Sidang pembaca yang budiman,
Tempo hari ketika sedang menyiapkan materi untuk dibagikan ke grup WA FIKOM-YRC, saya terantuk dan langsung terpesona dengan penjelasan yang diberikan Dr. Laura A. Jana, ahli pediatrik, pendidik, penulis buku dan komunikator kesehatan yang handal. (see her personal/professional website here: http://www.drlaurajana.com/)
Materi yang dibawakannya dalam sesi TEDxChandigarh [rilis pertama: 28 Maret 2018] merupakan intisari dari buku yang ditulisnya, yang berjudul The Toddler Brain: Nurture the Skills Today that Will Shape Your Child’s Tomorrow [Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2017].
Video presentasi beliau dapat diakses di sini https://youtu.be/z_1Zv_ECy0g?si=JlF7wf-NaSSXn3PY
Berikut transkrip dari materi yang ada dalam video presentasi tersebut (dalam bahasa Inggris; saya hanya merapikannya saja supaya lebih mudah dibaca)
Semoga sharing beliau ini bermanfaat untuk kita pahami dan lalu aplikasikan dalam ikhtiar pengasuhan sebagai orangtua (parenting) pada era digital ini.
Skills Every Child Will Need to Succeed in 21st Century
Around the world everyone from governments and business leaders and economists to parents teachers and pediatricians are all asking the same question what skills will our children need to succeed. Now you may think you know the answer to the question but consider this: It has been estimated that two-thirds of children today will work in jobs that don’t currently exist now. What skills do you want them to have?
In 2016, the World Economic Forum released a list that every parent and quite honestly anyone who cares about our children’s future needs.
It’s a list of the 21st century skills most valued in today’s complex globalized and rapidly changing world. A third of these skills are the traditional hard skills (such as) reading, writing and arithmetic that I call IQ skills.
More notable however are the other skills (called) social and creative skills like creativity, curiosity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking, along with grit leadership and adaptability;
It is these so-called soft non-cognitive and other skills that are gaining prominence in playrooms, classrooms, and boardrooms around the world;
Now I feel the need to point out that calling these skills soft doesn’t do them justice and referring to them as non-cognitive is just wrong given that they involve complex functioning of the brain that leaves us with “other,”
As somebody who has spent decades translating facts and figures into practical information, I can assure you that if you ever want to convince somebody that something’s really important don’t call it other;
So I’d like to propose that we call these other skills key skills spelled Qi;
Now the fact that it sounds like the word key as in ke-Y fits because these skills are certainly key to future success;
It also reflects the fact that they are the complement to the IQ skills;
IQ and Qi and finally the word key sometimes also pronounced has been used across cultures and centuries to represent a positive life force that you can be born with but they can also be developed;
And that brings us to perhaps the most important insight based on the science of early brain and child development;
We now know that these key skills can be developed far earlier than most people realize with 85% of brain growth thought to occur by age 3 and up to a million new neural connections forming per second during the first 5 years;
That we have a unique opportunity to more intentionally build babies brains and to assemble this toolkit of skills we know they’ll need to succeed, that help you better understand why these early years are so critical;
I find it helpful to use the analogy of comparing the electrical wiring of the brain to that of a house: it is entirely possible to rewire an old house;
It just always takes longer costs more and never turns out quite as good as when the wiring goes in before the walls go up
With respect to the wiring of baby’s brains, caring responsive adults are (people) that play the role as (babies’) chief architects neurons;
(babies) don’t just connect and don’t just learn what they need to know all on their own;
Unlocking children’s early learning potential is deeply dependent on social interactions which explains why cultivating the key skills involves a whole lot of talking, cooing, singing, playing, and reading books to babies;
With that in mind, allow me to introduce you to the seven key skills:
The first of the key skills is our me skills, defined by self-awareness, self-control, or impulse control along with focus and attention;
In other words, me skills are what allow us to be in control of our own thoughts, feelings, and actions;
Now, to put me skills into a bigger picture perspective, just think about how often these days we hear about everything from mindfulness apps and mindful breathing to the introduction of chief mindfulness officers into corporate culture;
Even renowned business visionary Peter Drucker (1909-2005) predicted that while the 20th century was the era of business management, the 21st century is going to be the era of self management, right, and a good self management day in the life of a toddler is when no one bites their friends;
That’s because the ability to resist one’s impulses or their urges is really dependent on impulse control which happens to be one of the three defining features of what neuroscientists call executive function skills;
What research now tells us about these all-important executive function skills is that they develop most rapidly between the ages of 3 & 5;
After me skills come we skills;
We skills are people skills, the relationship skills, like communication, collaboration, teamwork, active listening, empathy and perspective taking: all needed to play well with others;
We skills are especially valuable in a world where it’s become as important to be able to read other people as it is to read
Now, given that I don’t ever have to actually convince anybody that these skills are worth developing, allow me instead to translate put your listening ears on use your words learn to play nice with others and in the same sandbox;
The fact of the matter is that these highly coveted social-emotional skills are preschool skills and they can be developed of very early;
Toddlers can be taught to understand other people’s perspectives: 9 month olds begin to show signs of empathy and even very young infants are sensitive emotion detectors able to sense others emotions even before they can walk or talk;
Now, before moving on, I should point out that it is the combination of me skills and we skills that fit the formal definition of emotional intelligence described not only as two of the hottest words in corporate America but recognized around the world as absolutely critical to thrive in all aspects of 21st century life;
Next to the Y skills which obviously include asking the question why, but more broadly include exploration, curiosity, inquisitiveness, and asking all sorts of questions to better understand how the world works fueled by technology the Information Age has now put so many answers right at our collective fingertips that it is no wonder that the ability to ask good questions has become so much more valued than simply knowing the right answer;
As Albert Einstein put it, the important thing is to never stop questioning
Now think about some of the corporate training programs like the five why’s that train business leaders to better get to the root of a problem by repeatedly asking why implemented by some of the top companies in the world;
These formal questioning and training techniques ironically leave one fundamental question unanswered why should we have to go to such great lengths to train adults to do something that comes so naturally to two and three-year-olds?
The answer I’m afraid is that we train this skill out of children while it is natural for young children to question the world around them;
Making sure that they continue to see the world as a question mark very much depends on our commitment to encouraging rather than squelching their natural sense of wonder
When I think of will skills I’m reminded of when my own three children first began school and they became members of a club called the can-do Club, which recognized young students not just for their grades but for their drive and determination, both key aspects of will skills
Will is also about grit and perseverance and it’s evident in people with get the job done and stick with it attitudes: at the heart of will is motivation;
Now there are actually two types of motivation: the first extrinsic motivation involves rewards and punishments.
While this approach may work in the short run and for relatively simple tasks the complex challenges of the 21st century are going to demand a lot more from our children simply relying on rewards has been shown to all but kill creativity and in the long run actually decrease motivation;
Intrinsic or self motivation is what we’re really after the kind of motivation that comes from within to foster this kind of self-motivation;
We perhaps need to rethink how we parent in the earliest years when even the most routine tasks (such as) brushing teeth and peeing in the potty are all too often rewarded with sweets and treats rather than with praise and pride
Now, you may not be accustomed to thinking of wiggling as a skill but the best way to understand wiggle skills is to recognize that physical and intellectual restlessness go hand in hand
Just think about how we commonly describe successful adults as movers and shakers and go-getters who set stretch goals spring into action and reach for the stars: they’re all about action;
If you read the innovation literature you’ll find that innovators are almost always described as physically restless and at work you’re more likely to see walking meetings and treadmill desks and manipulatives on tables;
All meant more actively enhance our ability to think create and innovate;
Now think about the words that we use to describe active young children: fidgety, antsy, restless.
I can honestly say that in all my years working with children, I’ve never heard any of those words used in a positive sense;
Whether out of fear for their safety or for our own convenience, we tend to favor the calm, quiet child who doesn’t reach, touch, grab, or poker get into things instead of giving young children the wiggle room they need, we strap them in, we insist they sit still and we tell them to look but don’t touch;
All of us but most especially young children learn about the world by physically interacting with it instead of working their wiggles out;
What our children really need is for us to help them learn how to put their wiggles to work;
After wiggle comes wobble: a set of skills defined by agility and adaptability and the ability to face overcome and learn from failure
The word wobble comes from a phrase “weebles wobble but they don’t fall down,” a reference to a very popular classic toy called weebles;
Their eggs shaped with weight at the bottom so they could wobble back and forth but ultimately remain standing;
As skills needed to adapt to a very rapidly changing world, wobble skills have gained special prominence college applications and job interviewers routinely ask when have you failed and what did you do about it
Silicon Valley’s unofficial motto is said to be fail early, fail often, and fail forward: a motto that we really should be applying to how we raise young children;
On that note, I want you to think for a moment what might be earliest developmental milestones for wobble look like, but, don’t think too hard, because there are none!
The fact of the matter is that milestones only represent successes not failures;
If we want to raise resilient children we need to get in the habit of celebrating not just their milestone moments but their ability to fall down, brush themselves off and get right back up again;
The combination of the key skills are what if skills or what I think of as possibilities skills defined by innovation, imagination, creativity and out-of-the-box thinking;
It’s the what if skills that give us the ability to imagine the world not just as it is but as how it could be;
In a global survey of over 1,500 CEOs, creativity was identified as the single most important factor for future success;
Our world clearly rewards those who can imagine the world they want to live in and then create it;
Young children excel at imagining new worlds from make-believe and superheroes to imaginary friends and fanciful stories: Young children really are as futurist
Peter H. Diamandis, the founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, puts it (this way): young children are some of the most imaginative humans around;
But, it has also been said that the creative adult is the child that survived;
In our efforts to teach our children how we see the world we run the very real risk of convincing them that there’s only one right way to do or see things;
We must therefore ask ourselves the question raised by developmental psychologist Jean Piaget “are we forming children capable of only learning that which is already known or should we try to develop creative and innovative minds capable of discovery throughout life?”
I’m here to tell you the answer is the latter!
Giving children the best is about maximizing their potential, not their possessions; It’s about cultivating their sense of purpose and passion, not subjecting them to unnecessary pressure, and it’s about caring responsive adults and starting early;
We now know that what happens in early childhood does not stay in early childhood.
By applying what we now know about all of the key skills and applying it early me, we, Y, will, wiggle, wobble, and what if, I believe that we can achieve success in our shared goal of giving all children access to a world of possibilities
Thank you
Dr. Laura A. Jana
@sagarpaudel1188 (resumes the speech)
Seven Qi (Ke-Y) skills for thriving in the 21st Century
1) Me skills : Self Control
2) We skills : Social skills
Me skills + We skills = Emotional Intelligence
3) Why skills : Exploration, Curiosity
4) Will skills : Drive, Determination, Perseverance
5) Wiggle skills : Physical and Intellectual restlessness
6) Wobble skills : Agility, Adaptability, Ability to face, overcome and learn from failure
7) What If Skills (Possibility Skills) : Innovation, Imagination, Creativity, Out-of-the-box Thinking
