How to Stimulate Digital Kids

As I have covered in Diagnosing Learning Difficulties and Gifted Children in the Early Years, children have different ways of processing information. Digital kids need order, consistency and logic. The most important thing in the world for them is understanding.

Digital children are sharp-minded and need plenty of stimulation in order to learn better. But to learn best, the new information must be organized well and presented in a factual and detailed way. If they do not get something, they cannot proceed to the next step until things are clear, so they often ask questions.

Here are some ideas that will young digital kids learn better:

• Puzzles – making something coherent and whole from pieces is how digital kids think. Over time, puzzles develop their abilities to strategize (frame first, side to side, find all the blue pieces, etc), which will serve them well for many years
• Patterns – digital children think in patterns and look for patterns in everything around them, so matching games, “what comes next?” games or hear the beat in the music will help develop this skill
• New languages – language is made up of building blocks (words) and ways of putting them together (grammar rules). For a digital child, this speaks directly to the brain
• Riddles – having to crack a code, analyse a problem or find a solution are great fun for a digital child. “It’s interesting”, they will tell you. Anything to sharpen the mind
• Computer – the computer was designed by digital people to make complicated things simple, and they ARE simple for … other digital people, who can get into the mindset of the designers. Your main challenge as a parent will be to control and direct your child’s computer time
• Card games – these games have rules and the person using the rules best wins. Choose card games that require less luck and more skill and thought
• Projects & challenges – digital kids love to discover new information. They can find great ways to reorganise things (reorder books or CDs for easier retrieval), they love to research new topics and organise the material for a proud presentation. When giving a digital child a challenge, make sure it involves thinking, structuring and processing
• Construction games, like Lego – this is another building-blocks-and-rules kind of game and is also a bit like a 3-dimensional puzzle, except the result depends on your child’s imagination. It is important to get a large set of blocks with a wide variety of blocks but no particular designs, or your child will build it once and get bored

Happy parenting
Ronit

Related

How to Stimulate Kinaesthetic Kids

Kinaesthetic kids needs to move in order to think. They are also very sensitive to others and have lots of "gut" feelings. Kinaesthetic children learn by doing. Too often, these kids are treated as trouble makers, being blamed for not being able to sit still. However, but forcing them to…

January 4, 2008

In "Parenting"

How to Stimulate Visual Kids

Visual kids have a combination video-and-still camera in their heads. They like to see things. Pictures, colours and visual representations of things are their main information carriers. These kids learn best and expresses themselves best using pictures, graphs and colours. To them, one picture really IS worth a thousand words.…

December 20, 2007

In "Kids / Children"

Learning Styles

Understanding your kids’ learning styles can be a great help for life, both for you and your kids. The common belief that there is one way of learning is really far from the truth. There are many ways to learn and each way has its advantages and disadvantages.

November 13, 2007

In "Education / Learning"