The Importance of Abstract and Emotional Thinking

All of the emotional interactions that you have with your child during her busy day—whether it's idle conversation about eating or errands, fanciful pretend play, or opinion-oriented debates—create the thinking strategies that she will eventually apply to the more impersonal world. These dialogues are the foundation for logical and abstract thinking, including reasoning about something as seemingly unemotional as number and quantity concepts. For instance, there is no better moment to learn the difference between three candy kisses and one more piece of candy than when a child's sweet tooth is acting up and she wants to justify more rather than less! Let's take a look at how this emerging ability to think emotionally evolves into self-reflection.

Self-Reflection
In the recent past, your child may have been able to say, "I'm mad!" when she was steamed at her sister and just barely refrained from pinching her. Months later, she could say, "I'm mad and I want to pinch her," which was a great advance over actually doing it. Still, she remained caught up in the immediacy of her feelings. Now, however, she is actually capable of going a step further and linking her angry feelings to the reasons behind them. She can recognize that she's mad at her sister and wants to pinch her "because she took my new paint set without asking first!"

Self-reflection thus begins with using an idea to ponder a feeling or consider an alternate solution, rather than using the idea merely to justify an action. Your child is starting to step back a little from the rawness of her feelings, and enter into negotiations before rushing into behavior ("Daddy, it's not fair, it's my turn now!"). She can use words to reflect on her feelings in order to compromise or plan another solution with the help of another person. Later on, your child will even be able to picture herself in the future and imagine a solution that involves people or objects that are not right in front of her ("You're mean, I'm mad, and I'm going to tell Mommy on you").

After months and years of practice in linking her ideas to yours, your child will start to think more subtly—in grays, rather than black and white ("You're mean—but only a little mean"; "I'm mad, but only a little mad"). She'll be less caught up in an all-or-nothing view of things. Eventually, she'll be able to differentiate between what is true at a particular point in time and what exists at other times. She'll know that she feels a certain way right now ("You're mean! I'm mad at you!") and can also reflect on those feelings in relation to a more stable sense of herself and of you ("You were mean and I'm mad, but I'm a nice person so I don't have to get even with you. Most of the time you're nice to me so I guess I can forgive you"). Your child is thus developing a more cohesive and ongoing sense of self that helps her curb her own behavior.

More on: Learning Activities for Preschoolers