Posts Tagged ‘teaching’

Today’s Thought Bubble: I Love My Job!



What makes children smart?

In my jobs as a teacher and a psychologist who does assessment, I have been asked many times about how to increase a child’s IQ points or how they can be smarter. I always reply by saying “there’s no ONE way to make someone smarter”. I tell them that while maternal nutrition and taking the best prenatal vitamins during pregnancy can help in the baby’s brain development, it is not necessarily enough to make them intelligent. Genes do play a factor, but it is not also just that. It is a combination of nature and nurture that fosters intelligence in an individual. Giving them ample opportunities to explore, for example, is an important contributor to intelligence and problem solving abilities. I think that more than just the academic demands of school (which many people think equate to making one smart) it is also important that a child be allowed to play. After all, play is a child’s work. This is how they make sense of the world and understand how to engage with other people. This makes them develop physically, mentally and socially as well.

Other things that help foster intelligence in children can include hand’s on supervision by parents, monitored (not necessarily banned!) television, playing computer games, reading storybooks, taking road trips, and engaging in a hobby such as stamp collecting.

In general, one’s intelligence is influenced by several factors that interact with one another and can not necessarily be taken into individual contexts. As parents and teachers, our job is to help stimulate these  so children can maximize their potentials.

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