poverty. They can feel and experience themselves their development after reading stories and the moment before reading stories.
Children are dynamics and therefore they develop. To understand children’s development and how the independence learning is showed, there are forms of
independence that can be trained and achieved. These forms of independence have very close relation to children’s development. By the time children learn how to be
independent, it shows that children can develop and broaden their skills. The forms of independence are classified into cognitive independence and communication
independence.
1. Cognitive Independence
Independence in thinking means children have an ability to think about something without anyone’s help. Basically, children already have the ability to think
about a phenomenon. Their thought is limited to their existing knowledge on their brain that is influenced by the environment they live in. Loh in his article about
Developing Child Independence Thinking Skills defines thinking independently as the expectation to make believe themselves that certain information and its details they
get is logical or reasonable The aim to have independent thinking ability is to make children raise their
own confidence about their ability in finding solutions for any problems. Children always get excited when they learn and explore something new by their own efforts.
When they find that their thought is wrong, they will find other ways to get more reasonable thought. The confidence will grow naturally in every child when they can
have the opportunities to think about alternative solutions on their own. Confidence is the result of judgments connected with one’s feeling. Children start to judge
themselves based on their abilities and competencies in doing a certain activity Berk, 2013: 461.
The ability of independent thinking cannot appear instantly. It should be passed through many stages which every child will experience. These stages are
discussed in the theory of child development. Jean Piaget is a psychological expert in human cognitive development who supports and examines the independence in
children. According to him, the process in shaping children’s independence can be summarized into four stages. They are sensorimotor thought 0-2 years,
preoperational thought 2-7 years, concrete operational thought 7-11 years, and formal operational thought 12 years and above.
Children start to learn many things actively and reasonably when their age is above two years old which is called preoperational and concrete operational thought.
Preoperational thought shows children start to use their logic and intuitive when they do something Cook, 2005:13. According to Piaget in Cook 2005:14-17, this stage
contains three ideas which are children make their new mental expressions, intuitive thought, and conversations problems. For example, they express their imagination by
thinking anything on their mind. Based on their personal thought, then they independently pick any colors and scratch on a sheet of paper or on the wall.
When children have passed the preoperational stage, they face a new stage named concrete operational thought which occur during the age of 7-11 years old.
The characteristics are when children are capable to think about more than one factor of a problem, know there is transformation on the problem, and do the reversible
action of true operations Cook, 2005:18. Their logic is more developing in this stage. For example, a child looks at what he has for his breakfast. There are three
toasts, two sunny side-ups, and a bowl of vegetables. Then, he thinks about more menus and probably will ask a question, such as “Are there more toasts or sunny side-
ups?” If Piaget focuses his perspective on personal education of children, Lev
Vygotsky states his perspective on sociocultural aspects in accordance with independent thinking. He puts the interaction between children and their environment
as the cognitive process. He forms two methods in teaching and learning for children: reciprocal teaching and cooperative learning Berk, 2013:271.
Reciprocal teaching is the process of adults making a group with children. They are sitting in a group and discussing the content of a passage they read. Each
child has hisher own turn in leading the conversations. Adults ask them to make simple questions, summary, clarification, and prediction or guess. Cooperative
learning is the process of peer discussion among children in one group. Adults guide them to reach certain goals by showing models and asking some children to have a
short role play to deliver their intention Berk, 2013:271. In children’s literature, the child characters very often perform their ability
on independent thinking. They have their own thoughts on every phenomenon they find. These thoughts are formed because of several factors, such as family condition,
peer characters, and environment. However, they also get both positive and negative responses. The responses might be the cause of these child characters to defend or
change their thoughts.
2. Communication Independence
