Why do we need to raise thinkers?

Why is the ability to think for ourselves so important?

In the early days of learning to be a coach, I realised that what happens in a coaching session is thinking and  I became interested in Nancy Kline’s work on creating the conditions for people to think well for themselves. Nancy suggests that everything we do, all the actions that we take, depend on the quality of the thinking we do first and the way in which we are treated will either enhance our ability to make better decisions or reduce it.

One of the scariest moments for me as a mum was standing at the school gates and watching my children start their first day at school. I was no longer in control of their environment and they had to manage without me for a while.

In this moment I wanted to know that they would make the right choices, and that they would be able to stand up tall and think for themselves.

I wanted to know that they would be ok when I was not in the room

Over the years, I have also learnt that if I knew that they would be ok or could feel that, they would feel it too and have the confidence to be themselves whilst connecting and learning from others.

I had been coaching for a while when my children were little and I was honing my expertise in helping leaders enhance their thinking, suddenly I became interested in how I might do this for my children, what does it look like as a parent?

The 10 components of Nancy’s thinking environment suggest ten ways of being that will support others to think well in our presence, over the last few years I have been translating these with my friend and teacher Sophie Stephenson into 10 practical ways to help children become independent thinkers.

If you would like to learn more, we are currently writing a book and we have produced some podcasts where we chat and figure out what we might need to do differently as parents and teachers to help our children think and ultimately give them the gift of confidence.

You can listen to Raising Thinkers wherever you get your podcasts or click here

You can also purchase our 10 postcards relating to each of these practices here, our suggestion would be to take one a week and stick it on your fridge.

We would love to hear from you on what else we can do to help our children learn to think for themselves please share your experiences with us here.