There's a certain cycle that all learning follows. The first stage is what they termed roughing in a new learning. I would call that the first interaction with the model where you perceive a new possibility can be done. Second is filling in the details, this can take anywhere from minutes to seconds, even up to years and years and years. Finally the third period is practice, variation and mastery.

We are designed to perform miracles. Adults have 10,000 of the neurons. In the6 or 7 year old, they have anywhere from 50 to 60,000 neurons. Now you've got 100 billion neurons, any one of which can connect with 50,000 to 60,000 others, you want to multiply 100 billion by 50,000 to 60,000 and then figure that any of them can shift their mode of operation in any way to accommodate to the others and do all this on a multi-level all at the same time.

A central theme in Joe’s view of development is the danger of prematurely expecting a child to open and develop later stage-capacities early. The brain can and does accommodate these demands but at the price of the full development of the current stage, which is the foundation for all later stages.

We are preparing for what? We have got about three, four years before puberty, before the opening of genital sexuality when we can actually father children. Can you think of anything on earth that requires more self-restraint than parenting. And to prepare for that, what do we have? We bring the house to order.

The possibilities of using formal operational thinking in a concrete operational way are, literally, open-ended and infinitely possible.