Posted on 14 Mar, 2008 -
Develop your child’s hidden brilliance
7 top tips for turning your kids or grandchildren into brilliant and gifted achievers
I also think that there is a lot here that could help us get more out of our own hidden gifts and talents…
Bernadette Tynan is “an international expert in gifted children”. I see from the cover picture of her bestselling new book, Make Your Child Brilliant, that she also drives a bright red sports car and has breasts like two Jaffa oranges!
The first interesting thing I learnt when flicking through this book in my local Waterstones, is that my eldest child may be well become a lawyer because she is a turbo chatterbox. The second thing I learnt was that our brains use about the same amount of energy per minute as a small light bulb - as well as 20% of the oxygen we breathe.
At this point in the proceedings my three-year old announced that she needed “a poo” so I bought the book in a hurry and dashed over the road to the BHS.
Now, having flicked through the book with a little more leisure, I thought I’d pass on some of the best gems of wisdom for you to use on your own kids, grandkids or talented Jack Russel. I think there’s also a lot of points here that could actually come in useful for ourselves.
1. The most effective learning, apparently, occurs when we are enjoying ourselves - partly because it gets both sides of the brain working together and therefore producing good results. This explains, for example, why songs are a great way of teaching little children and why making sure they always enjoy their learning is the best way to help our kids. This point is also important to bear in mind if you come to a stage with a child when you realise that they are not happy about a certain subject they’re learning. “It is essential”, the genius-maker lady says, “that the parents get to the root of the problem and find out soonest why their child is not enjoying that particular class or subject.”
2. The best way to handle ‘why’ questions. Instead of answering all your child’s why questions as soon as they ask them, encourage them instead to look for answers to the questions themselves. They’ll often jump at the chance to do so and will encourage their brain to work in a much more active way.
3. Nurturing creativity - often forgotten in our exam culture. One activity Bernadette recommends for testing and developing creativity is the old ‘How many things can you do with a brick?’ test. However, rather than a brick, she suggests using a cuddly toy or more interesting household object instead. A toilet roll, for example, could be used as a telescope, as a scoop, or as part of a pet mouse’s exercise circuit…
4. A crucial part of helping your kids become brilliant is to identify and nurture their particular special gifts. Kids really benefit from knowing what they’re good at and gain confidence and belief in themselves. To pinpoint some of the skills or gifts they excel in, take a look at what subjects they’re good at in school, the kinds of things they show interest in during their spare time, and also their personality traits. “Bossy” children, for example, are actually often exhibiting a skill for team leading, facilitating others and seeing problems from different angles. If your child is forever coming up with highly imaginative ideas such as inventing a fuelless mode of transport or trousers that turn fluorescent if you find yourself in the dark… they could be destined to become an architect, a fashion designer, an engineer or even the 21st Century Leonardo Da Vinci.
5. Get your children to set their own targets and rewards. When you sit down with your child to chat about their progress, encourage them to think of targets for themselves. It could be as simple as ‘ Set my homework out better’ to start with. Rewards could be say on a slide of one to three stickers. “The art of self-rewarding… sets up a healthy can-do cycle in a child’s mind that says, ‘I don’t need someone else to reward me, I reward myself’. And at a deeper brain level this is setting up a very important message: self-confidence and self-belief.
6. Make sure they’re feeling on top of it all. One of the most important things you can do for your child to help them on their journey through school is to ensure that at every stage they are confident in what has been learnt so far. If at any time you find that they are not, investigate the problem and discuss with the relevant teachers where necessary. Problems can often occur, for example, if a child has missed just one lesson of a curriculum and this hole in their knowledge starts haunting them.
7. Help your child experiment with different kinds of learning. Some children learn well just by hearing information, for example, others need to see it written down to digest it properly. An example given in the book is of a little boy who was finding it hard to remember his new French vocabulary words. The problem was solved by getting him to repeat words to himself in his head while he swam - his favourite activity.
8. And finally, don’t get over hung-up about spelling. While it’s definitely a good thing to get right, it certainly isn’t essential. “Spelling and intellect are not interdependent… practise spellings and get them right it you can. But also value your imagination and creativity… they are the stuff of greatness in the end.”
Einstein, apparently, was not very good at spelling and it is suspected that Leonardo Da Vinci was dyslexic.
Now I’m just hoping to come across some evidence that shows that people whose minds often draw a complete blank when they try to recall even the simplest of words… are actually geniuses!
