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The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientific American has an interesting article on the secret to raising smart kids that says that more than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings. In particular, attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame. One theory of what separates the two general classes of learners, helpless versus mastery-oriented, is that these different types of students not only explain their failures differently, but they also hold different "theories" of intelligence. The helpless ones believe that intelligence is a fixed trait: you have only a certain amount. Mistakes crack their self-confidence because they attribute errors to a lack of ability, which they feel powerless to change. Mastery-oriented children think intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and hard work. Challenges are energizing rather than intimidating offering opportunities to learn."
The danger is not that your children will fail, and have permanently damaged egos-- the danger is that your child will never experience failure, and thus learn the important skill of picking up the pieces and moving on. Parents naturally want to save their children from the suffering that comes from defeat (e.g., the track race on field day, the art competition, spelling bee, science fair, etc.), but this is an important experience, and one that they will eventually have, regardless of how much parents shelter them. I would much rather have my child feel crushed because he lost the Boy Scout knot-tying competition than have his first failure be at that new job out of college. The young adult who knows ego management will be in a much better position to dust himself off and carry on than the college grad who takes failure as a sign of permanent inability.
Last night's On Point featured Tom Perkins, the venture capitalist who funded Netscape, Google, AOL, and so on, and he said something that struck me-- he said that he has failed often, but that his successes outnumber his failures. He also said that his firm has a reputation of betting on the entrepeneur who has failed once before. The entrepeneur who fails, learns from it, and tries again is the kind of guy he wants to invest in.
Scientific American ran some articles last year on child prodigies and expert minds (eg, Expert Mind). The general idea was that child prodigies are not necessarily ``smarter'' than their peers. Instead, they are so passionate about a particular task that they practice significantly more than their peers. That is, hard work accounts for a lot. Being slightly gifted at some task and doing well can be more encouraging than failing, but that just gets the ball rolling. For example, Tiger Woods played hours of golf--he would practically beg his parents to take him out to play.
People aren't born knowing chess openings or golf swings. Helping children find activities that really interest them can be hugely rewarding-- not because they should become child prodigies, but because then the process itself is satisfying, too.
Consistently telling a kid that (s)he is stupid will cause the kid to believe he is stupid. Wow! such insight!
Wrong-o. Consistently telling a kid that successes are due to being smart will cause them to believe the opposite as well - namely, that failures are due to *not* being smart. On the other hand, telling a kid that successes are due to hard work will lead them to believe that failure can be turned around through diligence.
Read it slower next time.
As someone who failed their A-Levels (that's post school, pre uni 16 - 18yr old education for the non-Brits) miserably having been told for years I have to succeed, that I have to get top grades and so forth to go to uni and do amazingly only to not do so great and fall into a pit of "I'm stupid, I can't do this, it's too hard for me" and then giving up.
7 years down the road, thanks for the open university (www.open.ac.uk), an establishment that gives not a shit about league tables but instead actually cares about learning, education and research you know, the things Unis are meant to be about I am now a first class honours computing and mathematical sciences graduate. Not only that but I achieved this whilst working full time and in 3 years, so around 40 - 45hrs work a week and around 32hrs studying, I also feel that what the article suggests is true, that intelligence isn't something that's entirely fixed - some take things in easier than others certainly whilst others have to work hard but I do not feel any more that there's many areas beyond my grasp if I have the time, money and inclination to learn them. This is why I'll soon be starting my second degree in Physics which I will follow up with a Masters and hopefully eventually a phd. Why you ask? Because when you're not forced to learn, and when you're learning because you want to learn, learning is fun and there's little you can't do if you have the raw motivation of wanting to learn behind you.
Fuck the people who tell you you're stupid, it's them that make you stupid. Don't let them get away with it - defy them and learn anyway so that you can come back and gloat about how wrong they were.
Well... from the article:
"Mozart, Edison, Curie, Darwin and Cézanne were not simply born with talent; they cultivated it through tremendous and sustained effort."
That little prick was writing operas by the time he was 4 years old. How much "tremendous and sustained effort" can a 4 year-old have made?
Why are we so unwilling to admit that some kids are born smarter than others? From high-school on, I always found tall, slender, smart girls hot. I married a tall, slender, smart girl. My daughter is now a tall, slender smart girl. I am not particularly smart (except for when it comes to picking a mate). Who wants to bet that Britney Spears' kids probably won't win a Nobel prize in physics, even though they are probably go to fancy private schools and will have every advantage (except a stable home life, of course)?
All I'm saying that if you want to have really smart kids, it's good to start with at least one really smart parent. Beyond that, the affiant sayeth not.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The point is found in the opposite, that if you don't believe you can improve yourself, you will never bother trying, and it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As Homer Simpson would say, "The lesson we learned here today is never, never try."
Here is a tried and tested way to almost gaurantee you have a smart child:
- Start reading to them VERY YOUNG.
I was reading on my own before the age of three and have had a life long adoration for literature. How did I learn to read? Simple. My mom read a book to me EVERY NIGHT as far back as I can remember (and then even before that) and let me follow along with her as she pointed to each word she read. Eventually, I didn't need her to do that anymore and I would toddle off into a corner with a stack of books on my own.
- Read books yourself. If your child sees you reading books for enjoyment and paying attention to the newspaper, your child is more likely to do the same.
- Allow your children to engage you in intellectual conversations. The worst thing you can do is, when your child starts a conversation or asks questions or wants to give you their thoughts on a topic, is slough it off or reply with only the vaguest of attention. No, you can't give your child constant un-divided attention. Your child needs to know that talking and debating and sharing thoughts and opinions and information is valued, encouraged and important. If all you engage each other in is conversations about last night's episode of your favorite sit-com, your kid is going to learn that consuming entertainment and keeping your mouth shut is what matters.
- Give your child freedom. I was able to bicycle and walk around the neighborhood (and beyond) when I was seven and eight years old. I was able to take the bus about fifteen miles into downtown Portland to explore the city, hang out at Powell's City of Books and practically live at the central library. I has a yard bigger than a postage stamp that you could almost get lost in. I built tree forts with my friends, invented games, dug giant holes and tunnels under ground. Played with my grandfathers carpentry tools to make stuff. Had a chemistry set. Had a library card. Had time to myself. Today, kids have their whole life planned and structured, are often restricted to a small area of freedom, can't roam anywhere on their own, and can't play with anything sharper than a spoon. As a kid, I smashed my fingers, sprained my hand and foot, cut my finger to the bone (and would have needed stitches, if we weren't camping 200 miles from the closest city at the time), hammered my finger, burned myself, cut myself with a handsaw and lots of other stuff. At twelve, I went down to the local car body shop and they let me have a chunk of steel. A simple rectangular block of it that I ground, sanded and shaped into an actual knife all on my own. Then I learned how to make a handle and rivet it all together, including using an expensive (and maybe dangerous) heavy duty drill press. Did I do lots of dumb stuff? Did I probably avoid serious harm many times, just by the skin of my teeth? Probably. But god damned, if I didn't learn a lot in the process and develop a lot of character through my inquisitiveness.
It seems to ignore a third view -- that intelligence is (pretty much) fixed, but we need to learn to use it. The capacity of a beer tankard might be fixed, but a pint tankard is as useless as a half-pint tankard until you put some beer into it.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
But, what you can do to increase the chances that someone will be SUCCESSFUL in life is to encourage and reward effort and work. For instance, if you kid gets an A, say "wow, you WORKED REALLY HARD to earn that A, great," and don't say "Wow, you're so smart!" Because if the kid later fucks something up, you want their mental arithmatic to be "I need to work harder" -- which anyone can do -- and not "I am a dumbass, which can't be changed." -- which doesn't encourage success. Ditto if they're failing: "you need to work harder at math" is what you should say, according to the latest research (which TFA is about, although I didn't read TFA, but rather another about the same study).
Some of the most successful people (CEOs, high achieving and famous game designers, etc.) I know are not super smart, they are just very motivated and work very hard. Some of the biggest failures I know (suicides, guys actually living in their parents' basement, etc.) are incredibly smart. As I get older, it seems that motivation, effort, and the skills needed to apply effort are way more important than raw IQ.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Which is pretty much how the parent poster put it. Your genes AND your personality define limits on your ability to exert yourself physically. Your upper limits for intelligence, physical fitness, and many other traits are indeed in your DNA, but you must reach them for the limits to be relevant. If you teach a child that athletic ability does not improve with exercise, he will not be likely to exercise and obtain the corresponding benefits. The article suggests that if you teach a child that academic aptitude is not strengthened primarily through study and hard work, these, too, will be eschewed.
But, by the same token, two children of different families or different ethnicities can do the same exercises (mentally, physically, whatever) and (1) progress at a very different pace, and also (2) reach different absolute limits of ability regardless of effort.
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.