Kevin Baldeosingh
Would you like to raise a smart child? Then don't call him smart. Especially if he's smart.
Several research experiments have shown that praising children for being smart when they are successful at some academic task can lead to the child slacking off later.
This is because children who are told they are smart come to see intelligence as an inherent part of themselves, like their nose. So they believe that being smart means being able to understand schoolwork without any effort. This particular attitude is so widespread in our society that we even have a phrase for it: "He have natural brains."
The problem starts when such children encounter problems which they cannot easily solve.
Facing difficulty, they either abandon trying to understand the subject matter or conclude that they aren't so smart after all. By contrast, children who are praised for the effort put into performing well academically ("You got an A! That must have taken a lot of hard work.") come to see intelligence as linked to striving. Once such children are also taught that failure is essential to learning, they have a better chance of excelling academically.
Perhaps even more important is having conversations with your child. Studies in developed nations show that, by the time they're three, children of talkative parents have heard 30 million words whereas children with taciturn parents have heard about 20 million (and if you have to look up "taciturn", you probably are).
It also matters what you say. In his book Intelligence and How to Get It, psychologist Richard E Nesbitt notes that "professional parents made six encouraging comments to their child for every reprimand," compared to working-class parents whose ratio was reversed with two reprimands per encouragement. "Degrees of encouragement by parents is associated with intellectual exploration and confidence on the part of the child," Nesbitt writes.
Children who are exposed to complex conversations do better in reading, writing and spelling in school. And the effects are independent of socioeconomic status–ie the children of poor loquacious parents did better than the children of taciturn well-off parents.
I must emphasise that the key here is conversation. Exposing the child to words by plumping him down in front of the television or even playing him an educational DVD is going to have no beneficial effects and may even have some harmful ones. Given this, it is particularly pernicious that the main buyers of such products in T&T are lower-middle-class parents, whose children are more likely to need real assistance to succeed in school.
"Human learning in its most native state is primarily a relational exercise," writes scientist John Medina in Brain Rules for Baby. "Intelligence is not developed in the electronic crucibles of cold, lifeless machines but in the arms of warm, loving people. You can literally rewire a child's brain through exposure to relationships."
None of this means that, if you follow such guidelines, your child will win a national scholarship. Genes account for about 50 per cent of IQ. But, even if your IQ genes aren't top of the line, the 50 per cent that's mediated by a nurturing environment helps ensure enough academic success for your child to make his way in the world.
