By Caitlin Bishop, behavioral health clinician
What children teach us about intellectual wellness
As I type this, I’m sitting on the (slightly damp) lawn in my front yard, soaking up the precious early spring sun with my 6-month-old daughter. In the company of an infant, it’s easy to marvel at the immense power of the human mind. With each rising sun there is some new skill that has been mastered, some new connection forged. Her understanding of the world grows in response to even the tiniest event, whereas I so often feel so narrow and stuck inside my same old thought patterns, arriving at the same tired conclusions rather than approaching life as an endless puzzle to explore, as she does.
This is one of the many gifts of children, and it’s why I love my job working as a therapist at an elementary school; being around the intellectual curiosity and creativity of young people. At least once a day I laugh out loud at some wildly surprising observation or hilariously on-point remark that I would never have thought to make. “That’s so true!” I laugh. “I never thought of it that way,” I respond. Children are brilliant because they haven’t fallen into cognitive habits yet. To be inside a young mind is to believe that anything is possible.
Stepping into an adult brain can be a little different. By the time we reach adulthood many of us know what we like and what we’re good at, and we stay in that lane, out of habit rather than conscious choice. This isn’t a problem, but the price for that comfort sometimes means we aren’t quite as sharp or as creative as we once were. Luckily, advancements in neurobiology have shown us that our brains are more like muscles than organs and are much more malleable than we ever knew.
“Neuroplasticity” describes the phenomenon in which neural networks in the brain show the capacity to change, grow, and reorganize – throughout our entire lifespan. It’s a big word, with big implications. Intellectual growth is not limited to infancy or early childhood but is possible at any point in our lives. Learning a new skill – ANY new skill – is like a nice workout for your brain. And why wouldn’t we want to take care of our brains as much as we would our bodies? Working through a crossword puzzle, doodling, playing a card game, even simple physical exercise can support cognitive wellbeing.
Or you can do what I’m about to do: lay on the grass, stare at the clouds, and search. The first few minutes are always uncomfortable. Trapped by habit and sluggishness, my brain struggles to see shapes from different angles. With some patience and effort, my mental rigidity dissolves and the sky slowly becomes alive with recognizable images of all kinds: animals, faces, silhouettes. Each one is an invitation to stretch and grow and strengthen my cognitive capacity so that I can approach life in a fresher and more intellectually vibrant way, like a child does, knowing that anything is possible and delighting in the unknown.
Tip: Go outside and find a place where you can look up at the clouds. What do you see? Remember what it was like as a child to find new patterns and beauty in nature. Let your mind wander and relax in nature as often as you can.