Many of the adults who took my mind mapping training, or participated in one of my other training courses where I explained mind mapping, go home and explain mind mapping to their children. Often, their children love to create mind maps. Still the process of learning children to mindmap is something most parents don’t really know. They don’t know what is important and what should be done by the child when creating mind maps. Here are some pointers.

The first thing you should do a sit down with your child and ask them how and what they are doing at school. Do they need to create summaries? Is there a presentation they need to give? If so you can tell them you know a wonderful, easy and fun way of doing this.

As you probably know most children are visual thinkers. They draw images, and they use images when they talk. You should nurture this way of working and thinking. That is why you should not bother them with all the minor details of mind mapping. The most important thing you should tell them is to connect information with each other and to create small images with lots of colors from the information.

You probably won’t have to tell them they should use few words. Their mind is like a sponge which absorbs lots of information and only needs one keyword to remember all the information. Inspire them to create small pictures, use few words, and connect all the information.

When you do this your child will easily pick up the art and skill of mind mapping. In fact, I think the mindmaps your son or daughter draws look much more like original mind maps then the ones you create. The reason for this is your child’s natural ability to think in pictures.

All of the above mentioned information is only allowing you to instruct your child how to create a mind map. The real test begins when you take their original information, for example their work book or their summary, and you compare this with the mindmap. Read the rest of this entry »