Nomix - Blog #parentingNomix - Blog #parentinghttps://nomix.co.za/blogs/tag/parentingFri, 10 Apr 2026 13:10:00 -0700http://zoho.com/sites/<![CDATA[Parenting The Realistic Thinking Child]]>https://nomix.co.za/blogs/post/parenting-the-realistic-thinking-childRaising 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 ]]>

Raising a Child with a Realistic Thinking Preference: 
Thinking About the What for the Realistic Thinker

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

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

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:

  • 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

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

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

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

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

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.
Marlé Roestroff
Nomix™ Collaborateur. NBI® Whole Brain Practitioner.
]]>Fri, 28 Apr 2023 16:34:20 +0200<![CDATA[Become a Whole-Brain Parent]]>https://nomix.co.za/blogs/post/become-a-whole-brain-parentWhole brain thinking profiling gives parents the ability to give their children the right guidance to learn skills to communicate with others, solve problems, be true entrepreneurs, think and act innovatively and helps parents to understand why children react and behave in certain circumstances.]]>

The 1 tool that can help your children reach their goals

Before grasping the concept of whole-brain parenting, you must first understand what whole-brain thinking profiles are and what whole-brain thinking is all about. Whole-brain thinking profiles are determined by answers that a child or an adult provides to specific questions. The measuring tool uses this information to analyse, which part of the brain the individual prefers to use, take in, process and remember the information, makes decisions, communicate and respond. Let's call it the part of your brain you prefer to use the most to think, communicate,  and process information.
The purpose of the whole-brain thinking profile analysis is to encourage a person to stimulate the underused parts of the brain for thinking more frequently. Getting it right, will make it possible for the adult or child to learn skills that were not possible before because they did not use those parts of the brain for decision-making, communication or problem-solving. Skills such as, being innovative, generating new ideas, communicating better with others and learning styles. Thinking with every part of your brain is what is meant by whole-brain thinking. If you know and understand your own and your child's whole-brain thinking profile, you as a parent will have the ability to become a whole-brain parent.
Whole-brain parenting means teaching your children skills and allowing them to take chances and use their unique thinking preferences to grow into successful adults. But also to teach them skills and guide them to use the other parts of their brains to thrive and perform in situations and circumstances in which their thinking preferences are not as strong.
Being a whole-brain parent does not happen overnight, but making yourself aware of some aspects that play a role in the process of making those adjustments and changes will encourage you as a parent to make work of it right away.
As a parent, start by being a good mentor for your child.

Cognitive Thinking Profiles

The first golden rule of whole-brain parenting is to remember that everyone is unique and that your and your child’s opinions may differ. The way you like to study, communicate and respond is not necessarily going to be the same as how your child behaves. And that is normal!
Find out what your own and your child's brain thinking profiles are and after that, you will see the challenges from a different point of view. You will understand each other better and together you can work towards building a successful future.

Using Left and Right to Explain Thinking Dominance

Here is an easy explanation to show the differences between the different brain thinking profiles and why people think and do things differently.
Think of the brain as a circle. Now divide the circle into two equal parts. Divide each half again into equal parts so that they become quarters. Take note as follows:
  • Each of those quarters has a specific characteristic about how a child prefers to think. It depends on which quadrant is dominant.
  • The left upper quarter is children who prefer facts and seek solutions. They are realistic and analytical.
  • The bottom left are kids who like structure and routine, they usually like to approach tasks step by step.
  • The top right is kids who are strategic and see the bigger picture. They are imaginative and can come up with good ideas.
  • Adult thinking profiles are divided into 8 sections and have other features that are explained in depth with the analysis.
  • The bottom right is kids who have good people relations and will sometimes put others' needs above their own just to keep others happy.
The point is to determine how you and your child prefer to think, and what your preferences are. It will facilitate the process of whole-brain parenting and whole-brain thinking development.

Mentoring Your Children

As a parent, you play a very important role in your children’s lives. You need to set an example that they can follow, that process must be implemented from a young age. Understanding your own and their brain thinking profiles will help you not only be a good example to them but also an excellent mentor to them.
Be a good mentor who encourages change, motivates your children and teaches them the skills from an early stage to become entrepreneurs, to think of creative ways to solve problems and to always think positively. Explain each feature of the different parts of the brain, what it means and how to use it. When they understand this, parents can help them with suggestions and by creating other scenarios about what will happen if the problem is approached and solved in a different way.

Whole-Brain

Because everyone is different from each other, your child is going to get into situations where he is going to deal with people who do not think like him or do things the same way as your child. Therefore, you need to develop your children’s whole brains, so that they will be comfortable interacting with others with different brain thinking profiles.

Entrepreneurship

Good leadership, communication and listening, critical thinking, strategic thinking and planning are some of the skills a good entrepreneur needs and by being a whole-brain parent and teaching them to always have a holistic approach, you can help the child to be stimulated in these areas and learn those skills.
Teach your children to generate new ideas or even to improve old ideas by allowing them to explore the different outcomes.
Entrepreneurship teaches you the skills to solve problems and if it is developed from a young age, children will not only learn to be entrepreneurs but also to innovate and come up with new and original ideas that can help them with a business opportunity.
Make sure you listen to your children’s ideas and do not shoot down their bad ideas. Instead, motivate them to further develop the idea and give them guidance and motivation to make changes if necessary.
Give them whole-brain exercises to perform for example researching the product and whether there is a market for it. Ask them to write down step-by-step instructions on how to make it. They have to work out a budget of how much it is going to cost to make and how much they are going to sell it. What profit do they expect to make? Encourage them to design a logo and slogan and after that, they should roleplay where you pretend to be the customer so that they can learn how to treat and deal with clients.
By making those 4 steps part of their planning, you teach them to think with each quadrant of their brains, and that was a whole-brain thinking process.
Marlé Roestroff
Nomix™ Benefits Collaborateur. Neethling Brain Institute NBI® Whole Brain Practitioner.
]]>Thu, 08 Dec 2022 17:06:38 +0200