Think about a big box filled with lots of toys. When you talk about the whole box and not each toy inside it, you are thinking in an abstract way. It’s like saying you have a box of toys without naming each toy. This way, the idea of the box is more about the whole collection than the individual toys.

Imagine you are painting a picture, and you use different colors to make a rainbow. Instead of talking about each color separately, you just say ‘rainbow.’ This is an abstract way of thinking because you’re focusing on the whole picture instead of each color.

Picture a cloud in the sky. You know it’s a cloud, but you don’t have to know every little drop of water that makes it up. When you look at the cloud, you see the big fluffy shape, not the tiny water droplets. That’s abstract thinking, seeing the big picture without worrying about the tiny details.