Since he was able to sit up and manipulate objects with his hands, Gavin has demonstrated an ability to think outside the box.

For instance…

When hubby told Gavin not to play with his glasses, he conveniently dropped a blanket over the glasses and “accidentally” picked up the glasses when he attempted to lift the blanket.

When I told him not to play with the switches on the bedside lamp, he sneakily got his toys to do the deed.

When my FIL told him not to play with the tissues, he drooled saliva down his chin so he would have to take a tissue to wipe it up.

When the maid told him he couldn’t walk in the house with his shoes on, he dropped onto all fours and started crawling on his hands and knees.

Although it can be quite annoying when he finds ways to circumvent our instructions, I’ve got to admit that I am secretly pleased to see him thinking outside the box. To further encourage this habit, I have been on the lookout for “IQ” toys (to use the term rather loosely) that can help refine his problem solving skills.

I’ve been searching online and offline for such toys and have discovered a good selection at the following locations:

1. Isetan, KLCC

They carry a brand called Plan Toys which offer a good range of “thinking” toys for children age 2 or 3 and above.

Isetan also stocks some wooden development toys by a brand called Eichhorn.  I bought the following cube toy for Gavin for RM109.  It contains five puzzles in one.  The top is the bead manipulation game which trains the use of his fingers.  The four sides of the cube offer:

1. Abacus
2. Matching patterns (seen below)
3. Shape sorter
4. Peg puzzle

I was actually looking for the bead manipulation game but thought this toy was too good value to bypass.

They also have thes wooden puzzles - although I think they look like they are designed for a much older age group.

Aside from these, I have been thinking of getting him the two-by-two Rubik’s cube which is now selling at Toys ‘R’ Us, although I think RM22 is rather steep to pay for it when you can get the regular three-by-three for RM30.

York House also stocks quite a number of interesting brain development toys, although most of them are for ages 3 and up.

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Further to my previous post on raising smart kids, I thought it was interesting to note Gavin’s behaviour when he plays with his shape sorter.

I first introduced the shape sorter to Gavin when he was ten months old.  He learned pretty quickly how to fit the circle into the round hole and subsequently, the octagon (which conveniently fits into the round hole as well - a flaw the manufacturers should take note of). 

On the box of the shape sorter, it says for age 1 and above, so naturally I was really pleased that Gavin had already learned to fit a couple of the shapes.  When he first did it, I was so excited, I praised him profusely for being such a “clever” boy.  Sadly, I think my praise was his downfall.

If you look at the picture, you can see that he is trying to work out how to fit the other shapes.  When I was too generous with my praise of “clever boy”, Gavin stopped trying to fit the other shapes.  He would put in the circle and the octagon and then look at us and wait for applause.  After that, he would demand that we open the shape sorter and release the circle and octagon so he could do it all over again.  He was not interested in the other pieces that he had not learned to fit in.  If we insisted that he do the other pieces, his attention would be diverted elsewhere and he would no longer interested to play with the shape sorter.

Initially, I didn’t realise it had anything to do with what I had said, but after my SIL pointed it out and showed me the article on Raising Smart Kids, I realised what they had said was true.  You should never praise your child for being smart, but praise them for the effort they put in to achieving something.  What I should have done with Gavin was commend him on his effort rather than tell him he was clever.

The problem with telling a child he is smart is that he starts to think that his intelligence is limited.  What he’s born with is all he will ever have, therefore when he reaches a problem he cannot solve, he gets discouraged and either thinks he’s stupid or not capable of solving the problem.  That often leads to the child avoiding difficult problems in fear of “looking stupid”.  Children who are told they are smart have the idea that they shouldn’t have to struggle to achieve things and that everything should come easily.  The moment they encounter a problem that they could potentially stumble on, they will rather avoid tackling the problem in fear of “looking stupid” rather than relish the challenge that the problem presents.

When I was growing up, I remember my Mum saying how smart my cousin was but what a waste that he never used his intelligence.  Instead, he played up in class and he never wanted to do his homework.  Does that sound like someone you know?  Part of the problem with these “smart kids” is that they have been told so many times that they are “smart”, “gifted”, “talented”, etc. that they start to assume everything should come easily to them.  They feel that they shouldn’t look like they have to struggle to complete the work because of their “smart” status.  As a result, when the work does get harder and they do have to struggle, they would rather not do it.  Hence, you end up with these so-called “smart” kids who waste their “talents”.

So what can you do to avoid the pitfalls?

The article recommends offering praise such as, “Wow!  You worked really hard to get that grade, well done!”  The emphasis being on your child’s effort rather than upon his intellect.  This encourages your child to develop a growth mindset and to continually pursue more challenges rather than avoid them.

Even when praising a child whom you think is a talented artist, you should say something like, “I love the detail you put into your picture,” rather than saying, “You’re great at drawing.”

In short, here are five ways to ensure your child becomes a smart kid:

1. Praise the efforts of your child rather than innate talent or intelligence, such as saying, “Wow, you scored 90% on your test, you must have worked really hard for it!”  Instead of saying, “Wow, you’re really smart to score 90% on your test.”

2. Teach your child about how his brain works - it is like a muscle that you can keep building - rather than letting him assume his intelligence is finite.  That way, when he encounters a problem he can’t handle, he will try harder to work it out rather than give up because he thinks the problem is beyond the scope of his abilities.

3. Encourage your child to tackle challenges.  If you find a problem too easy for your child, you can say something like, “That was too easy!  No fun!  Let’s try something harder!”  This helps to foster a spirit for taking on harder problems.

4. Tell your child about success stories that emphasise hard work and the love for learning - such stories will help your child thrive when he faces his greatest challenges.  People like Tiger Woods, Mozart, and Thomas Edison might have been known as geniuses in their arena but they got there through a lot of dedication, persistence and hard work.

5. Help your child view his mistakes as learning opportunities to improve himself rather than limitations to his abilities.

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“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”, or, if you read the “Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance“, it is “1% inspiration, 29% good instruction and encouragement, and 70% perspiration”.

Indeed, science is telling us to forget about in-born genius, special talents and other innate qualities that we believe to be responsible for creating geniuses in our midst.  If you read the findings from New Scientist, you’ll soon discover that in the battle between nature and nurture it turns out that nurture plays a much bigger role in churning out smart kids than previously thought.  It appears that genetics is not nearly as important as we believe and the critical factor is really the environment in which our children grow up in.

This rather interesting topic was brought to my attention by my SIL who watched a documentary following the efforts of a Hungarian father who raised three daughters to become chessmasters based on his theory that geniuses are made, not born.  By cultivating an interesting in chess and providing every opportunity to develop and hone their skills in playing chess, the Hungarian was able to raise his daugthers to the level of chessmasters.

The key to becoming a genius in any particular area (be it sports, science, music, etc.) therefore lies in your child having an interest in the subject, the dedication to pursue excellence and a conducive environment to cultivate your child’s skills and knowledge in the subject.

In fact, I think the description “genius” creates a misleading perception because society tends to hold the misconception that genius is innate.  The fallacy lies in the belief that you don’t have to work at becoming a genius, but that it is something you either are or you aren’t.  I think the term “expert” would be a better description because that is essentially how genius is achieved - a beginner who, through years of training and honing of skills and knowledge, eventually garners enough information on the subject to be deemed an “expert”. 

In a number of studies on the theory behind geniuses being made not born, they examined chessmasters and their ability to manipulate vast quantities of information.  What they discovered was that when a chessmaster plays a game of chess, they are accessing the part of the brain that a regular person might use to recall the features from the face of a family member.  A chessmaster is essentially no more skilled at memory recall or general analysis than the average chess player.  Their ability to play chess at such levels is derived from their experiences in playing and studying the game.

For instance, in a study, chessmasters and novices were asked to examine a chessboard with pieces in a fixed position for a short period of time and then asked to reconstruct the chessboard based on what they could remember.  The novices could barely remember where the pieces were after 30 seconds of studying, but the chessmasters could recreate the chessboard correctly only after a few seconds of perusing the board.  This was because the chessmaster has access to thousands of images of chessboard positions in his memory so he can break up the chessboard into clusters.  The positions of the chess pieces form recognisable patterns in the mind of a chessmaster, whereas, to a novice, it is just a chessboard with random chess pieces.

Next the chessmasters were asked to memorise the position of chess pieces that were randomly placed on a chessboard (i.e. the pieces were not in positions that would have resulted from natural play of the game) and they found that the chessmasters were not as effective in remembering the exact positions of all the chess pieces. This is because the randomly placed chess pieces did not conform to game patterns they could recall in their memory.

There is an article that describes essentially what the documentary covered, called “The Expert Mind“, that explains this whole theory in much greater detail.  It is a bit of a long read but an interesting one.

I guess it explains something that I realised some time back when I did an IQ test.  The test was based on questions that assumed a certain level of knowledge learned from school and if you never studied that stuff, you would surely do very poorly in the IQ test even if you were “brighter than the average Joe”.  It made me realise that IQ tests weren’t a very good measure of intelligence because the test calculated your intelligence score based on assumed knowledge.

So if we assume that you can raise a smart kid rather than having to genetically create one, what can parents do to help their children reach this potential?  According to an article from Scientific American Mind on “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids“, don’t tell your child he’s smart. 

Yup, you read that right - DON’T.  The problem with telling your child he’s smart is that it puts him into a limited mindset.  He starts to take his “innate intelligence” for granted and assume that no extra effort is necessary.  Such beliefs makes a child see challenges, mistakes and the need to exert effort as a threat to their ego as opposed to being an opportunity to improve.  Then, when faced with work that is no longer easy for him, he begins to lose confidence and the motivation to keep trying.

A limited mindset inhibits growth and the desire to keep pushing boundaries to improve oneself.  It creates a state called “learned helplessness” where we believe we can’t achieve something regardless of whether we trully can or cannot.  As modern child disciplinarians will encourage you to focus on your child’s behaviour rather than the child, the better thing to do when trying to encourage a “growing mindset” is to focus on your child’s efforts rather than his “innate intelligence”.

If only someone had explained this to me when I was in school…  All through highschool I was an academic achiever and praised for being “smart”.  When I finally got to University and was thrown amongst “smarter” students, I suddenly felt very stupid and wondered if I had been faking my intelligence all this while.  I felt like a pretender trying to pass off as a bright student when in reality it was effort that would have gotten me there.  I crumbled under the expectation that I was supposed to be smart and discovered the awful secret that I was just mediocre.

That also explains why I never excelled in sports in school but only realised my “potential” when I started running and rock climbing after I graduated and joined the workforce.  I always thought I wasn’t “gifted” in sports when the reality was I just hadn’t been given the opportunity to get good at it.  In a way, I think my belief that I didn’t have talent in sports was what helped me to achieve a higher standard in climbing.  In my belief that I wasn’t talented, I trained twice as hard, if not more so, than my other climbing friends in order to keep up with them.  All that training then took me to a level I never would have thought possible for someone like me.

In a nutshell, if you want your child to excel in anything that they do, teach them how to focus, how to work hard for what they want and to look at life’s challenges as exciting and fun.  If you want your child to become a genius (or expert) in any field, help them foster a deep interest in that particular field and then expose them to the right environment to cultivate their skills. 

For instance, the Hungarian father who raised three chessmaster daughters brought his daugthers to watch people playing chess, he took them to chess clubs, and gave them opportunities to compete in the game.  In essence he gave them every opportunity to learn more about playing the game and to gain experience playing the game. 

Essentially, to get good at anything, you have to put in the hours of practice, focus on your weaknesses and continuously work at improving your skills.  Even people like Tiger Woods, Mozart and Thomas Edison weren’t born brilliant - they might have had an aptitude and a potential for what they did but they certainly didn’t get there by kicking back and taking breaks.  It was through having the right environment and years of practice, study and sustained effort that they achieved what they have in life.

And that is how you can raise a smart kid.

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The importance of watching what you say in front of your baby…

On the weekend I was talking to a friend about words that her daughter has been using - and I’m talking about the kind of words adults sometimes use but don’t like to hear from our children.  Although she and her hubby had been conscious to stop saying those words in front of their daughter, it seems she has picked them up through some means unbeknownst to them.

What I suspect is that their daughter remembers hearing them when she was younger and deemed “too young to remember”.  It is easy to assume that young toddlers won’t remember words that you use, especially when they can’t really speak yet, because they don’t repeat everything that you say.  Since they don’t repeat it, we naturally assume such words have been missed by our children.  In reality, what happens in that absorbent sponge for a brain is that the word gets stored only to be used at a much later date when we are all dumbfounded by how they learned it.

My aunt once told me that when her grandson was really little, she used to call him her “hunny bun”.  After a while she stopped using that term of endearment and she never repeated it again.  When her grandson was older, she asked him out of the blue, “Who’s my hunny bun?”  Her grandson replied, “Me.”  She was so surprised that he remembered because she thought he had been too young to remember the words.

Likewise, there have been incidents with Gavin that have surprised me.  Little games I used to play with him when he was supposedly “pre-aware”, that he seems to remember.  Even the manner in which he uses sign language suggests that he remembers the signs I tried to teach him from when he was younger which I eventually gave up on thinking he wasn’t learning anything.  I started playing the Baby Signing Time DVDs for Gavin when he was 5 months old.  I suspect it is his familiarity with the music from his early babyhood that makes the songs such a hit with him whenever I play them for him now.  Sometimes when he gets a little difficult in the car, I find that playing the Baby Signing Time music CDs can help to calm him down a little.

I guess it is never safe to assume your baby is too young to remember…

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When my brother was a kid, he had this terrible habit of banging his head on the floor, the wall, or any hard surface he could get near, whenever he couldn’t have what he wanted.  His head-banging was of a nature so violent that it struck fear in the hearts of my parents that he would cause some serious injury to himself.  Naturally, they always gave in to what he wanted just to pacify him and stop him from continuing his self-destructive obsession.

About a month back, I noticed with growing alarm that Gavin, too, has this tendency to destroy himself in a fit of rage.  Although he hasn’t quite gotten to the level that my brother had - I notice that he hesitates a little just before he bangs his head against the floor and that there is some measure of control to the force he applies - there is a real possibility that this could continue to develop into something worse.

After looking it up, I discovered that head-banging is a normal occurrence in about 20% of children under the age of 4.  Although it may be a sign of autism, a diagnosis of autism can be ruled out as long as your child demonstrates certain milestone achievements by 14 months (up to 18 months, beyond which, there is a possibility of autism), these being:

1. Pointing
2. Following your gaze
3. Pretend play

Head-banging can be considered as normal as thumb sucking, so long as it does not progress beyond 4 years of age. 

The desire for head-banging is linked with our kinesthetic drive - a need for movement.  Since being in utero, a baby has been bounced and jiggled, even after birth, babies find movement (such being rocked in a parent’s arms) soothing.  As such, you may even see your baby banging his head against the side of his cot as a means of releasing tension just before sleep. 

Indeed, Gavin started to do this quite early on - he’ll sit against the headboard of our bed and start rocking his body back and forth so that his head thumps against the headboard.  We’ve never minded it too much since our headboard is cushioned, but when he started to do it during a temper tantrum - he’ll get onto all fours and deliberate hit his forehead against the ground - we got a little alarmed.

Dr Greene recommends ignoring the behaviour when associated with a temper tantrum so that the child does not persist in continuing this behaviour to gain attention.  In fact, the best thing to do is pretend not to notice and definitely do not give in to what they want or the behaviour may persist (looks like my parents should have just ignored my brother’s head-banging episodes). 

Because pain mechanisms prevent them from hitting their heads too hard, and the force with which they use is insufficient to cause any neurological damage, you do not need to worry about any danger of head injury.  Besides, the part of the head that is most often struck is the side and front.  And since a toddler’s head is built to take considerable trauma (as part of nature’s way of protecting them as they learn to walk and climb), parents of little headbangers can rest a little easier.

Curiously, the silver lining in this dark cloud is that health head-banging children were found to be “measurably advanced compared to their peers. If anything, then, head banging in healthy children can be a sign of increased intelligence.”  Or perhaps we just try to convince ourselves that there is some reason why our child had to be the difficult one and why we have to endure these little eccentricities?

My cousins have often marvelled at my brother’s intelligence in spite of the “damage” they felt he must have done to his brain from all the head-banging during his childhood.  In the end they concluded that he might have been a genius if he hadn’t destroyed his brain cells during his head-banging episodes.  If my brother, my study of one, was an intelligent head-banger, maybe it isn’t just wishful thinking that Gavin might be smart, too.

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Everyday I’m amazed at how quickly Gavin is learning new things. If I close my eyes for just a moment, I will have missed a new trick he just picked up.

I’m also learning more about him and I’m starting to understand the motivations for certain behaviours. For instance, I’ve discovered why he hates it when we sit down while carrying him. It means we’re not moving and if we’re not moving, the scenery’s not changing and that’s just plain boring if you’re a baby and you can’t really move around for yourself yet.

Gavin is so curious and eager to learn about the world that he refuses to close his eyes no matter how tired he is because he doesn’t want to miss a thing. That also means he gets rather cranky by the evening so I’ve made it a habit to enforce a couple of afternoon naps even though he doesn’t want them.

The difficulty about afternoon naps is putting Gavin down after he’s fallen asleep. The moment he feels the mattress against his back, he wakes up squealing. Sometimes he even senses the change in his position from vertical to horizontal and that’s enough to get him screaming.

A little trick my SIL and I started using was to put a pillow behind his head so that when we laid him down in his cot, he would be less likely to wake up. It worked for a while until he’d cottoned on to our little ploy. Now it is as if he has a sensor on his back that wakes him the moment his back touches a mattress.

We’ve got a new trick that seems to work for the time being. While he’s sleeping in my arms, I’ll tuck a pillow in between his belly and mine. Then I’ll set him down in his cot on his side with the pillow pressed against his tummy and I’ll pat him as I do so. When I’m sure that he’s settled, I’ll wedge another pillow behind him to keep him propped up on his side.

I know they talk about accidental suffocation with too many pillows around the baby but I never leave him alone for an afternoon nap unless he’s sleeping on his back. Even then, I’m usually not far away.

So far this last little trick seems to work so it remains to be seen how long it’ll be before he wisens up to it.

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Yes… just your regular kiasu parent trying to give her baby a headstart in life…

There’s a lot of information on this particular subject if you care to read about it:

http://parenting-baby.com/Parenting-Baby-Music-Research/Music-Research.html

Although, I should add as an interesting side observation, baby has increased his frequency of movement after I started playing music for him. Is that a sign of annoyance or enjoyment? Frankly, I have no idea.

The literature has stated that after 28 weeks, baby’s movements should be more frequent and any lack or scarcity of movement could be a cause for concern. So if the music is stimulating baby to increase his movements, could I extrapolate this information to mean that it is a good sign that he is responding well to the music?

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