Raising a Child with a Realistic Thinking Preference: Thinking About the What for the Realistic Thinker
Raising a Child with a Realistic Thinking Preference:
Thinking About the What for the Realistic Thinker
Introduction
Introduction
Raising children is no easy task, especially if your child has an inclination for having or expecting ideas to be sensible and practical making him or her a realistic child. Realistic children tend to be more fact-driven than other children, which can make it difficult for parenting. Fortunately, there are some tips and tricks that parents of realistic children can use to ensure their child grows into an independent, confident adult.
Most realistic children have a tendency to be more reserved in some situations when it comes to expressing themselves because they don’t want to appear foolish or incorrect. Parents can incentivise the child's expression, by rewarding them whenever they open up or are prepared to share something with you. Incentivisation could be as simple as giving appraising them or encouraging them with small rewards to motivate them positively expressing themselves. Special privileges may be awarded when they express themselves in a positive way as appose to being negative or destructive. Supporting them in this way will give them the reassurance that expressing their thoughts is encouraged and valued in the family.
Realist learning styles
Realist learning styles
As explained in one of my previous blogs, Raising a Child with an Analytical thinking preference, where a child has a dominancy for analytical thinking, he or she prefers facts and seeks explanations, whereas raising a child with a realistic thinking preference parents should follow a more sensible and practical approach. As a parent, it is therefore important to understand your child's thinking preference, which may have an effect on his or her learning style and how they process the new information they receive.
Let us discuss the realist thinker's learning style
Let us discuss the realist thinker's learning style
The realistic thinker's learning involves using concrete evidence to process and understand new information. Realistic thinkers would want concrete evidence to know how things work, and to understand the subject. Knowing how things work to understand the subject indicates that they would gather information by interpreting the facts that relate to the subject or conversation and recall the whole conversation by recalling the facts and or concrete evidence.
Successful parents of realist-thinking children lay the foundation for their teaching and parenting experiences, which is dependent on their thinking preferences, learning styles, and emotional well-being. Training role-players should understand the significance, impact and benefits of teaching and learning children founded on the learners' thinking preference, which in this case is the realist-thinker.
Realistic thinking learners structure their learning experience as follows:
Realistic thinking learners structure their learning experience as follows:
- They like to be alone when studying, with no disturbance,
- They prefer clear guidelines with short and clear instructions,
- They focus on achievable goals,
- They prefer to sit at a desk when doing homework or studying,
- They prefer facts and well-argued summaries of the most important facts
- They like to research to find concrete evidence and information,
- They like to analyze information.
Children with a realistic thinking dominancy may use different study methods, of which mind mapping may be one of those learning methods to study. The child would then use facts as the keywords in their mindmap drawings. Follow the link and complete your unique thinking preference profile to learn more about. Follow the link and complete your unique thinking preference profile to learn more about your learning style.
Subjects and career choices for realistic children
Subjects and career choices for realistic children
The World Economic Forum (WEF) indicates that the most needed types of skills acquired for future jobs are Problem-solving, Self-management, Working with people and Technology use and development.
Children with realistic thinking abilities have a natural tendency to excel in acquiring the most needed skills and growing job demands as defined by the WEF.
The impact of the WEF's growing job demands for realistic thinkers is as follows:
- Data Analytics: Realistic thinkers collect, examine, study, and interpret numbers, ratios and quantitative data to identify how a business could use the data to help them solve complex problems or to prepare quantitative reports.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) Specialists: Realistic thinkers discover new and innovative methods of implementing various types of technology and tools into their daily operations by conducting quantitative research and proposing sensible, rational and practical explanations.
- Machine Learning (ML) Specialists: Realistic thinkers in the machine learning context, develop robotics (Bots) and computer systems by doing quantitative research to establish the sensible, rational and practical activities needed for Bots to think and perform tasks on their own as humans do.
- Strategy Specialists: As Strategy Specialists, realistic thinkers have the ability to clarify the pros and cons of a company's strengths, weaknesses, operational effectiveness and opportunities from a factual perspective. Based on internal and external research, proven facts, and rational thinking abilities, they provide recommendations to minimise risks and formulate plans for the company to set their long-term goals. Strategy specialists have exceptional verbal and written communication skills.
- Information Security Specialists: Realistic thinkers tend to focus on facts and have the ability to identify potential information security challenges and breaches using quantitative research. Information security specialists identify potential information security challenges and breaches in their organisation's electronic and or digitised systems, setting information security standards, and upgrading information security software and protocols to assist the organisation to prevent information security breaches.
- Business Development Professionals: Realists develop business opportunities for organisations by evaluating their business performance with fact-driven research, simplifying growth and improvement prospects, focusing their attention on new product development and services, and engaging stakeholders with as little distraction as possible. Realistic thinkers build relationships with customers, producers, prosumers and or partners from a rational and sensible perspective.
Encourage Curiosity
Encourage Curiosity
Realistic-thinking children are naturally inquisitive and will often ask questions, especially the what question, about almost anything. While this trait is certainly beneficial in the long run, it can be exhausting for parents to answer all their questions continually. Parents can prevent themselves from becoming overwhelmed by responding to all the 'what' questions from the child, knowing what is important in instances like these. What is important for the parent to know is to prepare themselves for these kinds of conversations ahead of time. Parents may prepare themselves by researching the topics discussed and questions asked by the child and anticipate other questions the child may ask. Encourage your realistic-thinking children to read informative books which explain what things are made of, and motivate them to ask questions and explore new topics.
Develop Problem-Solving Skills
Develop Problem-Solving Skills
Realistic-thinking children often get stuck in fact-driven thinking and can struggle to process alternative ways of thinking such as thinking outside the box. Thinking outside the box contributes to thinking creatively and it is important for the parent to encourage their child to open up and see new possibilities and explore different ways of looking at things. Parents can focus their conversations with their children on a wide range of topics and ask them what they think about certain issues or ideas. Realistic-thinking children solve problems first by gathering all the facts and then rationalising the pros and cons to simplify the goal-attainment procedure. Simplifying the goals attainment procedure will help children practice open-mindedness about different perspectives to solve problems.
Develop Critical Thinking Skills
Develop Critical Thinking Skills
Critical thinking is the ability to reflect on an idea or a problem, apply reason and simplify logical connections between the elements that are relevant to that specific idea or problem. Critical thinking also addresses the 'what' questions children may have.
As mentioned above, parents should encourage their children to ask 'what' questions, such as what they think will happen when and where ... and wait for the child to respond, allowing the child to indicate what they will do when certain problems occur. Parenting a realistic-thinking child will require parents to ask and answer questions with facts and suggest realistic solutions for problems.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Parenting a realistic-thinking child can be challenging but also incredibly rewarding! It’s important to remember that while realistic-thinking children may have different thinking needs than the thinking needs of other children, they still need love, guidance, and support just like any other child would require. With some patience and understanding, you can create an environment where your realistic thinking child feels comfortable enough to express themselves freely without fear of judgement, solve problems in a realistic manner and study according to their unique thinking preferences.