How to Raise Kids Who Think for Themselves | Barbara Mojica

How do we teach our kids to tell the difference between fact and opinion in a world overflowing with information? In this episode, Anthony Craiker sits down with Barbara Mojica—educator, historian, and author of the Little Miss History series—to explore how parents can help children become curious learners and confident critical thinkers. Together they talk about the importance of family history, the role grandparents can play in shaping children’s understanding of the past, and practical ways families can use everyday moments—at the dinner table, at the store, even in the car—to spark meaningful conversations. Whether you’re raising young kids or guiding teens, this episode will inspire parents to model respect, honesty, and curiosity while helping their children develop the skills they need to thrive in today’s complex world.

Barbara's Website: https://www.littlemisshistory.com/ 

Social Media Links: 

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/bamauthor

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Littlemisshistorycom/

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Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/bamauthor

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Transcript

Interview with Barbara Mojica

Anthony: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody, to another episode of Fulfilling Work Meaningful Life. I'm your host, Anthony Craiker, and I am joined today by Barbara Mojica, a retired educator, historian, and author. Barbara, it's so great to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on. 

Barbara: Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm looking forward to chatting with you and your audience.

Anthony: Absolutely. So Barbara, what is the most meaningful experience you've had in the last week? 

Barbara: Okay, this may sound silly and simple, 

but I am starting to get more feeling back in my arm. I broke my universe. 

Anthony: Oh, okay. 

Barbara: Six weeks ago. And it's finally. Starting to feel a little bit better. I'm in a sling, so I'm kind of like one sided.

Yeah. 

But it's, it's it's feeling a little better. So day by day, you know, when you have lemons, you make lemonade. So 

Anthony: there you go. If you are. Yeah. Well, I, I'm glad you're [00:01:00] on the mend and hopefully you'll have it fully functioning in the near future. That would be great. 

Barbara: Yep. I'm hoping when I go next doctor's visit.

I'm hoping this is coming off, so 

Anthony: Very good. Well, I am so excited to talk to you today. When you messaged me and I looked at your profile on pod match, which is where I, I get. Most of my guest interviews from, I, I was really excited to see that you have a background in history. I'm a history major.

My undergraduate degree is in history. I went on to law school and I, I, I'm a practicing attorney now, but I, I have a love for history and so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to, to talk to you as a, as a. History teacher and somebody who appreciates the, you know, the importance of history.

So our, our, my audience might be wondering why would I bring on somebody to talk about history? And I think, we'll, we'll get into this in a little bit, but I, I think they'll find that there's a lot of value in understanding history in, in terms of understanding the world around us. And also I [00:02:00] love what you're doing with.

Writing books for kids about history and helping our our kids learn to be critical thinkers and learn to appreciate history is a, is a really, really important part of their educational journey. So I'm excited to, to talk to you about this. So, first of all, I know the answer to this, you know the answer to this, but for our audience, why should anybody care about history?

Barbara: Well, as my little character who narrates my book series says, little Miss History, if you don't know your history, you don't know what you're talking about. If you, even if you look at the very youngest child, what are the first things that a child asks, wants to know? The reason why? Where did I come from?

Who came before me? Why do, why do I go to school? Who, why do. People in my family have the customs and traditions they have. So if we want to understand how we got to [00:03:00] where we are today, we have to have a knowledge of the things that came before. How did we get here? The, all those basic questions that are a part of critical thinking, which you mentioned before.

Mm-hmm. The who, the what, the when, the where, the why, and what does history teach you? It teaches you to look at something, someone, an event, whatever that crux might be, and then to figure out is it true? Is this something that's real? And it's so important for children today to understand the difference between truth or effect.

Anthony: Mm-hmm. 

Barbara: Something 

that can be proven true or an opinion, because what are they fed every day? Ad nauseum. Yeah. On the internet, in social media, they're fed opinions which are reinforced. Depending on [00:04:00] who they interact with. And then that algorithm keeps repeating and repeating and repeating. So today there are so many people who really don't understand the difference between a fact and an opinion, and opinions have taken over and and today.

Being fed that over and over and over again. What you, what used to be. A variety of opinions is, is suddenly narrowed down to the very few opinions that the algorithm is feeding you because you are interacting with these same kinds of people over and over again. So we're not being given a diversity of opinions and we're all kind of being fed into these silos of a very small group that we're interacting with. So I find it very ironic that in a world where we [00:05:00] say we are, we're, the world is shrinking, we now have access to everyone. In reality, we are really being given access to a fewer, segment of that population, fewer people. So, yeah, it to me it, it, it really seems ironic that we should have access to the whole world.

And technically with the internet, we do have the ability to interact with someone thousands and thousands of miles away. We, we are in effect limiting ourselves. To a much smaller group of people. And so, and people are doing that willingly. Yeah. You know they're, they're not willing to reach out to hear what people say, who have a very different opinion from theirs.

So it, it's, it's, it's kind of a dichotomy. We have access to more yet. We [00:06:00] are limiting ourselves the 

Anthony: less, yeah. It, it really is ironic, I think that, that we have access to more information than we've ever had in the history of humanity. And yet it's so easy to end up in an echo chamber of just hearing people regurgitate the, you know, our own viewpoints on things.

Oftentimes not so well informed opinions about the world around us. So how can, how, how can we help our. Rising generation, our children, our grandchildren, to learn to distinguish between facts and opinions, while recognizing that they have this technology, right? That it's not going away. The, the internet's not going anywhere.

They're gonna have access to smartphones and who knows, whatever devices that are gonna come out in the future. How can we help them to, to learn to distinguish those things between fact and and opinion. And what role can history play in that? [00:07:00] Process? 

Barbara: Well, I think that it has to start with the parents and it has to start at a very, very young age.

Anthony: Mm-hmm. 

Barbara: Parents are the first teachers. Okay. They are really the child's only connection. To the outside world for the first few years of the child's life. So if we start teaching them the type of values that they're going to need to function and to think independently and critically in this world, the parents have to be the first to do it.

So what I call, creative thinking skills, which go along with the critical thinking skills are things like respect. A parent has to teach, can teach a and you can teach a very young child respect. Mm-hmm. By helping them to [00:08:00] understand that they have to be honest, that they have to be kind, that they have to share with others.

That they have to be humble in the sense that when they make a mistake, they have to be able to admit that they make a mistake. They have to learn to forgive others who may have made a mistake and inadvertently hurt or harm them in some minor way, and we have to teach them to. Persevere and not, not to give up.

It might sound complicated, but they can introduce those things in everyday life and the parent has to be willing to do those things as well. I mean, some parents find it very difficult to say they're wrong. Mm-hmm. And one of the best things you can do to teach a [00:09:00] child. How to acknowledge being the one to say well, I'm, I'm the, I'm the one who was wrong.

It was my fault. I mean, kids have to understand that. We are never always a hundred percent right. And the people we deal with are never a hundred percent right. Even if they are an authority over us. That's one of the skills that a leader needs to develop too, in working with people, 

Anthony: right? 

Barbara: So we, we have to do that with them at a very young age, and parents can integrate that in their everyday life.

By being the role model for the child. So if you want a child to communicate well with others, you have to be willing to put that phone aside. If you are sitting at the table and you've got the phone on. [00:10:00] When the child is talking to you, what kind of message are you giving them? 

Anthony: Yeah, 

Barbara: so they have to be the role models, and of course it's very difficult in our modern society.

Parents are juggling many different roles at one time. They're, you know, they're working, they're trying to interact with their children, they're trying to manage the household. They're, they're trying to. Have some kind of independent life of their own as, as well as the role of parent. And sometimes that may be very difficult to do.

We don't seem to have enough hours in the day, right? Yeah. So we only, we all only have those 24 hours and we have to learn to make time for ourself too. Balance our relationships with our families and to balance our relationship with our work. And, and that's becoming increasingly [00:11:00] difficult because some, some people have feel, you know, they get a sense of overwhelm and then they get frustrated and then they give up.

So we have to learn to make time. For each of of those separate components in our, in our lives and to teach children to do the same too. You know, that's how we teach them to be organized. Mm-hmm. You know, by helping them understand that we have to conform. 

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah, that's a, that's a really great point.

And, and, and it's another irony, right? I mean, we have, we, we have all of this amazing technology that is supposed to make our lives easier, and we're supposed to be more efficient, right? So in theory, we should have plenty of time to do the things that we want to do and, and need to do in life. And yet sometimes it feels like, you know, we're busier than, than we've ever been as a society [00:12:00] despite having all of these, you know, wonderful wonderful.

Tools and technologies that, that are supposed to help us. So it's, it's, it's a really interesting paradox. I think this, this time that we're living in and, and it's so easy to set a, a poor example for our children if we're not mindful of, of you know, what? What we're doing with the devices that we have and, and how we're spending our time.

And to your point, you know, I think instilling those values early on is really, really important for helping them to be able to engage the world, to think critically and to see things from other people's perspectives. 

Barbara: And, and you can do that in 

your everyday experiences. I mean, I know like, like you were saying, that the technology is almost forced upon us.

I mean, just think of. How you, that you are made dependent on your phone because of this, you know, two step verification and yeah, you try to do something and then, oh no wait, you have to wait for the code to verify to say [00:13:00] who you are and it, it becomes like crazy. But you, I mean, you can integrate these kind of things with kids.

Going to the store, dropping them off at school sitting in a waiting room at the doctor's office, you know, asking them these kind of open-ended questions and asking them what they think. You know, you, you walk down the street and you see an old house and you can say something to them like, oh, who do you think?

That do you think they dressed the same as we did? Do you think that they went to school? Do. Ate the same food we did, just asking them for their opinion on little things. You're in the grocery store, you know? Mm-hmm. Wherever you might be, you, you can integrate it into your life without saying, okay, I have to carve out an extra 15 minutes of, of [00:14:00] time every day when the child comes home from school and asks them those questions.

So you can, you can be doing that. No matter what you happen to be doing in your life and, and with a little bit of practice, it becomes pretty easy to do and it will almost become a automatic, and you, you would find that the child would start to respond to that and ask you the same kinds of questions.

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. What about family history? Like what, what, how can familial history influence our, our family dynamics and relationships? 

Barbara: That's a great way to start because the young child, again, first, their first introduction to forming relationships with people is within the family unit. So you can.

Introduce them to family history. You can. [00:15:00] The grandparents are a great way to do that because kids react naturally and. They are probably more open to respond to grandparents than their parents because they see them as less of an authority figure. They see them more as someone who has had experience and has done a lot of things before they were born and has a a, a lot of.

Different types of experiences to share with them. So I think having them form bonds with the grandparents and, and the grandparents being able to share with them different types of experiences and then have the children to relate to those that appeal to them. And of course the grandparents may have more time to spend with them than the parents do.

Anthony: Mm-hmm.

Barbara: Depending on the kind of work that the parents do whether they have a nine to five [00:16:00] job or whether they work at home, the same number of hours, still the grandparents may have more time and the ability to take them to different places while the parents are working and so on. So that's one thing.

And, and of course. Encouraging them to, to share with the children how things were different and how things have changed. The grandparents have experienced so much change in their lifetimes compared to the parents so they can go back and talk to them about things that. That are totally unfamiliar to the child.

Mm-hmm. You know, like a card catalog in a library, which doesn't even exist anymore. How we actually had to go when we wanted to find out the answer to something. We had to go to a library we had to [00:17:00] find and research books that talked about that subject. Then we had to take notes on it. We had to take all that information and the computer didn't put it together for us.

We had to go and put it together and after we compared and contrasted all of those things, again, part of the skills of history and critical thinking. We had to take all of that information and put it together in order to form some kind of conclusion. 

Anthony: Yeah, we 

Barbara: had to come to some kind of truth, figure out what is the reality.

But we compared, we contrasted, we analyzed we looked at original sources, people, things that people actually wrote about and, and. Were actually occurring at that time or the of the letter that they wrote to somebody expressing their opinion so we can prove [00:18:00] that that was true. 

Anthony: Yeah, 

Barbara: we don't have to guess.

Was it their opinion that wrote about it? That must have been what they. Believe, and we can use other kinds of primary sources too, like archeology or you know, physical, physical artifacts that, that have been left behind. So that's a good way you know, to connect with kids and to help them understand, well, what's the difference between reality and, and, and what somebody thinks.

Anthony: Yeah. 

Barbara: And in schools that could be done in so many different ways. Unfortunately, a lot of the schools aren't teaching it that way. You know, we have to get kids to handle those primary sources and then to have them figure it out. So you can have groups, you can have kids working in different groups, doing different [00:19:00] things, examining.

The, those primary sources and then having them come back together and work together to compare and contrast what each of those groups found, and then be able to come to some kind of conclusion. And then, of course, there were times in history, 

Were no matter how much material we gather. We find a lot of different facts that, some of which contradict each other.

So sometimes the conclusion is there is no one definitive answer. 

Anthony: Right? 

Barbara: But there are possibilities based on facts. 

Anthony: Yeah, from a, from a historian's perspective, I think that's where history gets to, gets to be a lot of fun, right? Is Yes. When you're looking at all those sources and trying to, you know, fi figure it out.

I yeah, I, I I love how you described that. 'cause I think a lot of people misunderstand what history is, right? It's not just dates and names and places. Those are important. We, we [00:20:00] need to know those things. But history is a, is a process of analyzing the evidence and, putting it together and trying, like you said, to come to a conclusion about what happened, what, what is real, what, what was reality in the past, and how does that inform our circumstances today, and how is that going to affect the decisions that we make in the future?

So it's a, it's a really important discipline. At least I, at least I think so. 

Barbara: Well, and, and, and that's why it is an, an undergraduate major for so many people that go into different fields, whether it be as you did with law or politics. 

Anthony: Mm-hmm. 

Barbara: Or. With almost any field, you have to be able to think critically and sort information and even science because in, oh yeah, in essence, history is a lot like science.

You're kind of, you, you're starting with a hypothesis. Something you think right might be [00:21:00] true. And then you are working from there. You test all the variables, which are all, all, all the different types of primary source information. And then you kind of put it all together. Sometimes the experiment works, sometimes the experiment doesn't work.

So it's, it's it's very similar. Similar process. 

Anthony: Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit more about your books that you write, the, the little miss history books for our audience that may not be familiar with your work. 

Barbara: Well, that's the way I started out when I, I have a long career in education, so my, both my degrees are in history.

I have, you know, undergraduate and graduate degrees in history. But then as I. Got out into the field, I discovered I didn't want to be just into research, so I wasn't going to be an academic in the ivory tower, just writing papers. I was a more of a people person, so I went into [00:22:00] education. I started teaching, and I was a general educator for many years, and I became a lot.

Very much as time went on, disillusioned with the education system understanding that it wasn't meeting a lot of kids' needs. And that, you know, knowing that kids learn in a lot of different ways and in order to be effectual you had to provide a multitude of approaches to teaching. And that wasn't happening.

And as time went on, it got worse and worse. And we are giving kids the one size fits all kind of approach to education. So I went into special education, went back to school again and, and got degrees in special education. Became certified. I started working with the opposite end of the spectrum, kids that had very severe needs, autistic, fragile acts, you know?

Anthony: Yeah. 

Barbara: Behavioral needs, physical needs. And I started [00:23:00] working with those kids in school and one-on-one. And then eventually I got into administration, back to school again, and I took administrative degrees. So I became the director of a special ed school. And I did that for a while. And then eventually I wound up in a very large school district in New York City and I became an administrator.

So I was providing, evaluating, testing and providing, finding the schools. Four kids that had special needs. So I kind of went all the way around the spectrum with education. Then at the end of my career I. I really wasn't working with, with history per se anymore, but I still had that love of history.

So when I finally did retire from from formal system of education, I decided I would combine my two loves. [00:24:00] So I took my passion and my love of history. And I decided I would combine it and, and write children's books. My husband is an artist and he suggested that in order to make it more fun I use a character to narrate.

So he created a character. Little Miss History 

Anthony: who 

Barbara: narrates, and she's based on a younger version of me. A person who loved to travel was very into people. One, it. To find out what made people tick and why they thought the way they did. So he created this cartoon-like character of a younger me and she's little miss history with her rose colored glasses and her hiking outfit.

And she goes around exploring, interesting historical places, but they're, they're very multidisciplinary, so, so they usually [00:25:00] involve a lot more than history per se. Mm-hmm. So it could be, it could be an iconic site like the Statue of Liberty, but it could also be something much more diverse like LaBrea Tar Pins or the North Pole.

Anthony: Mm-hmm. 

Barbara: Or sequoia National Park. Sometimes my books have a more scientific. So we might talk about how the trees grow, what we do with the trees the pollution in, in, in some of the national parks, and what are some of the ways we have to address that? Can they come up with, with some ideas? We talk about Native American rights, we talk about geography.

So the books are very, very multidisciplinary, always asking kids what they think. You know, we're using that history, but we're understanding how we got to where we are and we're thinking about what could we do in the future [00:26:00] to do things better, to come up with a better plan. So that's how the series got together.

So there are now 17 books. We go to the sites we use our own photography and my illustrator, my husband, combines that with hand drawn sometimes hand drawn portraits, sometimes maps you know, sometimes the photography and all of that gets put together. Into the the final output. So it's a, a picture book, a critical thinking book a guide to some, some parents and teachers use them before the visiting a specific site.

They might use the book as a prep or visiting book. And I give the kids things to think about, you know, open-ended questions. Extended vocabulary and so on. So it's, it's very much a. Kind of work in progress that [00:27:00] grows with them. So young children see the books more through the pictures and as they grow older, I could, I could be presenting the book to a kindergarten class, or I could be presenting the same book to the sixth grade.

Anthony: Oh wow. 

Barbara: You know, we using more of the open-ended critical thinking. 

Anthony: Right. So. 

So there's a wide range, age range that a wide 

Barbara: range, and even adults, because I always try to include things that are very little known and would surprise people, so even adult readers can pick up some. That's great information.

Anthony: I love that. Well, where, where can people learn more about you and find your books? 

Barbara: Well, the best place to go to. Find any of the resources would be my website. So the website is simply little miss history.com. And on the website I collect all of the work that I do. So [00:28:00] I have the books and I have, reviews of the books. Snippets of the books, but I also have all my other resources so you can connect from my website to my blog where I give. Tips and strategies for parents, as well as book reviews. I have a YouTube channel where I do mini teaching videos and I also collect videos and resources for parents and children.

I have a Pinterest board where I collect lots of different. Resources as far as curriculum or homeschooling or even things that parents could use in their home? 

Anthony: Yeah. Be 

Barbara: finances or advice on travel? It could be almost anything. And my social media, so you can contact me directly through the website.

You can. Find any of those resources, just, it's all clickable. So if you click on the link, you get taken to [00:29:00] wherever you want to go. So I try to make it as easy as possible for people to get what they need. So my mission basically is to help parents raise happy, successful, and confident kids and wherever.

They may feel they need to go to get that information. I hope to provide it from that one central place. 

Anthony: Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, I, I can't think of a, a better mission in life than to help help parents learn to raise, confident, intelligent kids who will contribute to society in a positive way.

So I, I appreciate what you're doing and we'll be sure to leave the links in our show notes for our listeners to be able to find you and go to your website and your social media accounts and, and check out what you're doing. So Barbara, it's been a real pleasure talking to you today. I thank you so much for coming on the show and best wishes with everything that you're doing, that you're doing great work.

Barbara: Thank [00:30:00] you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation. 

Anthony: You have a wonderful day. 

Barbara: You as well.