Mental development
It's relatively straightforward to measure the height of our children and ensure that they have everything they need to grow physically, but when it comes to measuring and growing their minds we face a much greater challenge. This challenge is greater for many reasons, beginning with the fact that until recently, we didn't have anything like a ruler for mental growth. Without a ruler—preferably an accurate yet inexpensive ruler—there was simply no way to reliably measure mental development. All we could do was compare students' grades or abilities to produce correct answers.
Back in 1996, Dr. Dawson decided to work on building such a ruler, with the goal of using it to support the development of competent, hopeful, and socially skilled humans with well-developed, agile minds. MindLog is the result.
Beautiful human minds
MindLog is designed to support the kind of real-world learning that happens when we either put ideas to work or form new ones through practice, experimentation, or collaboration. It leverages the same mental mechanisms that drive us to learn to walk and talk.
MindLog also builds skills for learning, including skills like sensing, noticing, reasoning, and making connections.
MindLog's commenting feature supports the development of social skills along with skills for for providing constructive criticism.
Receiving comments on their own MindLog entries provides young MindLoggers with frequent opportunities to build skills for working effectively with feedback, including essential self-regulation and social skills.
For ages 2–18
Parents can begin using MindLog to monitor their children's mental growth at any verbal age.
Our use of the word parents includes legal guardians.
In the early years, parents can record the language of children a play, transcribe it for free on most computers, clean it up a bit, and add it to the child's personal MindLog.
Later, children can either dictate their MindLog entries or parents can enter their handwritten texts into MindLog.
Finally, once children begin to prefer typing, they can write directly into MindLog and begin sharing their writing with friends and family.
Please contact us if you're interested in beta-testing MindLog for Parents.
Why MindLog?
We're all born with a genetic inheritance that predicts about 50% our future mental growth. Contextual factors like diet, child rearing practices, schooling, and life experience account for the other 50%. Parents play a big role in determining what the latter 50% looks like. MindLog equips parents with information about their children's developmental trajectories that can help considerably with childrearing and schooling decisions. In fact, parents who use MindLog can leverage what they learn about their children's growth patterns to make customized educational decisions.
For example, because children develop at quite different rates, children who develop more rapidly (and are frequently read to) may teach themselves to read before first grade. Other children who are read to just as often but are developing less rapidly, may need to be read to up to 3 or even 4 years longer before their minds are primed for reading. In the past, educators expected all children of a particular age to learn to read, regardless of how prepared their minds were. For children who weren't ready to read, this could mean several years of seeing themselves as failures, which is not a good way to support healthy mental development.
Most children who have been read to daily can learn to read within a few weeks once they are regularly scoring in mid-level 8 on our scale. The average age-range for scores at this level is 5–8.
MindLog and home-schooling
MindLog is ideal for home-schoolers. Once children are able to write or dictate responses, their MindLog journal can be used to store all of their written work in one place. They can share their work with friends, invite others to comment, comment the work of others, and watch themselves grow. Importantly, they can watch themselves grow without the interference of scores. (We don't show scores to children or adolescents under the age of 16.)
MindLog Essays vs. MindLog Reflections
We recommend Mindlog Reflections for parents, because, if you follow the instructions below, you will receive more scores for the same price.
Documenting natural speech (ages 2ish–7ish)
The examples below show growth for two children from about 30 months to 5 years of age. In the example on the left, records were scored every two weeks or more. In the graph on the right, records were scored every week or two.
We are not expecting parents to record enough of their children's speech to produce records as dense as these. Instead, we suggest aiming for a score once every two months from ages 2–3, then once every 3 months from 4–5, every 4 months from 6–8, and every 6 months from 9-17.
Suggested score and entry numbers
| Age-range | Score frequency | No. of entries | Max scores per year |
| 2-3 | Every 2 months | 4-5 | 6 |
| 4-5 | Every 3 months | 4-5 | 4 |
| 6-8 | Every 4 months | 4-5 | 3 |
| 9-17 | Every 6 months | 4-5 | 2 |
Most likely, you will be able to use the built-in recording app on your computer to transcribe recordings and isolate your child's speech. You can add transcription results into the currently open reflection field in MindLog at any time. Include basic punctuation, if possible. When you have enough speech to hit the maximum character count limit, hit the submit button.
If you max out the character count for each entry (which may involve making more than one recording) before submitting an entry, the number of entries required to receive a score will be 4-5. Entries are editable until they have been scored.
When naming and describing “prompts,” Keep in mind that you are creating an archive that you're likely to visit in the future. We suggest establishing naming and describing conventions right from the beginning. This will make it much easier to locate particular records in the future.
We can't provide a maximum character account because it varies by age or educational level. The first time you use MindLog you won't know the maximum character count until you receive a warning.
About recording children's speech
You will need to record the speech of children under the age of 9 or 10. Children can be recorded at play or in conversation.
MindLog is designed to work best with spontaneously produced speech—the current everyday speech of a child. We're after what we call the child's functional vocabulary—the vocabulary in use when the child is not receiving support from the environment. Young children learn their language by repeating the speech the people around them. This makes it a bit challenging to collect functional level speech.
When conversing with children who are being recorded, avoid using any language that they aren't already using on their own. Including words that are not in young children's active, unprompted vocabularies will artificially inflate their early scores. This can obscure later growth.
To get as close as possible to your child's functional vocabulary, follow these guidelines:
- When you're recording, avoid using words your child isn't already using on a regular basis.
- Make recordings when the child is playing with similarly-aged children or chatting with adults who understand the need to avoid using any language the child is not already using.
- After you have made a transcription of each recording, isolate your child's speech and remove all words that your child “parrots” after hearing them said by someone older.
- Next, remove all words that are not used in a meaningful way. For example, leave out words your child doesn't typically use that are repeated out of context.
Before entering a word into MindLog, ask yourself, “Is this a word that's been used by my child in everyday interactions for several days?” If the answer is “no” it's best to leave it out.
The shape of development
At this point, nobody knows what growth patterns based on frequent measurements over long periods will look like. MindLog is something entirely new and hasn't yet been around long enough to produce a single chart that covers over 15 years of MindLogging at this level of detail. A growing number of parents, educators, researchers, and learners are looking forward to finding out!
The image below shows the growth of a fictional child whose fictional parents began making entries when she was about 30 months old. Initially, speech samples were entered by her parents every few weeks until the child began entering her own responses at about age 10. In the Reflections version of MindLog,
A few things to consider
It's a good idea to familiarize yourself with our more general information about MindLog and optimizing learning through information here on our website, in Dr. Dawson's Medium blog, and through our courses—especially ViP.
Real growth can look bumpier than what you see in the graph above.
We expect that growth charts will reveal periods of slower growth (plateaus), followed by growth spurts. We have already documented spurts and plateaus in research with young children. It is helpful to think of plateaus as periods of consolidation (learning to work with new ideas) and spurts as periods of growth (building new ideas). If your child seems to be entering a plateau, (1) avoid introducing new challenges, and (2) make sure there are diverse opportunities for practice existing skills.
In the early years, parents can learn a great deal about their children's growth patterns and how these relate to life events. As children get older, they can become experts on their own learning by observing how moods, behavior, and life experiences affect their growth.