Posted by Maria Dimitrova

Read this: to ensure your children’s success in life

Gain: Knowledge that will allow you to make well-informed decisions for your children’s lifestyle and future

You a loving parent who wants the best for your children and tries to ensure their happiness and success. But do you know how to achieve this extremely significant life goal? Unfortunately, a big percentage of parents ignore the importance of gathering knowledge about the beneficial conditions for children’s development and rely only on their life experience when taking decisions for their children’s lifestyle and future.

This often proves insufficient since the more information you have, the better the chances are to make good choices. Reading books, watching programs tackling parenting issues and sharing with other parents is of great value as it helps parents overcome the limitations of their personal experience and get a more objective view on the factors most conducive to children’s success in life.

One of the most important factors is their intelligence. It doesn’t just ensure good grades at school but also helps children make right decisions on an everyday basis which proves even more valuable than educational achievements.

How can you boost your children’s intelligence?

Nutrition

A scientific study shows that there is a direct link between the diet of young children and their brainpower in later life. Toddlers fed a diet of junk food can suffer lasting damage. Children who eat more chips, crisps, biscuits and pizza before the age of three have a lower IQ five years later. The difference could be as much as five IQ points compared with children given healthier diets with fruit, vegetables and home-cooked food. But even if their diet improves, it could be too late as the ill-effects can persist for a lifetime.

Fitness

Science also confirms that exercise training programs are simple, yet important, methods of enhancing aspects of children’s mental health that are central to cognitive and social development: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2748863/.

Regular exercise can promote absorption of extra oxygen and also induce sound sleep at night. A brain that gets good rest through sleep. Physical activity in children:

• Promotes clear thinking
• Boosts creativity
• Stimulates learning
• Increases energy and mental concentration
• Produces positive changes in the body that enhance self-esteem.
• Helps develop motor skills and coordination. The feeling of having control over your body’s movements is exhilarating, not to mention the benefits of maintaining a good figure.
• Reduces depression by increasing levels of important brain chemicals (which are often depleted in depression)

Massage

Massages not only promote relaxation and have pain reduction benefits for babies and adults, (I highly recommend them) but also it was discovered that when massage is given to the infant for 20 minutes every day for a month, it stimulates their intelligence. For more information about the techniques to be used when massaging a baby: http://www.dailywomenshealth.com/benefits-and-techniques-of-baby-massage.html

Stimulating intellectual activities

* Analytical skills. Stimulate their development by playing games with your children that include recognizing patterns by comparing and contrasting different objects and things. Look for such educational games in children’s stores and bookstores. Solving logical problemsis also extremely beneficial. Other suggestions for beneficial games:  chess, checkers, crossword puzzles, cryptograms, word jumbles, scrabble, mathematical puzzles, monopoly.

* Creativity is a very important skill as it helps children to discover new ways of taking advantage of and applying the knowledge they’ve gathered. But how do you teach creativity?

Writing is one of the best ways. Doing it regularly builds the kind of thought patterns that improve the ability to innovate together with problem solving skills and logical thinking. Here are some efficient techniques to attract their interest to writing:

1. Writing about their feelings provoked by a picture/landscape/object. Ask your children to close their eyes and focus, pay attention to breathing for a moment and try to clear their minds. Have them open their eyes and concentrate on the picture for a moment. Tell them you don’t want them to write about what the picture looks like, but rather to focus on what the picture makes them feel. What does the picture make them think of? What does the picture remind them of? It can be anything- it doesn’t have to relate directly to the image. Does it have a happy feeling? A sad feeling? Ask them to sit down and write about it for a few moments. You’ll be amazed by the results. Don’t forget to praise your child.
2. Writing a story based on a picture or finishing an unfinished story you’ve read to them.
3. Writing a diary.

Reading. It’s no big news that reading to your children helps nurture a love of language and promotes bonding — both of which optimize a child’s intellectual potential. It also helps toddlers enhance memory, improve attention span and build vocabulary. Maintain their love of books when they become able to read by visiting bookstores and buying books suitable for their age.

Introducing Music and Rhythm in your child’s life is another way to boost creativity and enhance their academic performance. Many children find the rhythmic stimulation of drumbeats makes it easier to focus on doing homework. There is evidence that alpha brainwave entrainment music helps people concentrate better and absorb information easily. You can find such music on youtube.com

Technology

Much as using technology is useful and essential nowadays, overuse of it by children affects them adversely. Arlette Lefebvre, child psychiatrist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and a leading advocate of media literacy, is a computer buff and Internet enthusiast. However, she says technology calls for kids to develop attention spans with breadth instead of depth because of multitasking due to flitting back and forth between the cellphones, instant messages, Google searches and video games that simultaneously make demands on their attention.

California psychologist Larry Rosen, an expert on human-computer dynamics, explains that all this opening and closing of computer windows gives them the sense of accomplishing more than they actually are. The constant demands for quick responses, while playing video games or responding to MSN, speeds their brain function, increases adrenalin and gets them hyped. While adults know when to take a break, most kids don’t have the maturity or self-discipline to recognize that. After a while they end up getting frustrated and anxious because their biological and neurological system is completely on edge.

Take into consideration this warning and control your children’s use of technology. Try to engage them in other games including real communication so that they spend their spare time in an interesting way without feeling deprived of the fun a computer or play station offers.

Emotional Intelligence (Empathy)

Maybe you’ve heard so many stories about wealthy and famous people who have achieved professional success and yet they feel unhappy. Can they really be called successful then? Isn’t happiness the most crucial criterion for success in life? Professional realization contributes to this but it’s certainly not enough.

For many years society was focused on assessing only the IQ of people and relatively recently the importance of emotional intelligence was discovered. This comprises the ability of people to manage their emotions and understand other people’s emotions and behavioral reactions so that negative emotions are prevented as much as possible or when they occur, it’s easier to overcome them in a healthy way and also managing conflicts is done more efficiently.

If your child is emotionally intelligent, they will have better chances for creating successful personal and professional relationships and feel satisfied with their life. Surely, this is what you want for your children. Take a look at ways to boost the development of emotional intelligence:

* Give your children a personal example of being emotionally intelligent. Do research and learn techniques how to manage your emotions efficiently. This may be your most rewarding time investment. You’ll derive benefits from it for the rest of your life and find a way to be a friend with your children while still being an authority to them which they can draw upon whenever they need your support and assessment.

Being emotionally intelligent will prevent you from making some common mistakes like overparenting. An overparented child is a protected, spoiled child. He or she often lacks real confidence and won’t take many risks. An overprotected child avoids new situations and looks to hide behind his parents when difficulties or challenges arise which hinders the development of problem-solving skills. The same undesirable result is obtained when parents are overcritical and smash a child’s self-esteem or provoke his/her intolerance to authority.

As your child grows, help them to understand different emotions and why people react to certain circumstances. Help your child to identify the following:

- How am I feeling right now?

- Why am I feeling this way?

- How would I like to feel? What can I do to change the way I feel?

The more you help your child understand his/her emotions, the more your child will be able to control impulsive behavior and cooperate with others. To stimulate your children’s emotional opening up and encourage sharing their feelings with you, adopt these habits:

1. Use the word “I” to own the feeling. Start with “I feel upset when I am not heard.”

2. Give the feeling a label for your child: “It looks like you’re sad because your friend could not come over and play.”

3. Validate your child’s feelings. Listen, nod your head, use short comments to get them to continue talking. Do not criticize or yell or your child will shut down.

4. Make eye contact and pay attention.

You can learn more about emotional intelligence in Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman, Ph.D and valuable techniques for communication with your children from this book: “How to talk so kids will listen&listen so kids will talk” by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.

Implement the variety of these techniques for boosting children’s intelligence on a regular basis and you’ll be satisfied with the results but remember that your biggest success as a parent will be ensuring your children’s childhood is filled with happiness and love. This will create a solid foundation for their success in life.

Recommended books:

Emotional Intelligence: 10th Anniversary Edition; Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (See all Personal Transformation Books)

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk (See all Health, Mind & Body Books)

Further reading:

The Optimal Time to Become a Parent

Avoid Junk Food – Sweat-Free and Unfat

Choosing a Univerisity Subject

Choosing a University that Works for You

Life is a Constant Negotiation – Do it Successfully

Basic Skills Not Taught at School

Learn a Foreign Language Quickly

Leave a Dead-End Job and Become a Successful Consultant

Cut that Personal Debt

Is Gold Too Expensive? Think Again.

The Best Holiday Location for Your Needs

Leave the Job You Hate

Benefit from Moving to Another Country