Studies Show Kids Who Are Obsessed With Dinosaurs Are Better Learners And Smarter Kids
It's official. Your kid’s all-consuming love of dinosaurs will actually benefit them in the long run. Also, it’ll likely go away in the next few months, at most a few years, so you don’t have to talk about velociraptors forever and you’ll eventually be able to stop telling people all your son wants for his birthday and Christmas is dinosaur-related items.
They could develop a love of anything from dinosaurs to insects to Minecraft to Disney princesses, and even though you may be tired of watching Frozen for the umpteenth time, it could lead to a smarter child.
The Odds Of An Obsession
Rather than calling it an obsession, researchers have taken to calling your child’s enthusiasm for dinosaurs as an “intense interest” which tend to burn bright and fast. A child's intense interest will typically only last between six months to three years.
A third of all children will develop an intense interest (though not necessarily to dinosaurs), most often between the ages of 2 and 6. Psychologists believe these intense interests are a big confidence booster for young kids because "that's their first taste of mastery, of being an expert in something" said Paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara.
The Big Picture
Recently, a study done by psychologist Joyce M. Alexander at Indiana University has categorized your child's interest in dinosaurs as a "conceptual interest" as opposed to situational interest, and have said that these conceptual intense interests benefit your kid long term.
The difference between a conceptual interest and a situational interest is easily determined if you look at your child's interest. Are they interested in dinosaurs as a whole, or are they simply interested in dinosaurs when they make a loud noise in a movie? A conceptual interest is not exclusive to dinosaurs either, it can be developed for anything.
How Are Intense Interests Beneficial?
Intense interests are good for a child's cognitive development. It helps them to develop a better attention span, increased knowledge and persistence, as well as better and more thorough information processing skills. Basically, kids who develop intense interests are better learners and overall smarter kids.
Pediatric psychiatric therapist Kelli Chen believes, "exploring a topic and mastering it is beneficial because that's how we form careers as adults. A kid's primary occupation is play, so they're going about their job of playing through the lens of this thing they're interested in learning about."
The Second Most Common Interest
Alexander's study found consistent information with other studies, also determining that interests of a conceptual domain can improve linguistic skills and be a good indicator of high understanding. Researchers believe the way children look at dinosaurs and learn about them helps them come up with strategies to face new situations and solve problems.
Studies have shown that the most common intense interest in children is vehicles, ie. planes, trains, cars, busses, and a close second is dinosaurs. It was also determined that boys are more likely to develop intense interests than girls, because of the way that genders consume information differently.
When Will It End?
The majority of the time, a kid's intense interest will burn out quickly - at most three years, but typically much shorter - but sometimes it can lead to a lifelong interest in dinosaurs or cars or whatever their subject of choice may be.
There are a number of factors that play into your child's loss of interest in a subject. The largest factor is that once a child enters full-time school and is exposed to a variety of different subjects, they no longer have the mental capacity to intensely focus on one topic.
