[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# Exploring Family Relationships with Thinkblocks

## Details

**Authors** Govindarajan, Bhairavi

**Year** 2021

**Publisher** Medium (LifeSmart Parenting)

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Human Development

**Secondary disciplines** Education

**Kind of engagement** public

**Applied** false

[Read it](https://medium.com/lifesmart-parenting/exploring-family-relationships-with-thinkblocks-87c0ecf97394)

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To show parents and home educators how a cognitive jig can be used with children to structure a conversation about family relationships, and to argue that consistent use of such jigs builds lasting habits of orderly thinking.

### Who or what was studied (sample)

The author's eight-year-old daughter, Pragnya, in the main lesson, and a two-and-a-half-year-old, Pradyun, in the adaptation; two further children, Ananth and Rama, are mentioned as long-term users of the jig without further detail.

### How they did it (methods)

A first-person account of a home lesson built in five stages with Thinkblocks, a tactile tool, followed by a five-step adaptation for a toddler.

### What they found (results)

The lesson proceeds from R, two labeled blocks joined by a line, to RD, a block placed on the line to name the relationship, with the author noting that one relationship admits several valid labels and showing both a sibling-relationship and an interactions version. It then opens the named relationship as a system of parts — playing with, fighting over, helping with and enjoying — expands that model, and finally adds the mother as a perspective on the sibling relationship. The author reports that her daughter became aware of the jig and could apply it in other settings. The toddler adaptation attaches a picture to each concept, uses one idea per block, points while talking, moves blocks to change the message, and rebuilds and talks again, which the author recommends particularly for language learning. She concludes that consistent use of cognitive jigs, even with very young children, builds disciplined structuring habits that can last a lifetime.

## Commentary

### In short

A home educator documents a DSRP lesson run with her eight-year-old using Thinkblocks, building a sibling relationship up through the RDS jig and then adding the mother's perspective, with an adaptation for a two-and-a-half-year-old.

### In more detail

The post begins by defining cognitive jigs as reusable templates for organizing visual or tactile maps, notes that children can absorb them through repeated exposure without being taught them directly, and names lists and barbells as the familiar cases before introducing RDS as its subject. The lesson is then photographed stage by stage. Two blocks are labeled and joined; a third is placed on the connecting line and labeled, at which point the author pauses on the fact that the same relationship can carry more than one accurate name and shows two of them; the named relationship is then treated as a whole with parts, which the child fills in as playing with, fighting over, helping with and enjoying; the model is expanded; and a perspective block for the mother is added last, so the same sibling relationship is seen from a vantage rather than from nowhere. The toddler adaptation changes the representation rather than the structure, substituting a picture on each block for a written label and adding a rebuild-and-talk routine that the author ties to language acquisition. The post credits Cabrera Research Labs once, as the developer of Thinkblocks, and links out for more information; it does not cite DSRP theory or name Derek or Laura Cabrera, and it does not record the child's words.

### Response

The jig is used correctly and in the right order: the relationship is established first, then named as a thing in its own right, then opened as a whole with parts, which is what makes RDS more than a line between two boxes. The most substantive move in the post is the smallest one — stopping to note that a single relationship admits several valid labels — because that is the distinction rule doing work on a relationship rather than on an object, and it is the step that turns the exercise from labeling into thinking. Adding the mother as a perspective at the end, rather than treating her view as the view, keeps the perspective pattern intact. The toddler adaptation makes a real claim, that the structures are available before literacy, and the post offers it as practice rather than as evidence, which is the honest framing for a single household. DSRP arrives here through the tool rather than through the theory: Cabrera Research Lab is credited only as the maker of Thinkblocks, so a reader meets the four patterns as blocks on a table without meeting the account that says why those four.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

**Added** 2026-11-02

**How to cite this** Govindarajan, Bhairavi (2021). Exploring Family Relationships with Thinkblocks. Medium (LifeSmart Parenting).