What is metacognition, and why do we need to master it? Metacognition is known as “Thinking About Your Thinking.” It begins at 8 years old. People who “think about their thinking” can anticipate change, direct their own learning process, and learn more deeply.

Life Skills that Require Metacognition

Metacognition is essential for many self-advocacy, relationship, and independence skills, such as:

• a growth mindset; it requires reflective thinking about how the individual learns and grows. 
• healthy self-regulation
• an understanding of the reasons for one’s behavior

And, academic achievement is another big bonus — research suggests students achieve at higher levels as their metacognitive abilities increase.

How to Strengthen Your Awareness of Your Thinking

Here are some techniques for strengthening their metacognition:

• Ask your child, “Was there anything confusing at school today? What was the most confusing part? Why?” Identifying one’s lack of understanding, and the specific challenge, is an important part of developing self-awareness.
• Allow mistakes and reward risk-taking. Failure, after all, is the first attempt in learning.
• Encourage and model brainstorming.
• Give them opportunities to talk about how their thinking has changed with a “Traffic Light” chat. Ask your child about when they got stuck (red), met a challenge or tried something new (yellow), or learned something interesting (green). You can encourage metacognition with questions like these:
  • What did you learn?
  • How did you learn it?
  • How has your thinking changed as a result?
  • What worked or didn’t work when you were learning?
  • What do you want to do differently next time?

How will you encourage your child to think about their thinking today?