COMMON SENSE HAS TO BE TAUGHT

COMMON SENSE HAS TO BE TAUGHT

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD. Traditional Realist

The introduction of YouTube has helped in solving practical problems around the house, in sports, mechanical techniques and a host of other issues that pop up daily. It has made life easier for highly motivated and skilled problem solvers. Arriving at this point to know how to carefully watch and listen to detail then to follow through successfully completing the project takes many skill sets. People often clump these skills under “common sense.”

The foundation of common sense is usually taught at an early age by loved ones. As the child matures the observation skills increase along with the knowledge we call “common sense.” This process is becoming less and less common for a large segment of our youth.

The cultural factors affecting the decrease in what we call common are undeniably

powerful. Modern children have less time to observe and learn from their parental figures and siblings. Most parents are working outside the home while family size is diminishing. Both parents and children are riveted to their electronic devices, disengaged from each other. Family members doing things together around the house has practically vanished.

The rapid breakdown of the family has created many lost opportunities for parents to be the primary teachers of their children. Instead the children are chauffeured off to activities where the main focus is to develop skills in the arts and sports. These instructors point out methods of the specific skills of the discipline but not the more global habits that are common to almost all productive individuals.

Modern children often have little parental instruction or observation on how to do household chores. The job of washing windows is no longer common. Most children will do a slipshod job leaving the window cloudy and streaked rather than clean. They appear to be unaware of what is expected and how to do it since no one took the time to teach them.  Another example of this is when there are several things to pick up in the yard and the child carries each to the stationary wheelbarrow instead of moving the wheelbarrow to the objects to pick them up.  Adults would see this as using common sense but it has to be taught to most children.

Often homework is done with several other things distracting the child from totally concentrating on it. Too often schoolwork is done in a quick, haphazard way when the environment is not quiet enough to internalize the material.  Most youngsters have to think several steps ahead to become more efficient.

As the child matures the common sense skills continue to get more complicated. Instead of focusing directly on the task presented to them, their minds wander. Applying one’s undivided attention to any problem is more effective than trying to do several things at once. This used to be “common sense.”

This ability of the individual concentrating can be reinforced and improved by the parents or the child developing his own methods of doing it. Parental role modeling of the manner of learning encourages and assists the child’s picking up ideas and motivation to develop methods to solve complex issues that frequently occur in our everyday lives.

Common sense is not given to a person at birth. We have to learn it by doing things to the best of our ability. Adults, usually a parent or other significant role model, can make the process easier for the child through their suggestions and guidance. These respected people assign a chore to the youngster to be completed in a specific time period. The outcome often works better if there is an adult working with them rather than have them learn through their mistakes.

Often the adult will ask questions to help the child be more efficient and effective which increases their thinking process that is part of developing common sense.  These questions help the child make more appropriate decisions by helping the child think through the process of what they want to accomplish. 

You have to be with a child over an ample time period to understand how he focuses and attacks problems. These everyday events can be more revealing to the parent than taking the child to an amusement park or other fun activity to learn how the child processes information and uses his energies to do what he is supposed to.

Many youngsters who have no one to teach them have overcome this circumstance by learning through observations of others. These are exceptions to the general rule. Most children have to be shown numerous times how to incorporate lessons of common practices and logical ways of thinking into their everyday experiences. Most of us need repetitive lessons by our role models to qualify as having common sense. Common sense is taught, you are not born with it.

Domenick Maglio, PhD. is a columnist carried by various newspapers, an author of several books and owner/director of Wider Horizons School, a college prep program. Dr. Maglio is an author of weekly newspaper articles, INVASION WITHIN  and a new book entitled, IN CHARGE PARENTING In a PC World. You can see many of Dr. Maglio’s articles at www.drmaglioblogspot.com.