Sylvia Scodro and @polina_marinova for their invaluable contributions and feedback.
All of you wonderful readers for giving my work a slice of your attention.
And, most of all, my husband @fjnido whose shining intellect and editing has elevated my work, and whose faith gives me hope that I might one day become the person he is convinced I have always been 🫶
And THANK YOU to those who took the time to read and endorse my book. It feels surreal that some of the people I admire the most support my work
Exposure to a healthy amount of confusion offers significant benefits.
The more kids experience confusion in the right context, the more they'll be willing to wade through the feeling of not knowing—a key survival skill in today’s world.
3 Principles for Exploring Confusion 👇
1. Expose kids to confusion
Encourage kids to solve that harder math problem or read that challenging book. Let them explore complex ideas and help them understand that when they do, they are going to feel confused—and that’s okay.
When they play a new game, resist the urge to tell them the rules. Give them the chance to figure it out for themselves. Over time, you will notice they will start to enjoy it.
On how to raise successful kids, the power of video games, the school system & alternatives, lessons from kids and the Stoics, and ways to learn and love learning 🤸
Mental models are especially helpful when we face complex situations.
When new information hits us left and right, we need to know how to interpret it. We need a guiding light to lead us in the right direction when things get chaotic.
This is particularly true with parenting.
Our kids change every day.
They’re leaping from one stage of development to another. And we’re overloaded with all sorts of data, from the opinion of your mother-in-law, the newest hot tip on mommy blogs, to the latest findings of childhood psych.
What should we do with it all?
Without mental models, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and paralyzed, but with mental models, you can sort the good ideas from the bad, orient yourself to what’s most important, and take decisive action.
How much of the “learning” that happened in school stuck over the years?
I’m guessing very little.
That’s because the learning that occurs in formal schooling is mostly an imitation of learning 🤷🏽♀️
Humans are designed to learn🧠
We learn through self-directed play, exploration, and trial & error. We learn by digging deep into our interests, making things, and reflecting on the impact and consequences of our actions.
These are inborn instincts that come automatically to us
Turns out, formal school does not match the usual way humans learn 🤷🏽♀️
We've taken learning out of its natural context and put it into an institutional framework 🏫We’ve prioritized grades, conformity, and compliance over joy, curiosity, and exploration 🤦🏽♀️