My Family and Other Globalizers | Kids not listening? Good news: it’s evolutionary biology

Young people are configured to absorb and observe new information, aka be easily distracted, which is an important component of the learning process. (Representational image: Ketut Subiyanto via Pexels)

Note to readers: My Family and Other Globalizers is a weekly parenting column on bringing up global citizens.

If I had a rupee for every time that I asked my children to refill the ice trays with water after they had taken said ice out of them, before stuffing them back empty in the freezer, I would be a rich woman. And there is a smorgasbord of similar scenarios that would have me rolling in riches: a euro for each time I told the boys to fold their night clothes away into the cupboard, only to find them lying crumpled on the floor. Or a yen for remembering to have their school bags packed and ready the evening before, rather than last thing in the morning with the school bus honking outside.

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These are but the fantasies of any mother, scratching her head trying to figure out why her words seem to go in and out of the ears of her offspring, seemingly without leaving a trace on their consciousness. Well, frazzled parent, I have good news for you. There is apparently a scientific reason for why children don’t follow simple instructions.

According to Daniel Berry, a psychologist who studies the development of self-regulation and attention at the University of Minnesota, often when children appear not to be following instructions, what they are following is the biological imperative of making sense of the world around them.

The amount of new information that a young child needs to absorb, categorize and store away in their brains on a daily basis is enormous. To grow their brains, they actually need to follow and learn about the things that can distract them from carrying out what their parents are telling them to do.

So far example, they might take out the ice tray from the freezer, squeeze out a cube for their drink, but then hear the family cat meow and wander off to find out what’s going on with the pet, while the tray lies languishing and unfilled on the kitchen top. This is how a child’s brain is wired.

According to Dr Berry, children’s brains need the freedom to make sense of the world. Were they to shut out distractions, and exclusively focus on parental instructions, they wouldn’t be able to accomplish this sense-making as effectively. The ability to focus attention on one task and suppress other competing desires requires something called executive function. This is defined as the cognitive ability needed to control thoughts, emotions and actions, aka maturity. And the part of the brain responsible for executive function—the prefrontal cortex—doesn’t finish developing until people reach their mid-twenties.

The brains of adults and those of children are designed for different purposes. Young people are configured to absorb and observe new information, aka be easily distracted, which is an important component of the learning process. Sometimes when your child is ruminating, staring off into the ether, while his math homework book lies untouched on the study desk, he is actually learning more—by spending thought on assimilating his day’s experiences—than he would be doing sums.

Some cognitive scientists, like Alison Gopnik, have even made the case for training Artificial Intelligence to learn like children—by trial and error, experimentation and adaptation—none of which are developed simply by obeying parental orders.

In computing there is a phenomenon called Moravec's paradox, which refers to the fact that the things adults think of as hard—like playing chess—are the very things that AI can do easily. What is hard for AI to learn are the kinds of things that are easy for a 4-year-old: recognizing a face, judging people's motivations, setting appropriate goals, paying attention to things that are interesting; anything to do with perception, attention, visualization, and social skills and so on.

All of which is a sciency way of letting you, dear reader, off the hook. The next time your offspring fails to listen to your instructions, remember that it’s not about your parenting skills, but about evolutionary biology.  Halleluiah!