Dr. Laura Jana, a pediatrician and director of innovation at UNMC’s College of Public Health, has a new book out called “The Toddler Brain: Nurture the Skills Today That Will Shape Your Child’s Tomorrow.”
Jana says her book offers a parenting paradigm shift and focuses on seven QI skills children need to develop in their first five years.
She says she did extensive research for the book and wrote about how people can adjust the ways they parent young children to prepare them for the future.
Jana says the seven QI skills are meant to be simple and include ME, WE, WHY, WILL, WIGGLE, WOBBLE and WHAT IF.
But she says though they are simple to categorize, it doesn’t mean they aren’t important.
"ME skills imply self-awareness, self-control, impulse control and mindfulness. So they’re all about how do you sort of take control of yourself. And WE skills, as you might guess, are the people skills, the relationship skills. WHY is as it sounds, it’s questioning, but not just the question WHY but asking questions about how the world works. WILL is motivation and drive.”
Jana says WIGGLE focuses on the physical and intellectual restlessness that play a key role in putting WHY and WILL skills into action.
WOBBLE focuses on adaptability, resilience and how to learn from failure and WHAT IF encompasses curiosity, imagination and creativity; allowing kids to understand both how the world is and envision how it could be.
For more information on the seven QI skills and Dr. Jana’s book, the Facebook page is @DrLauraJana.