it doesn’t fully become established until the later teen and early adult years. The prefrontal cortex is among the last parts of the brain to mature. Adele Diamond says she is repeatedly asked:

How can you say that a three-year-old or a four-year-old is capable of any kind of executive function? The prefrontal cortex is too immature. The analogy I like to use is: Think about a two-year-old’s legs. Your legs at age two are not at their full adult length; it may take ten or fifteen years to reach their full adult length—they’re very immature. But even with those immature legs, a two-year-old can walk; a two-year-old can even run. So the legs, even in their immature two-year-old state, are capable of serving a lot of the functions that legs are supposed to serve.

She concludes:

An immature prefrontal cortex is capable of supporting a lot of the functions it’s supposed to support. So even babies, toddlers, and kindergarten children are capable of exercising executive functions to some extent.

How Can Focus and Self Control Be Improved?

I find Adele Diamond’s analogy to walking and running very logical. How well would we walk and run if we weren’t allowed to do so until our legs were fully grown? When we see children crawling, pulling themselves to stand, and demonstrating other cues of readiness, don’t we naturally encourage them to strengthen and train their muscles, nerves, and bones to perform these complex skills by helping them to (literally) take “baby steps”? It should be no different with the skills of focus and self control—and the good news is, it’s possible.

It’s a fast-moving modern world and we’re easily distracted, but staying on task is important. Focus and Self Control involves Executive Functions of the brain. These are the skills used to manage our attention, our emotions and our behavior in order to meet goals. These skills begin to develop when children reach preschool age and continue to develop through the school-age years and into adulthood.

Children learn to focus over time and with practice.

Be aware of typical child development.

Your preschooler is still working on developing the skill of attention and self-control. At this age, it’s common for children to get distracted or disinterested in an activity.

Watch your child and ask questions.

To learn how to help him develop focus and self-control, it’s important to understand what your child is telling you with his behavior. Be a detective and watch your child in these moments. Ask yourself questions like:

Praise your child’s strategies.

At the Bing Nursery School at Stanford University, when children are given a hard puzzle, teachers reinforce the children’s problem-solving strategies using words like: “Look, you turned that piece around and around to see where it would fit.” Although the children struggled, they didn’t give up. Based on studies of what helps children continue to work hard in the face of challenges, parents and other adults praised their efforts or strategies, not their personalities or intelligence.

When you recognize your child’s strategies, regardless of the length of time he spends on an activity, you encourage him to keep trying, even when things are hard. Tell your child things like:

“You were using the materials so creatively on that picture. I wonder if you can finish it.”

“It looked like you were matching colors on that puzzle. Can you show me how?”

Encourage exploration.

Your child is still exploring the world through his senses and testing out his ideas. This exploration may seem chaotic to you, but your child may be taking the lead in his own learning. Here are some things to do with him to promote Focus and Self Control:

Extend your child’s learning by looking for toys or reading material that build on his interests. Make sure to rotate these items so he doesn’t get bored. He’s more likely to stay focused when he’s fascinated by something.
Limit distractions. Don’t put too many toys out at once. In addition, eliminate distractions. The studies of Daniel Anderson of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst showed that children are more unfocused when the television is on, even it is in the background.
Offer a variety of ways for expression. Does he prefer to write, draw, sing or have hands-on experiences? When he’s engaged, he’s more likely to be motivated and pay attention.
Promote your child’s curiosity by asking lots of questions and encouraging him to ask them, too. “Wh” questions, like “who,” “what,” “why,” and “when” are great prompts for discussions.

Doing things over and over helps build your child’s memory. Even if he only plays with the same puzzle for a few minutes at a time, he’s learning to master a task while building his abilities to focus and remember. The more experiences your child has, especially with things that interest him, the more likely he is to build skills of focus, memory, creative thinking and self control.

Play games that promote Focus and Self Control.

The more experiences your child has, especially with things that interest him, the more likely he is to build skills of focus, memory, creative thinking and self-control.

Play games like “I Spy,” “Simon Says,” and “Red Light/Green Light.”
Play games with rules, like board games and sports.

Even when you play pretend with your child, he is required to use his Focus and Self Control to stay true to his character and his memory to recall what he is supposed to do.

July 21, 2025

Author: carlosdanielponce4@gmail.com

Focus and Self Control . . . Maybe as Important as IQ

Focus and Self Control . . . Maybe as Important as IQ

Focus and Self Control . . . Maybe as Important as IQ

Perspective Taking: Reducing Conflict in Children: Lessons from Larry Aber

Perspective Taking: Reducing Conflict in Children: Lessons from Larry Aber

When to Teach Letters, Colors and Numbers to Babie

When to Teach Letters, Colors and Numbers to Babie

Be a partner in your child’s explorations and play.

Build on your child’s interests.

Extend your child’s early understanding of big ideas.

Create a supportive environment for learning.

Mind in the Making: Transforming Communities with Science and Heart

Mind in the Making: Transforming Communities with Science and Heart

When Should We Begin Promoting Focus and Self Control?