Book takeaway – The Quest to Define Intelligence
24 Feb 2010 Leave a Comment
in For the baby, We'll learn together Tags: intelligence
from “Einstein Never Used Flash Cards”
Work within your child’s zone of development
- Follow your child’s interest. Don’t try to make your child do a task you assign, but instead figure out what the child wants to do. Let her set up the problem she wants to work on, whether it’s putting shapes into matching holes or finishing a puzzle.
- Reduce the number of steps your child has to go through to achieve the goal she has set for herself.
- When your child gets frustrated, encourage her to stick with the task. Don’t try to make her stick with it; try to moticate her by saying things like “We can do it together!” or “Let me help you.”
- Demonstrate. Flagging motivation often indicates a good time to show your child how the task is done.
- Talk about the difference between what your child did and what needs to be done. You can says something like “It doesn’t work when you force it, but it might work if you put it in gently.” By calling attention to the differences, you are teaching him alternative efforts to an end.
- Make connections for your child to things she does know how to do. Effective teachers for people of all ages help the learner to link what they are learning to things they already know.
Stress effort, not achievement
What we need to teacj them more than anything is that it’s okay not to be perfect, that we make mistakes, too, and that we love them for their effort. In contrast, an intense emphasis on early learning teaches them not to think outside the box. Yet this is just the opposite of what develops an intelligent person. We need to praise the strategies they use to solve a problem, rather than their intelligence. This implicitly says to children that with the right approach, they can do most anything. In this way, we free our children from the anxiety of disappointing us and enable them to focus on persevering in challenging circumstances.
Don’t insist that there is only one right way to do something
If your child comes up with a novel solution to a problem, that’s great! An emphasis on creative, intellectual play will encounrage children to believe that intelligence can be added to, one problem at a time.
Show your kids that you make mistakes too, and let them correct you
Not only does this take the pressure off your children to be perfect, but it also presents learning as a lifelong pursuit.
Focus on developing your child’s creativity and independent thinking
