You can define logical thinking in many ways but here we’ll define it as the ability to identify patterns, to engage in clear reasoning and to draw conclusions that are robust and make the best sense of the patterns you’ve seen.
What is logical thinking?
Logical thinking starts with asking questions like “Does this make sense?” and “What is the evidence?” It moves us away from focusing too much on our emotions, conditioning and feeling and instead focuses on facts. Children that develop strong logical thinking skills have a great foundation on which to become confident, independent, and resilient people. They learn not to panic when things go wrong and instead to work through problems and search for solutions methodically. It also makes them better learners that are able to grasp difficult subjects more quickly because they know how to think clearly.
We are (in the mid-late 2020s) seeing people rely on social media to get information about the world, and they are being fed a steady diet of confusion and falsehoods. We also have people outsourcing their thinking to LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini. If you can’t think logically, you will always be vulnerable to being fooled by others. Those children who build their logical thinking muscles are going to have a massive advantage in future, so it’s essential that parents and caregivers focus heavily on this.
Logical thinking complements emotions, creativity.
Importantly, logical thinking doesn’t mean ignoring emotions or creativity. In fact, it works best alongside them. We’re not cold robots who just sort through inputs and select the most logical output. No, we use logical thinking in harmony with empathy, imagination, curiosity, intuition, etc. When nurtured together these traits help children become wise, not just clever.
So how do we develop logical thinking in our young people? Simply put – we encourage our children to question, to ask why, to explore, to experiment. I’m a firm believer that children are natural problem solvers – we just need to create environments around them which give them opportunities to put heir natural inclinations into practice. I personally believe that learning and exploring mathematics is a great way of building logical thinking in children because mathematics is all about finding and making sense of patterns. This is one reason that I focus so heavily on maths with my children, even though I wasn’t hat into it when I was younger.
The videos below gives some good tips. Keep checking back as I’ll be adding more resources as I come across them. And please be sure to sign up to my mailing list so you don’t miss future articles.
Peace
Ely
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