Engage the upstairs brain through curiosity and play
Ask questions that require the child to think, imagine, or consider another perspective.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Ask questions that require the child to think, imagine, or consider another perspective.
- Why it works: The prefrontal cortex develops through use: asking a child to imagine another person’s feelings, consider consequences, or think of a creative solution is literally exercise for the circuits responsible for empathy, impulse control, and decision-making. Playful engagement of these capacities during calm moments builds the neurological infrastructure that the child draws on during emotional storms.
- Evidence: Plausible mechanism, limited direct outcome data.
- Avoid: Posing perspective-taking questions during or immediately after a conflict, when the upstairs brain is still offline — these exercises only build capacity when the child is calm enough to access the circuits you’re training.
Why it works
The prefrontal cortex develops through use: asking a child to imagine another person’s feelings, consider consequences, or think of a creative solution is literally exercise for the circuits responsible for empathy, impulse control, and decision-making. Playful engagement of these capacities during calm moments builds the neurological infrastructure that the child draws on during emotional storms.
How to do it
- 1During calm moments, ask perspective-taking questions: "How do you think your friend felt when that happened?"
- 2Use what-if games: "What would you do if…?"
- 3After resolving a conflict, invite the child to explain why something felt unfair and how it might be solved differently.
- 4Praise the reasoning process, not just the answer: "That was really thoughtful."
What the evidence says
MechanisticExecutive function and perspective-taking develop through practice across childhood; structured challenges to these capacities support their development, consistent with use-dependent neural development principles.
Honest caveat: Use-dependent cortical development is well established; that specific parenting questions build these circuits is a principled inference rather than a directly studied causal claim.
- — Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168.
Common mistake
Posing perspective-taking questions during or immediately after a conflict, when the upstairs brain is still offline — these exercises only build capacity when the child is calm enough to access the circuits you’re training.
IX Coach suggests age-appropriate perspective-taking and curiosity exercises drawn from your child’s actual interests, so upstairs-brain practice happens in engaging rather than dry contexts.
Practice this with IX Coach →