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I've known John Roderick a while. I’ve been trying to figure out what to say about #BeanDad. I’m not a parent, so I don’t have the expertise of others who've commented. But I’m an expert on something else—teaching kids to solve puzzles.
That’s not how it’s done. Not ever.
(1/13)
That’s not how it’s done. Not ever.
(1/13)
As the co-author of the book Puzzlecraft: How to Make Every Kind of Puzzle, I’ve taught thousands of people how to solve puzzles. Many of them have been children. So I’ve learned a few things about how it works for them. (2/13) http://lonesharkgames.com/puzzles/puzzlecraft/
Kids are actually pretty good puzzle solvers! But they need much more assistance and instruction than adults do. They’re awesome little processing machines at solving tasks they understand, but if you don’t give them clear instructions, they get frustrated and check out. (3/13)
Puzzles are exercises in managing that frustration. Too little frustration and the solver hand-waves it away. Too much frustration and the solver walks away. (4/13)
It’s a balance of giving the solver the ability to solve the puzzle themselves and enough comfort to keep trying. When the solver has made the choice to put themselves into that zone, they want control of it. You can’t just give them help they don’t ask for. (5/13)
I don’t give my solvers much help because they’ve made a personal decision not to ask for it. If you take away that decision point, then you’re just depriving them of the ability to proceed. That’s just adding external stress, which is toxic to progress. (6/13)
Kids cannot handle external stress at the same time as solving problems. They’re not Hugh Jackman hacking a website with a gun to his head in Swordfish. Kids prioritize external stress over any other task, such as learning a new solving skill. (7/13)
Unless you are literally a rat in a maze, external stress does nothing to improve your puzzle solving ability. There’s a thing called Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and it tells you that you need to be fed first before you can achieve more complex goals. (8/13)
Solving an unfamiliar puzzle takes every brain cell you have. If you are devoting those to something else—say, hunger—you will fail. John’s child asked many times for help. Eventually she cracked the puzzle. But she did so under extremely unideal conditions. (9/13)
That's called *experimentation*. It’s making your goals supereminent over your child’s. There may be circumstances in childrearing where that’s a good idea. I don’t know. I’m not a parent. But it’s got to be suboptimal when what you want is progress in learning. (10/13)
John’s story made sense to him in his family life. It doesn’t make sense to nearly everyone else. No one chooses to give up the freedom to walk away from a puzzle. A nine-year-old can’t, because they can’t go anywhere else. A hungry nine-year-old is even more impaired. (11/13)
John says his daughter was fine and happy afterward. I don’t know her. All kids are different. But this was a story he told the world as if to say, “See, here’s how it’s done.” In my experience teaching children to solve puzzles, it's not how it’s done. Not even a little. (12/13)
John wrote one of my favorite songs, “The Commander Thinks Aloud.” It ends with the following words: “This is all I wanted to bring home to you.”
John, this is all I wanted to bring home to you: You can’t make kids learn new solving skills by depriving them of sustenance. (/END)
John, this is all I wanted to bring home to you: You can’t make kids learn new solving skills by depriving them of sustenance. (/END)
