The key to improving children\’s learning ability lies at this age! Yale University research and brain experts have confirmed

Many parents will find a phenomenon: their children\’s academic performance has been very good in the first, second, and third grades, but after entering the fourth grade, their rankings suddenly dropped; on the contrary, some parents have discovered that their children\’s academic performance in the lower grades was mediocre, but after entering the fourth grade, their children\’s academic performance was mediocre. After grade one, my grades actually went up. Is the \”big reshuffle\” of class rankings after third grade really inevitable? This issue has become the subject of research by many experts and scholars. The Gesell Institute of Child Development at Yale University has tracked children for more than 40 years, and the final results show that the growth pattern of human behavior is very regular, and the age of 9 becomes a critical year for major changes in children\’s learning ability. Hideki Wada, a famous Japanese brain doctor and writer, has published many books on college entrance examinations and has become a well-known authority in the field of college entrance examinations. Under his guidance with his professional background as a doctor, students emerge from obscurity every year. to students admitted to the University of Tokyo. Hideki Wada proposed the concept of the \”nine-year-old wall\”, which means that a child\’s brain development will advance to another stage around the age of nine or ten. Research shows that the human brain develops fastest before the age of 10, and the brain weight is equivalent to that of an adult around the age of 12. Although the brain weight of children after the age of 9 increases very little, the internal structure of the brain cells is further complicated, and various aspects of the brain are Functions further gradually mature. The poet Ai Qing once said: \”A person\’s life is very long, but the most critical steps are only a few steps.\” The \”nine-year-old wall\” is a critical period for children\’s growth. Education scholar Rudolf Steiner called this period \”children crossing the Rubicon\”. During this period, children\’s physical and psychological characteristics change significantly, which is the best time to cultivate learning ability, emotional ability, willpower and study habits. period. When a child\’s ranking fluctuates, it is likely that he is facing a critical point in the \”nine-year-old wall.\” The brain states of children before and after the \”nine-year-old wall\” are very different. Targeted education can often get twice the result with half the effort and achieve good educational results. How to confirm whether a child has crossed the \”nine-year-old wall\”? First of all, it is based on the age of the child. When the child reaches 9 years old, parents should pay attention. The \”nine-year-old wall\” is just a range of high probability, and each child\’s development level is different. Some children can already think abstractly at the age of seven or eight; for some, after the age of ten, their ability to think abstractly has not been fully developed. But basically it is completed between the ages of 9 and 11. Secondly, pay attention to your child\’s ranking in the class. For many question types after the fourth grade, mere memorization or calculation skills are no longer enough. When a child\’s brain\’s abstract thinking is not fully developed, he will not be able to understand math word problems or graphic problems, or a Mandarin reading test. The child\’s performance will probably plummet because he cannot understand the content of the class. Finally, identify whether your child is experiencing frustration with word problems or graph problems. Before the third grade of elementary school, as long as a child can do arithmetic, multiplication, and writing, there will basically be no problems in reading. After fourth grade, some children become confused when word problems appear in the course. This is the result of brain development not keeping up. Through years of clinical observation, Hideki Wada has determined that he has passed the age of nine.Children with \”wall\” can think abstractly in their brains, can grasp things abstractly, and have the ability to think conceptually. This means that children can understand causes and results, purposes and means, premises and conclusions, affirmation and negation, etc. Meanings and differences. When encountering mathematical word problems, you can remember the prerequisites and derive conclusions accordingly; when encountering graphic problems, you can master the whole and parts and solve them smoothly. What should you do if you find that your child cannot keep up with the progress in school? Carol Dweck The professor was inspired by a high school in Chicago, where children who failed the exam were not given a \”fail\” which meant failure, but a \”not yet\” (not yet achieved). The seemingly simple \”not yet\” \”, is actually very valuable. It means that you are on the road of exploring learning, but you just haven\’t arrived yet. For children, this is a positive psychological construction: abilities change over time, and current setbacks It\’s just a normal process that I must go through in my exploration curve. Therefore, Hideki Wada believes that children\’s performance decline and failure to keep up are just \”not yet achieved.\” This situation cannot be solved by studying hard. In addition to waiting for the child\’s brain to There is no other way than being able to think abstractly. But schools will not wait for every child to cross the \”nine-year-old wall.\” At this time, what parents can do is try not to blame their children. Another very important point is not to Children are anxious to attend cram schools because their grades are lagging behind. More and more children will start tutoring in fourth grade. However, if the child\’s brain has not yet developed to the stage where he can do abstract thinking, let him and other students sign up for tutoring for further education. class, the child may hate reading because he can\’t keep up. At what grade is it best for a child to start tutoring? The answer to this question must depend on the child\’s development. Some children are better off starting tutoring in fourth grade; It is not too late to start in fifth grade or even sixth grade, and some children have demonstrated the ability to think abstractly at the age of seven or eight, so it is not a bad idea to let them skip a grade. Our goal is not just to pass the exam from primary school to middle school; You want your children to succeed in college entrance examinations (the same goes for their future lives). So parents don’t need to worry about the difference of one or two years. It’s best to take it slowly in line with the child’s development level. Children’s Brain Is it necessarily a bad thing to not be able to keep up with others in development? Children who have not yet passed the nine-year-old wall may not necessarily fall behind others. With the development of abstract thinking ability, the ability to simply memorize will gradually decline after the age of nine. Nine The memory ability of children before 10 years old is much higher than that of children after ten years old, and the level is even better than that of adults. For children who have not passed the \”nine-year-old wall\”, try to let him practice recitation. You can let him practice reciting in the fourth grade When starting school, memorize all the content that needs to be memorized before sixth grade. If the child is interested in Chinese characters, you can even let him preview Chinese texts in junior high school. For children who have not yet passed the \”nine-year-old wall\”, you can also let them Practice more calculations. Elementary schools will not teach students too many digit calculations, but parents can consciously let their children do as many five-digit and six-digit additions as possible.Calculating subtraction, multiplication and division will give him the confidence that \”my calculation ability is great and I can do any difficult calculation\”, so that he will not hate mathematics. After making your child confident in Chinese and arithmetic, as long as he waits for the development of his brain\’s abstract thinking ability to be completed, he will be able to solve natural word problems, graphic problems, and reading tests. The worst thing that can happen is to make your child feel like \”I can\’t do either.\” Even if he cannot solve word problems, as long as he has superior computing power, he can continue to maintain his idea of ​​​​\”I can\” and maintain his continuous enthusiasm for learning, which is more important than anything else. When a child crosses the \”nine-year-old wall\”, we must focus on cultivating his or her learning ability. Regarding education, there is a saying in ancient my country that \”it is better to teach a child to fish than to teach him to fish.\” Children whose brain development has passed the \”nine-year-old wall\” will enter a qualitative development stage not only in their thinking ability, but also in their attention, memory, understanding, expression, etc. Therefore, during this period, parents should pay attention to cultivating these learning abilities in their children. A wise father exercises his children\’s thinking ability like this: One day, the family just bought a bag of rice, and the father said to Bang Bang: \”Young man, come here, I will provide you with a scale, you come and tell me this bag of rice.\” How many grains are there?\” Bangbang was very embarrassed: \”Dad, this is a bit overwhelming!\” Seeing Bangbang\’s embarrassed look, his father reminded him: \”Didn\’t you ever calculate a question like this: Calculating a page in a book? How thick is the paper?\” This sentence awakened Bangbang. After finding inspiration and ideas, Bangbang quickly acted: he first weighed one or two meters, counted how many grains there were in one or two meters, and then calculated a kilogram of rice. How many grains are there, then weigh how many kilograms of rice are in the whole bag, and finally multiply the number of grains in a kilogram of rice by the kilograms in a bag of rice to calculate the number of grains in the whole bag of rice. In this case, the father did not tell the child how to solve the problem, but encouraged the child to think seriously and draw inferences about what he had learned. This is exactly how he is cultivating his child\’s learning ability. Under this kind of education method, no problem will easily stump this child in the future. No matter how you seize this last critical period to develop good habits, a Japanese survey shows that from the fourth grade of elementary school to the third grade of high school, as students grow older, their study habit scores do not increase. In other words, the key to developing good study habits is before the fourth grade. From the perspective of the development of children\’s willpower, fourth grade is an important period for children to actively form good study habits through self-denial. The will development of fourth-grade children is changing from weak to strong, and the children\’s actions gradually develop from being restricted by the authority of teachers and parents to being restricted and regulated by internal self-understanding. Children\’s purposefulness has improved significantly and they have begun to form the will to overcome difficulties consciously. The learning motivation of fourth-grade children begins to transform from external motivation to internal motivation. Even if there is no direct reward, they will tend to work hard to get good grades in order to get recognition from teachers, classmates, and parents. So, fourth grade is the final key to developing good habits and changing bad ones. If parents have been cultivating good habits in their children, they must not relax during this period, but they also need to gradually let go. A Taiwanese mother shared her experience in cultivating her children’s reading habit: Before, IWhatever books I give my daughter, she will read. But after the fourth grade of elementary school, I clearly felt that she began to have a stronger preference, especially thrillers and mystery novels. As for categories that she was not interested in, it was difficult to force her to accept them. Because I have some understanding of the \”nine-year-old wall\” before and know that this is a normal phenomenon for children to learn to be independent, and I am mentally prepared, I do not think that \”the child has become rebellious and starts to disobey\”, but respects her ideas. The foundation for positive interaction with children must be laid before the age of 9. For example, to develop good reading habits, parents must establish authority early. After the children develop the habit, they can let go little by little according to the situation. The children will feel that their parents are getting easier and easier to get along with, and the entire transfer process can be smooth. All in all, the age of 9 to 11 is a key node for children’s brain development. With correct guidance, children can survive this fluctuating period safely, their comprehensive abilities will be rapidly improved, and they will achieve a profound turning point with life significance in their learning journey. . So, has your child ever crossed the \”nine-year-old wall\”? How is your child\’s learning ability?