Parenting is inherently interesting but also extremely difficult. You always want to bring all the good things to your children, however, over-controlling, over-protecting such as using inappropriate parental control software can sometimes backfire, inhibiting their development and instinct their abilities to explore life.
Based on research in neuroscience and psychology, the article below will help you better understand how to raise a genius – or how to teach children to become smarter and more self-controlled.
Parents should be gardeners, not carpenters
Carpenters carve wood into the shape and size they desire while the gardener, with their caring hands and perseverance every day, helps everything grow.
So is how to raise a genius. You can completely mold your child into a specific image as you always wish, like a talented doctor or a successful businessman. You do your best to enable your child to follow that path by exposing him to medicine from a young age or by forcing him to join the business clubs in school.
However, you may not realize that, to satisfy your wishes, you have to trade your child’s development and the relationship with them. Your child will have a negative view of doctors and entrepreneurs (simply because they don’t like it) and they will spend time doing what you want while they can have many opportunities to explore and train themselves in other areas.
In short, the gardener’s approach will be to create more opportunities for your child to experience and see which ones spark interest and interest in your child. Once you have a good understanding of your child, just as the gardener understands the type of plant you are growing, you can adjust the soil, water, and fertilizer so that it can take root and thrive.
Instead of describing people, describe the behavior
When your son accidentally hits his sister, instead of telling him that he was a bad boy, you can tell him not to hit her like that because she will be hurt, when she is hurt, she will be very sad. As with compliments, instead of saying that your child is so good, tell her how she uses this constant to solve math problems creatively.
These types of words will help your child’s brain build more useful concepts of self-regulated action.
Be a good example for your kid
Your child is of school age, and you are his closest person, he will see how you speak, behave, act and imitate that. In short, children learn naturally by watching, playing, and most of all, copying adults. This is effective, ongoing and gives children a sense of ownership.
However, your child can still imitate the good and the bad. So be careful what you say or judge. Besides, children are very able to imitate things around them that in their eyes are happy, funny but not really good. For example, a 10-year-old kid in America died trying to imitate the black-out trends on TikTok.
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Take lots of time talking with your child
Research shows that even when children are only a few months old and do not understand the meaning of the word you say, their brains still use them to build a neural foundation for later learning. Therefore, the more words your child hears, the greater the effect of acquiring knowledge in the future. Your child will also have better vocabulary and reading comprehension ability. One of the effective things on how to raise a smart kid.
As they get older, they will explore their life and this big world, and of course, there are good and bad things. See yourself as a tour guide leading your child to explore the mysteries of the world around them, showing them what is appropriate and inappropriate in both real world and virtual world.
You should prepare mentally and logically to teach your child what to avoid such as drugs and stimulants before they get curious and try them secretly.
Patiently answer your child’s questions
Your child is in the process of learning about the world around him, so you may get tired when he constantly asks the questions “Why?” and “How”. Remember that your child relies on you to ask you questions, and once you explain something to them, your child takes on a piece of new knowledge from the world and makes him able to predict well.
Don’t answer your “why” questions like “Because I said so.” When he truly understands the reasons behind a certain action or prohibition, etc., he can better adjust his behavior – this is a way on how to how to raise smart kids.
For example, when talking about pornography on the Internet, many parents have banned their children from watching sex movies like “If I see you watching sex movies, I will scold you.” Failure to explain clearly the reason will make your child confused and limited in analyzing the cause and effect later on.
It would be much better if you say that your child is not allowed to watch porn because the porn will decrease their intelligence, making them have low self-esteem. This reasoning helps children understand the consequences of their actions and proactively avoid them later.
Guarantee those who your child exposes to is safe
In addition to the people your kids meet like grandparents, aunts and friends, try to expose your child to as much diversity as possible, especially when they are babies. According to research, babies who are in regular contact with people who speak different languages and accents can build brain systems that help children learn other languages effectively in the future.
Likewise, babies who see many different faces are better able to distinguish and remember more types of faces in later life. However, you should not be subjective with the people that your children interact with as often as their friends because your kids are still very likely to be bullied, especially online bullying.
Intervene at the right time
Children love to try things on their own without a parent’s help, such as getting dressed or playing a jigsaw puzzle. This is fine because children need to develop a sense of self-control. Even actions that look like wrongdoings can be your efforts to understand their impact on the world.
For example, when your child throws toys on the floor and waits for you to come to pick them up, he or she doesn’t wait for you to do it because they are most likely experimenting with gravity. Let your children understand that their actions affect the world around them.
However, there are exceptions, when children grow up, especially during puberty, with curiosity and easily influenced by friends and less reliance on parents at this age, the high percentage is they will indulge their curiosity by learning about gender and will accidentally be exposed to a variety of harmful content such as porn.
To ensure your child’s online environment is safe and healthier, you should consider using an additional online content filtering tool to hide 15 types of harmful content on the Internet, including:
- Pornography
- Horrifying content like gore, accidents, ghosts, violence, murder, terrorism, etc
- Content about stimulants, addictive substances such as alcohol, beer, marijuana, drugs, etc
- Content with aggressive elements, hurting others like Hate speech
The special thing is that this free porn blocker extension is completely free, helps to minimize your child’s access to harmful content, ensuring a healthy online environment for your child but at the same time, not invading their privacy rights.
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