Debunking Myths: How Kids Learn and Easy Brain-Boosting Tips for Parents

Are some of the most common beliefs about how kids learn actually myths? Imagine if changing your perspective can release you from stress and guilt that you’re “not doing enough” – and transform your child’s learning experience. Today, we’re busting three big myths about how kids learn, and you’ll also discover six surprisingly simple yet powerful ways to support your child’s brain development.

Myth 1: Kids learn best through repetition and drills.

Related to this is the myth that we should push kids to achieve more and more at earlier and earlier ages.

Every day, I hear stories of moms who are stressed over downloading and printing worksheets, and then getting even young kids to answer them. Then when the kids don’t want to, they feel like they’ve failed and that they’re doing something wrong. When actually, there’s nothing wrong with the parent or the child – the problem is that the worksheet or activity is not developmentally appropriate!

Moms see Instagram posts on what other kids are learning and then feel guilty that they’re not doing those with their kids. Now, challenging a child just a little beyond where they are now can be helpful and developmentally appropriate. But if you do an internet search for “toddler worksheets” for example – many of them are beyond a toddler’s developmental level! For example, many of them involve tracing drawings or even tracing letters of the alphabet or numbers. These can set up your child – and you – for frustration.

It’s easy to think that worksheets, repetition, and drills are the most effective way for kids to learn, but research tells us a different story. To be able to retain information in long-term memory, it needs to be encoded into a part of the brain called the hippocampus. 

More than doing repeated drills by rote, it’s meaningful experiences that will embed the learning into long-term memory. That’s why children thrive when learning is fun, engaging, and meaningful. Think about how much more your child remembers when they’re excited about a subject versus when they’re just repeating facts.

Myth 2: To maximize learning, kids need to be “productive” and kept occupied all the time.

We’re so afraid of boredom that the internet is full of advice on how to keep our kids constantly occupied.

I’ve seen how parents feel a lot of pressure around this. Recently, a friend forwarded a post by another mom. The mom shared how her four-year-old is enrolled in nursery school, AND in reading enrichment classes, math lessons, martial arts, gymnastics, art, and foreign language lessons. That’s SIX different classes in addition to going to school!

My friend said, “And my kids just play! I’m so ashamed of myself.”

Sadly, parents are now made to feel guilty if their kids are not “being productive” all the time or if their kids are “just playing”.

But in reality, kids need downtime. It’s during downtime that they develop creativity and imagination. It builds resilience because they’re given the space to problem solve and make decisions, instead of having everything decided for them.

Many researchers have used functional MRI to look at what happens in people’s brains during what they call “wakeful rest”. This means they’re awake, but not watching TV, not constantly being entertained. Surprisingly, many parts of the brain are relatively more active during “wakeful rest”. Some are parts of the prefrontal cortex that are needed for planning and focusing attention, among others. Some parts are important in emotional regulation, while others (including the hippocampus we mentioned earlier) are important for memory. Again, that’s memory, planning, and emotional regulation. These are all important skills that kids need to learn if they are to thrive in school!

That’s why this myth can be particularly harmful. If we’re afraid of boredom and idleness to the point that kids no longer have downtime, we get extremely exhausted trying to be both a parent and an entertainment system. In addition to that, we also deprive them of the opportunities for brain development that comes with “wakeful rest”.

Myth 3: Learning only happens in the classroom or only if you’re following a lesson plan or doing structured learning activities.

In reality…Kids are learning all the time, whether or not we’re aware of it. During meal time, bath time, throwing out the trash time, being stuck in traffic time, even arguing with the siblings time, and eavesdropping on mom and grandma time –  kids are always learning.

We often underestimate the power of everyday experiences in contributing to a child’s education. Learning isn’t confined to school hours; it happens at home, during play, and in interactions with the world around them. I’ll share some simple ways you can turn daily activities into powerful learning opportunities.

I know it can feel like you’re not accomplishing as much if there’s no checklist or lesson plan to tick off, but if you can see into your child’s brain at the connections that are forming, you’ll see that there’s this rapid brain growth that’s happening when you engage your child in everyday experiences. That’s because one of the most powerful driving forces behind brain development is your relationship with your child.

When parents hear myth #3, there are often two reactions. Many are surprised- and then they feel relieved. Some may initially feel even more guilt and pressure because they now feel that they need to add on learning on top of everyday experiences. That’s not what we’re saying at all. On the other hand, what we’re saying is that in the things that you’re already doing anyway – having conversations over dinner, involving them in everyday chores – even without you adding on “learning” – you’re already building their brains.

I talk about all these myths with love and empathy and without judgment. I know we all love our kids dearly and we want to do everything possible for them. 

There’s just so much noise and conflicting parenting advice that it’s difficult not to believe these myths.

But I’m going to introduce a mindset shift here – What if we can achieve MORE by doing LESS?

In business, there’s the Pareto principle – 80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts. I believe that’s true in parenting as well. Parenting is incredibly exhausting, so maybe it could be freeing if we could focus on the 20% and decrease your mental load by offloading some of the 80%.

6 Surprisingly Simple Ways to Boost Your Child’s Brain Development

As parents, we’re always looking for ways to give our kids the best start in life, but it doesn’t have to be complicated or stressful. Here are 6 helpful strategies to boost your child’s cognitive development.

1. Encourage Playtime

Playtime is more than just fun; it’s crucial for brain development. When children play, they learn to solve problems, interact socially, and develop creativity. Whether it’s structured play with rules or free play, it’s a fantastic way to boost their cognitive skills. 

Encourage free, unstructured play. Simple brain-building games are great too!

Instead of planning kids’ activities all the time, encourage free, unstructured play. Now this doesn’t mean letting kids destroy the house or do whatever they want without limits. But it means allowing them to use their creativity and imagination and not dictating how they play.

Research has shown that unstructured play builds various parts of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is one of the major parts of the brain we need for what we call executive functioning, which includes skills for planning and working.

Simple, brain-building games are great too. These are all no-prep activities that don’t need a lot of effort from you. Examples are language games such as “Bring Me” for toddlers and younger preschoolers – not only is this a fun way to build language skills but it also practices their attention and task completion. I spy, twenty questions, and complete the story are among my favorite activities too. For more activities like these, grab our FREE Toolkit that includes a week of language-boosting activities for toddlers.

Pretend games build creativity and imagination and are important for cognitive development. We’ve worked with kids who are unable to do pretend play, and one of the first things a therapist does with them is to teach them how to do pretend play.

Games where kids practice starting and stopping, like freeze dance, are also helpful for building executive function skills.

And also games where they practice turn-taking, like playing tag. As a bonus, when they play tag, they move around – and movement and exercise are necessary for healthy brain development.

These ideas may seem simple, but they can be even better for your child’s brain than a worksheet or academic activity.

So next time your child is playing, remember that they’re also learning valuable life skills.

2. Read Together Daily

Reading together is a powerful way to enhance your child’s language skills and cognitive development. It not only introduces them to new vocabulary but also helps them understand complex concepts and emotions. Reading is one of the best ways to boost brain development. It helps build not only language skills but also social and emotional skills. That’s because they see how characters react to different situations and they take on the perspectives of different characters.

It gives them a gadget-free hobby they can enjoy not just today, but even as they grow older, so we don’t need to worry about constantly entertaining them.

And it broadens their understanding of the world. 

Remember, reading together isn’t the same as teaching a child to read. You can read to a baby or a toddler, no matter how young they are, but when it comes to reading lessons, we need to wait for signs of readiness – which we’ll talk about in a future episode and we have a book on this coming up soon! I’m so excited, this is in the final stages.

Even kids who already know how to read will enjoy reading with a parent. When they are older and they read completely independently, discuss their favorite books with them.

We can create a lifelong reading habit, starting in childhood.

Have a variety of books available throughout the house, within the child’s easy reach, so that your child can get a book and enjoy it. My child loves doing this. I often find him sitting on the floor surrounded by a pile of books and he’s absorbed in them. While ebooks are popular, print books are still better. They provide a richer sensory experience. Several researches have shown better comprehension and memory from print compared with ebooks.

Choose books that celebrate diversity – books that feature people of all abilities, and from different cultures. In this way, we’re expanding our kids’ world.

3. Connect and simply BE with your child, without any plan or agenda.

Recently on social media, I saw so many posts of parents saying that they don’t enjoy playing with their kids. They don’t see themselves playing with the Paw Patrol toys their kids love so much. If that’s you, don’t judge yourself for feeling that way. You don’t have to be a Paw Patrol fan to connect with your child. Instead, try this experiment.

Observe your child. Listen to what they say. Do this even for just ten minutes. Then see what happens. Remove the pressure on yourself even to make silly noises or to imitate the videos of parents playing with their kids on YouTube. Simply be you – that wonderful person and parent that you are, without the unrealistic expectations created by social media.

Make eye contact. Really look at them. Our lives can get so busy that we forget to do this. Involve them in family conversations. I know I’m guilty of this. I’ve asked questions and then not even stopped to hear what my child says. 

​​Listen, even if some of what they say may sound like gibberish. No matter what age your child is have conversations with them. You can do this at any age. We can have conversations – back-and-forth communication exchanges – even with babies who haven’t learned to talk. We continue this until the toddler and preschool years until our kids go to school – until they become teenagers and even adults.

If we do this today, we continue building brain connections – and these connections help our kids stay resilient even when they grow older.

4. Talk along with everyday activities. 

Share with your child what you’re thinking. If there are times we don’t have the answer or we’re not sure what to do, we can share our thought processes with our kids. This is also a great way to model decision-making skills.

These “Talk-along” and “think-aloud” are a busy parent’s best tools for helping kids build brain connections.

We said that kids learn all the time, even if it’s not during a structured learning activity. Also, kids learn best through meaningful experiences. When we do talk-along and think-aloud, this is exactly what we’re doing – helping them learn through meaningful everyday experiences.

Encourage your child to think aloud too! Research shows that this improves reading comprehension and helps them express themselves better.

Doing this will surround your child with rich language experiences can significantly boost their brain development. Talk to your child about everything, narrate your day, and engage them in conversations. This exposure helps build their vocabulary and understanding of the world around them.

5. Encourage curiosity and allow downtime.

Curiosity is the engine of cognitive growth. Encourage your child to ask questions, explore their environment, and engage in new experiences. This not only stimulates their brain but also fosters a lifelong love of learning. So, next time your child asks ‘why,’ take it as an opportunity to explore and learn together.

And what better way to build curiosity than to allow downtime? Kids need to rest too. It’s okay for kids to get bored! – and it’s during this time that their curiosity, creativity, and imagination can soar.

In one observational study of over 400 kids, the more moms dictated what kids did, the less the kids were able to control their emotions and behavior. Of course, there are many caveats in interpreting research like this. But what we do know is that we don’t NEED to dictate our kids’ activities all the time. If this feels impossible right now, be sure to watch out for our next episode of the Discerning Parenting podcast where we talk about some ideas we can try so we don’t need to keep entertaining and dictating our kids’ activities all the time.

6. Limit Screen Time

 While technology can be a useful tool at the right age and when used in a discerning way, too much screen time can hinder your child’s brain development. Set boundaries and encourage other activities like reading, playing, and exploring the outdoors. Balance is key to ensuring healthy cognitive growth. I realize I’m opening an entirely new topic with this tip and so many emotions can come up when we talk about screen time. I encourage you to check out some of our previous episodes in the Discerning Parenting podcast where we discussed screen time addiction in children and whether increased screen time in young kids is linked to developmental or language delays.

Next Steps

I hope these simple tips have given you some easy yet effective ways to support your child’s brain development. Today, just choose one and try it. Remember, it’s these small actions that make a big difference.

I want to invite you to check out my book, ‘Toddler Talking: Boost Your Child’s Language and Brain Development in Three Easy Steps.’ It’s packed with practical tips and strategies to help you support your child’s development effectively.