Mind In The Making: Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs

What can we do to keep the fire in our children’s eyes burning brightly? How can families and teachers give children the life skills they need to cope in our multi-tasking, multimedia, modern world? These are the central questions Ellen Galinsky explores in the book Mind In The Making: Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs.

I had read Mind In The Making shortly after it was published in 2010, and was avidly following Amanda Morgan’s (Not Just Cute) series of “read along” posts delving deeply into the contents of the book, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to meet Ellen during a recent talk she gave about the book. Ellen introduced Mind In The Making as an “accidental book”- one that took over ten years to write. She explained, “I didn’t set out to write a book. I started with the idea of doing a study on Youth and Learning. But- “In the course of interviewing young people (from many different backgrounds) for the study, I found far too many of them were turned off by learning, which is in stark contrast to very young children, who are driven to learn. I postponed the study on Youth & Learning and began a journey to answer the following questions: 1) How do children learn best? 2) What makes them stay motivated and engaged in learning? 3) What makes them see themselves as learners, and how do they become ongoing, life-long learners? 4) What can be done to rekindle their motivation if it has been dulled?”

Ellen then decided to make a documentary exploring the best science on children’s learning. But, after a few months of interviewing researchers and working with a production company to film experiments, the documentary grew to become a series. Four to five years later, after examining research across many disciplines, Ellen said she began to see a certain set of skills that emerge in all children who are motivated, engaged learners. She could also see, from looking at longitudinal research, that if parents and teachers promoted these skills, it made a critical difference, and helped children to thrive throughout their lives, which is why she defined the seven skills she identified as life skills. She quipped, “Everyone does something. Some people kayak, and others climb mountains for adventure. I follow research and call it adventure.” My kind of lady!

Ellen Galinsky

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