This is a long article on how you can raise smart kids, so, take a journey through this article my lovely people.
Every parent want a brilliant and smart children some get enraged if their children comes back with a subpar performance at the end of the termly examination that they end up beating a child that isn’t doing fantastic in class.
Why parent get so enraged with poor performance of their kids baffles my mind because the truth is that, there are a lot of factors that make a child brilliant and just very few of them depends on the child. In fact the only factor that depends on the child is concentration and diligence.
Every other factors ranging from the ability to think, assimilate, read, memorize, prepare and a host of others fall under the purview of the parents whether consciously or unconsciously.
The Nature Versus Nurture Debate
The Nature debate says a child that has the genes of parents who were average students will most likely be an average student. The Nature debate backed by a lot of scientific proposition says that a child picks a huge chunk of his brain power from the mother.
Another thing a child picks from the parents is the memory power. So if you were forgetful as a child, there is a big probability that your child would be, due to a gene scientists refer to as the brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
The gene comes in two forms and if parents pass the weak version of this cell to their child the child might be forgetful and read only to forget quickly.
Thankfully, there is the nurture part of the argument that says a child’s brilliance can still shine forth despite what nature bestowed the child if the parents uses some special skills to raise the child.
These skills have been used repeatedly in developed countries and are open for parents that are willing to learn and put the knowledge to practice. These skills aren’t just gimmicks that your child can use in school because let’s face it; school is just a tiny part of the huge part to success.
You will learn lessons here that your child will need for a lot of other spheres of life. These skills are what this article will be teaching us, here are a few of them broken down into simple concepts.
Encourage an Early Search for Knowledge
Steve Jobs step dad taught him about electronics when he was a toddler, Oprah Winfrey’s grandmother taught her how to read when she was three.
Tiger Woods was playing golf when he was two and this early introduction to knowledge is what seem to be lacking in many homes. In many homes, when a child is a toddler he is either in front of a TV all day which isn’t great for his brain’s development or is in a day care sleeping all day.
Here is the advantage some successful people have; they were raised to start incorporating information pertinent to their lives early so they grew up loving knowledge and that has helped them a great deal. The truth is; a child you read story books with as a toddler will love to read more as a grown up than a child that watched TV all day as a child.
Encourage Question
There is a phase in a child’s life that is characterized by a lot of questions and that phase is a very important part of your child’s life.
Your child’s brain is at the opinion phase where it is forming opinion about a lot of things it can’t explain.
It is also a time when your child’s mind is stretching and sadly at times some parents kill their child’s inquisitive mind. Parent frustrated by the questions a child asks explode and say don’t disturb me! Some even go as far as calling their child Questionnaire. When you do that, you end up killing the flame of curiosity that leads to brilliance. Remember Albert Einstein once said "Never lose a holy curiosity"
Answer their questions no matter how much and use the opportunity to give them brain twisters to that will provoke their thinking faculty. For instance if a child ask the question, 'Daddy or Mummy why are you not attending my school? You might answer the child by saying I am too old for your school but do you know there is a type of school I can still go to? Think of the answer and tell me later.
When you approach this question in such manner, you are forcing your child to think, and that, trust me is the greatest skill on earth, the ability to think!
Thinking is the currency of the brilliant and successful and that is why Henry Ford said 'Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.
Talk with your child
Many times we just assume talking is that thing we do to communicate. It is much more than that; it is a tool to transfer brilliance especially to little children.
The next time you are with a little child, tell the child that the television it is spelt T E L E V I S I O N and that the car is spelt C A R.
Tell the child those are four books 2+2 is four and 2x2 is four. Do this repeatedly and I promise you your child is on his way to brilliance.
Never make learning seems like a chore.
The reason many children hate reading is because they have come to see it as chore or task. It will do a child good to voluntarily desire to learn. There are games that are good at provoking the learning inquisitiveness of a child. Such games like Scrabble, Ludo, Whot and Monopoly helps children at learning early Math and English.
Trust me, when you play such games with your kids, you are gradually building their capacity for brilliance as they will form a perception in their minds that learning is fun and they will grow to see the importance and essence of learning.
Allow Independent Discovery / Learning by Error
More often than not, parent will always want to protect their children from perceived danger, thereby depriving them from learning independently for fear of them being hurt. Experience they say is the best teacher. When we allow our children to learn from their errors and by independent discovery, that learning experience has automatically becomes their property and will never be forgotten.
Good Diet
As parents, it is our responsibility to ensure our children's diet are rich and balanced. At different phase of their development, the needed diet in terms of quality and required quantity for growth and development must be provided as this forms part of the ingredients for the Mental development of a child.
At infant, the child should enjoy atleast a minimum of six months of exclusive breast feeding.
Sleep
A sleep deprived child will never be brilliant because his or her brain isn’t getting enough rest. This will lead to weak memory and short attention span thereby a below per performance becomes the resultant effect. Below is the sleep chart that medical science recommends for every children.
Newborn to 3 months old 14 - 17 hrs
4 to 11 months old 12 - 15 hrs
1 to 2 years old 11 - 14 hrs
3 to 5 years old 10 - 13 hrs
6 to 13 years old 9 - 11 hrs
