Planning Note_Bung-Nyeon Kim, President of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Foreword_Kim Hyo-won, Planning Director, Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Chapter 1: Helping the Brain Form Efficiently and Stably: Learning and Brain Development | Kim Hyo-won

Grasping reality into the brain | Factors affecting learning | A multi-level model to help understand learning | A more efficient and stable brain | Effort and learning strategies are as important as intelligence | Ways to support learning and brain development | Turtles: Every child has a different pace

Chapter 2: The Three Masters of Learning: Attention, Working Memory, and Executive Function | Seunghyun Son

The Difference Between Attention and Concentration | Three Things Your Child Needs to Know | What is Working Memory | What is Executive Functioning | Eleven Tips for Effectively Teaching Your Child | Children Who Need Expert Help | From the Heart of a Parent Who Just Taken Their Child to a Buffet for the First Time

Chapter 3: Literacy and Study Self-Esteem | Yang Chan-mo

Literacy is Demanding in an Era | Study Confidence and Literacy | Reading Boosts Intelligence | When is the Critical Period? | How to Develop Language Skills Early in Life | How to Improve Reading Skills in School Age

Chapter 4: Math and Mathematical Abilities You Can't Give Up | Lee Tae-yeop

Numerical skills related to decision-making, success, and national competitiveness | The development of numeracy and factors affecting it | How to improve numeracy skills with teaching aids | Number sense and brain science | Self-directed learning and easy math are not everything | Study habits of elementary school students | The areas of calculation and geometry must be developed together | Why, when, and how do math dropouts arise? | Children with calculation disorder and dyscalculia | Is advance learning helpful? | How to prepare for competitions | What can parents do at home?

Chapter 5: When and How to Study English | Jae-seok Jeong

Writing Systems and Learning to Read | Is There a Sensitive Period for English Learning? | New Trends in English Education: Literacy

Chapter 6: Achievements of Children Who Manage Their Emotions | Eun-ju Kim

Emotional regulation is essential for academic success | Learning emotions: Important emotions involved in achievement and frustration | How parents can help their children regulate their emotions | The development of emotional regulation: Frontal lobe development and inhibitory mechanisms | Academic achievement in children with high emotional intelligence | Factors affecting learning emotions and ways to improve emotion regulation skills | Emotional problems that lower cognition, concentration, and learning motivation | How to increase positive emotions toward learning | Children with intrinsic motivation and abundant psychological resources | What parents should do

Chapter 7: Things That Get Better When the Environment Changes | Park Ji-in

The Link Between Early Life Stress, Intelligence, and Academic Achievement | Understanding Your Child's Inner Self and Reducing the Burden | Intensive Parenting Becomes the Trend in Korean Families | Differences in School Environment and Parental Communication by Social Class | Surviving with Children in the Digital Age | A Society Where Evaluated | Children Who Strive for Their Own Self

Chapter 8: A Generation Where Studying Has a Declining Influence | Song Ji-hye

Studying determines success or failure in life, really? | A generation where study's influence is diminishing | Parents' attitudes toward academics | Studying is also a talent | A few things more important than studying | A message of encouragement to all of us

Develop cognitive function
Achievement through perseverance and self-control

Each child's brain development is different.
In this book, the authors, who treat developmental problems in hospitals, explore a more efficient and stable brain based on brain science research.
Knowing this will help you understand more clearly why your child's learning is different or falling behind that of his or her peers.


When we learn something, we use several cognitive functions, including intelligence, which are closely related to the neurobiological components of the brain.
During the fetal period, the cerebral cortex is already divided into dozens of highly differentiated regions.
Around the 35th week of pregnancy, major folds in the cerebral cortex are formed, and the temporal lobe region, which controls language, begins to show asymmetry.
That is, during childhood and adolescence, not only cognitive functions but also the structure, function, and connectivity between brain regions all mature.
Therefore, parents must provide experiences and learning appropriate to each stage of life for their children's brains to develop healthily and lay the foundation for learning new things.
The most important of these is the development of the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive function, impulse control, and higher-order reasoning and judgment.

It is clear that intelligence has a significant impact on children's learning, and different learning strategies are required depending on the child's intelligence level.
As a parent, to better understand your child, it's helpful to know what functions the brain uses for learning.


Hyunwoo, whose mother is a doctor, is currently in the third year of middle school.
Although everyone in the family excelled in their studies, for some reason, Hyunwoo had difficulty concentrating and was slow to act since his early elementary school years.
During the non-face-to-face classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, I was only able to solve one math problem per hour.
When the teacher repeatedly pointed out Hyunwoo's behavior, the boy became discouraged and depressed, even wishing he could just fall asleep and never wake up.
Hyunwoo visited the clinic with his mother and took an intelligence test.
As a result, Hyunwoo's IQ was low at 77, and he had ADHD.
The author recommends repeated eye-level education for children with low intelligence, like Hyunwoo.
It is especially helpful to explain things in an easy and specific way, taking into account the child's language comprehension ability and vocabulary, and to use pictures and video materials.


Brain circuits naturally weaken if they are not used.
Therefore, it is important for parents to help their children practice making and modifying their own plans.
This is because repeated experiences mature the prefrontal cortex and train executive functions.
What problems arise if your executive function is poor? First, you can't prioritize tasks in the short term.
Furthermore, in the long run, it is easy to become unable to control one's desires, which leads to a decline in self-objectification and the insistence on inefficient learning.
If the stress caused by this is left untreated, the child's brain function will decline further, and the author reveals eleven tips for making children learn effectively.
The speed and quality of your child's learning will depend on how well you apply these tips.


Another thing that is just as important as intelligence is for children to have the belief that their own brain development is possible through effort.
Children who have the tenacity and self-control to consistently work hard achieve success not only in their academics but also in other areas of their lives.


How to Develop Literacy, Math, and English Skills

Literacy is the foundational skill for all learning.
High literacy skills lead to higher academic self-esteem.
The author of the literacy section recalls that, despite reading a lot, he found language particularly difficult during his school days, and points out the possible causes of this.
The strength of this book lies in the authors' ability to share their expertise and revisit areas of study, not just their current research and treatment, but also their own school days.


If you don't acquire early literacy skills, you will experience academic failure in the first and second grades of elementary school, and as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, your reading ability will widen further, making it difficult to narrow the learning gap.
Therefore, literacy is extremely important.
The author recommends 'reading' as a way to improve literacy.
It may sound a bit obvious, but knowing the correlation between the development of the brain regions described in the book and reading can be very motivating.
The more we read, the more the synapses in our brain are connected on a large scale, and as the synaptic connections become denser and thicker, various brain areas develop.
Reading stimulates the cerebral cortex, which is particularly associated with intelligence, thereby developing the abilities of the prefrontal cortex.
Moreover, literacy has been found to be related to emotional stability and boost self-esteem.
So when is a good time to start reading? This book details the golden time and reading methods.


Mathematical ability (with the caveat that this may sound worldly) is closely related to a child's success and, by extension, national competitiveness.
Mathematics has applications in more fields than you might think.
For example, mathematics played a role in predicting, responding to, and treating the coronavirus pandemic that has swept the world.
Additionally, several studies have shown that studying mathematics develops observation, reasoning, and insight skills.
Children who are good at math are more likely to make successful decisions and achieve socioeconomic success.


So what should parents do to help their children develop their sense of numbers? The author recommends providing environmental conditions.
A study of children aged 14 to 30 months found that there was a significant difference in the frequency with which numbers were used in conversations between parents and children.
Of course, it is much more helpful for parents to say numbers when looking at picture books or going to the supermarket.
On the other hand, what if your child only picks out certain types of problems and consistently makes mistakes on others? Hajin, a sixth grader, is a prime example. While she excels at problems involving geometry and spatial reasoning, she lags behind in calculations and operations.
The former corresponds to the space-time domain, and the latter corresponds to the number and reasoning domain, so of course they may not develop evenly.
It is said in the market that 'repetition is important' to develop computational ability.
However, the author examines the appropriateness of this method and examines whether it is a correct solution from a neuroscientific perspective and whether there are any side effects.
Furthermore, it provides guidance on what methods are best to use for children who have difficulty with math even though they do not have any cognitive problems.
The author of “How and When to Study English” is a doctor and the head of the Korean Dyslexia Association.
Is there a sensitive period for learning a foreign language? Are English immersion programs like the current trendy "Mom's English" method or short-term language training programs helpful? The author examines these common questions among mothers.
For example, there are many mothers who speak English to their babies and sing English nursery rhymes to them. However, they point out that this type of education is surprisingly ineffective, as children's brains try to match new English words with corresponding vocabulary in their native language, so if their native language is poor, their foreign language vocabulary is bound to be poor as well.
What about the controversial early English education? The author encourages children and parents who missed out on early English education, saying, "If you invest enough time later, after your child has developed the ability to concentrate and learn, they will never fall behind others in English skills."
If you solve the 'Foreign Language Education Quiz' he presents, you will find that there are many facts that overturn our common sense.


Achievements of Children Who Control Their Emotions Well

What sets this book apart from other learning books is that the authors, as mind-care practitioners, teach students how to regulate their emotions while learning.
When it comes to studying, the learning environment is more important than anything else.
The authors emphasize that 'children who are good at controlling their emotions can achieve academic success.'
Several studies have shown that children with mood swings lag behind in their ability to absorb information, socialize, and problem-solve.
If we look at cases where children did well in elementary school but then had poor grades in middle and high school, there are many cases where they failed to manage or control their emotions.
This book contrasts the story of Minwoo, a student at a prestigious private high school, who suffered from severe mood swings and anxiety and frustration, with Soyeon, who had been drawing, who unexpectedly achieved excellent grades when she changed her career path to studying.
This is because the two children are representative examples of failure and success in regulating ‘learning emotions.’
Therefore, parents must be sensitive to their child's emotional problems to prevent them from experiencing a decline in their child's cognitive abilities, concentration, and motivation to learn.
Especially during adolescence, the frontal lobe develops fully and self-regulation ability increases, but hormonal changes can also make it difficult to control emotions and addictive behaviors, so emotional management is key.
In short, “children with high emotional intelligence also have high academic achievement.”
Accordingly, the book provides detailed information on factors that influence learning emotions and ways to improve emotional regulation skills.


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Competition among children at school isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Competition sometimes boosts your performance and pushes you forward.
Children who are trying their best but are not able to improve their grades due to lack of concentration in their studies need to take strategic approaches, create a good environment, and may need to be diagnosed for ADHD or other conditions.
When a child is stressed about studying, parents may step in and have them quit the academy or allow them to play games freely.
But that doesn't mean it will be easily resolved.
While some prior learning is ineffective, some is appropriate and necessary.
In this book, the authors try to provide the best answers to each child in various situations.
In addition, it contains an ADHD symptom checklist, a dyslexia screening checklist, and a dyscalculia checklist, which will be of practical help.