What is intelligence? Summary Initial intelligence
The First Steps in Intelligence Development Strategies to Increase Intelligence
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Basic Strategies to Develop Intelligence in Young Children
The following are the basic strategies that will help maximize your child's intelligence:
1 - Talk to your child as much as possible. From the day your child is born, hearing speech increases verbal brain activity. Using a high pitched voice (motherese) is good. Repeating things many times to a baby is good. The more they hear the same words, the faster they learn to differentiate sounds and learn the meaning of words and expressions.
2 - Play with your child a lot. Activities are our best lessons. Playing the same game repeatedly with a child helps the child learn to memorize, to expect, and to understand rules and cause-effect relationships. Playing games of performing little chains of tasks, such as passing toys from left to right in an order (first the trucks, then the cars, then the airplanes) teaches the child inference. Inference is one of the most basic intelligence tools. Inference is the ability to extract relevant information from a large information stream. For instance, If we feel a breeze coming from under a door at some points, but not at others, we can infer that there is another door or window behind that door, and there is a breeze only when the other door or window is open. To teach to infer, we make things initially very simple and obvious. This way, the child can easily "infer" the first rule in our game. Then we add a new rule after the child has learned the initial rule such as moving the red trucks first, then the yellow trucks, then the red cars, then the yellow cars, then the red airplanes, then the yellow airplanes. Add yet an additional rule such as separating the toys by size too. So the rules the child must infer are type, color, and size.
3 - Let your child do it. When you play with your child, you do your thing and he or she does hers. If you do it for him or her, you inhibit the child’s intellectual development. If it is too difficult for your child to be able to do it after watching you, you may help his or her hands do it. But do not do it yourself. Just guide the child through the task with the least amount of help possible.
4 - Break your child's learning tasks down to easy steps. Perform the steps one by one as you teach them. Have your child perform one step as you perform yours. If one step is too difficult and you need to physically help your child, it does not mean that the other steps are just as difficult. Do not give more help than the child needs. Model things for your child. Watching an action attentively stimulates many of the same brain cells as performing it. So, when your child watches you do something, he or she is learning to do it.
Repetition is necessary. Perform many times the task you want the child to learn. Do the task in such a way that the child will pay attention. Sing, dance, laugh, or talk to the child as you perform the task. If the child is not looking at you, you are not teaching the task.
5 - Stimulate the child often. If your child is a baby, when he or she lies down, take his or her little feet and move them up and down, back and forth, open and close. Do this gently and with smiles, laughter, songs, talk, and or any other happy communication that you feel like doing The baby will benefit from the exchange, and it will be fun for both of you. This type of interaction helps improve the contact between you and your baby.
Good, positive interactions contribute to all aspects of development.
If your child is older, teach them to do little gymnastic things, games that require coordination, etc that are appropriate for her age. Describing here what physical activities and games are appropriate for each age would turn this paragraph into a book. There are many places with booklets available for games and activities for children‘s different levels. Your local bookstore and library will have them. However, if you start playing with your child today, and let your child choose the games initially, you will learn very well the levels of complexity and difficulty your own child enjoys. Then, with your child's participation, you can increase the difficulty and complexity.
In addition to teaching your child physical and mental strategies through games, you will earn your child's trust and reliance. This will be very beneficial in future years.
6 - Do not ignore your child. If you are on the phone, cleaning the dishes, mopping, or involved in any other chore, and your child calls your attention, stop the task for one moment and respond nicely. Too many parents become immune to gentle interruptions. They simply continue what they are doing, until the child starts screaming, crying, throwing tantrums, or grabbing something dangerous. Then the parent jumps to pay intense attention to the child. This teaches the child to cry, scream, have tantrums, get into dangerous things, etc. Consistently quick and pleasant verbal responses teach your child to use verbal communications in their relationship with others.
Clear and efficient verbal communications are key to intellectual development.
Therefore, if you are too busy to respond at any point, indicate that to the child in words. Says something like: "this is a long distance call, I'll be with you in a moment," and teach your child to respond correctly. If the child persists with the interruptions, instead of waiting, then make sure that it was not an emergency. For emergencies, teach the child to say "emergency." If it was not an emergency, then scold the child for disrespecting your request to wait. If the child does it again, wait until the child is in the middle of some thing that he or she enjoys, and stop what he or she is doing. Then ask her how it feels. Then tell her that the same feelings apply to you. This teaches the child to understand that others feel things just like the child does. But remember. This is not for revenge. It is to teach your child. Revenge does not have a place in good parenting.
7 - Explain things to your child. Whenever the child asks why, what is this, how, when, or where, answer as truthfully as possible. Make your explanation as understandable as you can. Then, ask them if they understood. Ask them to explain it back to you. Explaining is a skill directly related to intellectual development. So, in the early years, children will need lots of help to explain. Simply coach them to give you examples. Explaining through examples is a good basic way to start learning to explain. The next step up is to explain by description of its components. And the third step is to explain by behaviors. Then, the three elements, examples, components, and behaviors can be integrated to give in depth explanations. For example:
What is a person?
a) “You, John, Jane, and I are people.” -- This is an explanation by examples.
b) “A person has two arms, two legs, a trunk, and a head.” -- This is an explanation by description of
its components.
c) “A person is an animal that thinks, speaks, and uses tools in complex manners.” -- This is an explanation by behaviors.
d) “We have two arms, two legs, a trunk, and a head. The main difference between us and other animals is that we think, speak, and use tools in complex manners. So, You, John, Jane, and I are people.” --This is an integrated, full explanation for a child‘s level.
8 - Devise games to play with your child that help her to quantify and perceive parts of things. Two additional areas that are basic to intelligence development are quantification and the perception of the parts or components or things. Being able to quantify means being able to correctly tell how many or how much of something there is. So, playing with quantities that the child understands and increasing the amounts as the child becomes at ease with them is also very helpful. For instance, place three cars on the right and four on the left and ask the child which has more. Repeat this with other toys, keeping the same amounts until the child gets right. If the child gets up to five things right (which has more, 5 cars on the right or 4 cars on the left?), bring six into play but only once in a while. Once the child starts being able to tell how many there are correctly with six, then start using 6 as part of the comparisons.
Once you have about six or seven items that the child can quantify, get puzzles or other things that can be taken apart easily. With the child assemble them; disassemble them; separate groups; tell how many parts in each group (make sure there are as many parts as the child can quantify, you don't want the child to guess, but to quantify). This game will help the child practice quantifying and well as helping him or her perceive that things have parts and how to tell what the parts are and to tell the parts apart. Turn these activities into games in which you cheer each other, sing, dance, and whatever makes the child love it. There are many ready made games in the market. But I think that improvising and making up your own games with your child is the best.
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