Raising bright children

Reading to your child, asking and answering questions, and exposing him to varied environments will nurture and improve the little one’s mental agility and intelligence, writes JOHN MUTURI.

Your child’s intelligence is probably close to yours, but it isn’t cast in stone; whether it rises or falls depends a great deal on parental love and involvement.

An intelligent person has good problem solving skills (such as reasoning logically, connecting ideas, seeing all sides of a problem), plus good verbal ability (expressing ideas clearly, conversing easily as well as reading often and well).

Many parents believe that intelligence is cardinal to success, and some of them eagerly promote the intellectual development of their children in many ways.

Some "stimulate" their infants in the belief that intellectual development is largely established by age six or even age three. They buy books or enroll in courses that purportedly tell them how to ‘multiply" their child’s intelligence or teach their baby how to read and calculate by toddlerhood.

They also compete to get their children into the ‘best’ pre-schools and their teenagers into selective colleges. Yet some professionals suggest that this might be in vain because intelligence is largely genetic and cannot easily be improved.

Parents, even of infants, are curious about their child’s intelligence. During a recent baby banda expo in Nairobi, the mother of a winning baby beamed, "Jackie has always been so alert. At six months, when we talked to her, she gurgled an answer back, and she walked at nine months!"

While she was seeing an intelligent adult in Jackie by the look of things, infant and toddler milestones, such as the age a child first walks, and uses two-word sentences, does not of certainty mean she will be a highly intelligent adult, according to psychologists. The best predictor of later intelligence for infants and toddlers is the intelligence or education levels of their parents.

So parents are best advised not to judge the future intelligence of their infants and toddlers by early developmental tests. They should assume that children will be approximately as bright as their parents.

Responsive play

There exists however, exceptionally intelligent children who exhibit extraordinary talents primarily due to environment and genetic origin.

For example, if you have two children, they will differ in intelligence by 12 points, on the average. They share a common environment and approximately half their genes. But if they were reared apart and did not share a common environment, they would differ by 15 points, an increase of three.

Good parents respond to their child’s mental overtures by carefully asking and answering all questions from the children, having dialogue which means talking cooperatively, not just at the child, providing them with constant encouragement and giving the child many varied experiences.

When your child is older, read to her, encourage her to learn passages from favourite books and ask questions and discuss answers. She will be able to read quite early. The child will eventually direct her own learning by reading a variety of books and articles, exploring objects and events, and creating games.

By the time she is five, provide her with extensive encouragement, opportunities, and special instruction such as languages. The child will be well adapted to school with good social and extra-curricula participation.

So you don’t need to embark on a formal, unusual, intense curriculum with your child-involved, responsive play and language exercise are enough.