Which kind of clever is your child?

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Parents have always known that IQ scores don’t tell the whole story. How can a written test show that Susan plays the piano like a dream, or that Paul can take two broken radios and make a new one that works? But because IQ scores are often too serious, some children suffer.

Take Leslie. At the age of ten she was excluded from a class for the academically gifted because her IQ was only 100 instead of the required 125. Leslie’s father, however, says that his daughter has something more than high IQ – intuition about the people. When Leslie completed her law qualifications, she did so well in the interviews that she won the competition for a very prestigious job.

As Leslie’s story indicates, children have many abilities, that tests can not measure. Professor Howard Gardner, a professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences. In his book “Frames of Mind” he says that there are seven basic kinds of intelligence. IQ tests focus mainly on two intelligences: the linguistic and the logical-mathematical. But the other five – the bodily-kinaesthetic, musical, spatial, and interpersonal and intrapersonal should get some attention too. How to understand and develop the potential of a child?

Linguistic.A linguistically gifted child is an early talker. He can make his own language. He will memorize long strings of words and pick up some foreign phrases. Such a child learns to read at an early age.

How to encourage a linguistically gifted child? Read to him every night at bedtime. Give him books and take him to the library. Ask him to recite poems. Buy him a good dictionary.

Musical. The musically gifted child loves making music. He will listen to sounds, taxi horns, typewriter keys, even washing machines. He will touch piano keys, recognize familiar songs when played even without their lyrics.

How can you develop his musical intelligence? Sing to him, buy a piano, find a good teacher. Look for schools with extra-curricular music lessons.

Logical-Mathematical. A child who is strong at maths and logic likes category and pattern. Are these building blocks the same or different? He is also good at chess and draughts and is quick to learn equivalences (two days equals 48 hours). He may construct rule-governed imaginary worlds. (Lewis Carroll, who wrote “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” was a mathematician).

What are the ways of encouraging him? He would like to have building blocks, to store small toys by category. Give him a Monopoly game. Play cards with him, even though he will usually win. Find a mathematical club in your area.

Spatial. These children are superb visualizers. Take Kitty. At four she was trying to draw milk cartons in perspective. Now she is 15, she gets top marks for art, and is thinking of becoming a photographer.

It’s easy to encourage this gift. Give a child paints and a special area for drawing. Supply various clays, plasticized and scissors. Go on long walk over unfamiliar area and encourage a child to draw maps of where you’ve been.

Bodily-Kinaesthetic.This intelligence consists of two main skills: how to manage our own movements gracefully and how to handle objects skilfully. Athletes are bodily-kinaesthetically gifted; so are many engineers. If your child finds it easy to swim, and ride a bicycle with no hands, he or she may be bodily-kinaesthetically gifted. This child can work with tools, taking apart and fixing clocks, radios, and even computers.

What to do for these children? Take them to science museums, buy them tools, take them to junior sport clubs, dance and gymnastics classes.

Personal – knowledge of self and others.It’s hard to recognize a child who is gifted in this way – usually we notice the lack of this gift. Self-intelligent children can be noticed at older age. They know how to plan and how to use their own abilities. The child who has intrapersonal intelligence notices changes in other people: “Why was Grandma sad today?” he’ll ask. If he is reading a mystery story or watching a detective programme on television, he may quickly identify the criminal.

How can you encourage the personal forms of intelligence? Praise him on his insight. Let him join the group with chances for leadership, take him to drama classes. After a theater performance, talk about the characters. Ask him to describe the characters of the family members.

“Children make their mark in life by doing what that can do, no by what they can’t,” Howard Gardner says. “School is important, but life is more important. Being happy is using your skills productively, no matter what they are.”

CHILDHOOD STRESS

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Adults view the world of children as happy and carefree. After all, kids don’t have jobs to keep or bills to pay, so what could they possibly have to worry about? Plenty! Even very young children have worries and feel stress to some degree. Stress is a function of the demands placed on us and our ability to meet them.

Sources of childhood stress.Pressures often come from outside sources (such as family, friends, or school), but they can also come from within. The pressure we place on ourselves can be most significant because there is often a discrepancy between what we must do and what we are actually doing in our lives.

Stress can affect anyone – even a child – who feels overwhelmed. A 2-year-old child, for example, may be anxious because his parent isn’t there to satisfy him or her. In preschoolers, separation from parents is the greatest cause of anxiety.

As children get older, academic and social pressures create stress. In addition, well-meaning parents sometimes unwittingly add to the stress in their children’s lives. For example, high-achieving parents often have great expectations for their children, who may lack their parents’ motivation or capabilities. Parents who push their children to excel in sports or who enroll their children in too many activities may also cause unnecessary stress and frustration if their children don’t share their goals.

Many professionals feel that a number of children are too busy and do not have time to play creatively or relax after school. Kids who begin to complain about the number of activities they are involved in or refuse to go to activities signal to their parents that they are too busy. It’s a good idea to talk with the child about how he or she is feeling about after-school activities. If he or she complains, it’s necessary to talk about the pros and cons of quitting one of the activities.

The child’s stress level may be intensified by more than just what’s happening in his or her family. Parents should be careful when they discuss troubles at work, a relative’s illness or financial matters. Children will pick up on their parents’ anxieties and start to worry themselves. Complicating factors, such as an illness, death of a loved one, or a divorce, may be causing the child’s stress. When these factors are added to the everyday pressures, the stress is magnified. Even the most amicable divorce can be a difficult experience for children because their basic security system – their family – is undergoing a tough change. Separated or divorced parents should never put kids in a position of having to choose sides or expose them to negative comments about the other spouse.

Recognizing symptoms of stress.It’s not always easy to recognize when the child is stressed out. Behavioral changes, such as mood swings, changes in sleep patterns can be indicators of stress. Some children experience physical effects, including stomachaches and headaches. Others have trouble concentrating or completing schoolwork. Still others become withdrawn or spend a lot of time alone. Younger children may show signs of reacting to stress by picking up new habits like thumb sucking, hair twirling, or nose picking; older children may begin to lie, bully, or defy authority. A child who is stressed out may also have nightmares, overreactions to minor problems, and drastic changes in academic performance.

Reducing the child’s stress. How can we help the child cope with stress? Proper rest and good nutrition can help increase the child’s coping skills, as well as good parenting. Parents should make time for their child each day. Even as the child gets older, this "quality time" is important. It’s really hard for some people to come home after work, get down on the floor, and play with their kids or just talk to them about their day – especially if they’ve had a stressful day themselves. But by showing interest in the child’s life, regardless of the child’s age, parents are showing their child that he or she is important to them.

Working through the stress with the child.When children are unwilling or have trouble discussing these issues, it may be helpful to talk with the child about some concerns. This will help the child see that parents are willing to discuss these issues with him. Some level of stress is normal; it’s OK to feel angry, scared, lonely, or anxious. But they must know that other people share his or her feelings. If the child continues to show symptoms and is unwilling to talk, it might be helpful to see a counselor or another type of mental health care specialist.

THE ART OF TALKING

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Last night was a bore. Several people came to my place for a chat hoping to enjoy themselves. But what an awful evening it was! One young man talked to us for ah hour on every subject under the sun. None of us could get in a word, not even me, though I am supposed to know how to do it – I’ve been a journalist for many years. So what should have been a pleasant social get-together became an awful bore.

Our speaker, for I cannot call him less, was as exciting as reading of last week’s laundry list. He is eighteen, and that, I think, excuses him, for he hasn’t been practicing the art of talking for too many years.

He will learn, I hope, that a good conversationalist is a man who has something interesting to say, and at the same time he tries to make his audience feel comfortable. He is also a good listener and shows by his interest that he wants to hear what others have to say. He enjoys talking but realizes that everyone will get more pleasure from conversation if all get a chance to take part. He speaks clearly enough for all to hear comfortably; he is never monotonous, and his speech is full of interesting things; and, by the way, unlike some people, he looks his listeners in the eye, and not into space.

Unfortunately quite often we suffer from bad conversationalists. They are all the same – they are always boring, and yet they differ. You can even talk of several types here. To begin with, there is the so-called ‘monopolizer’, for instance. This type of conversationalist wants to do all the talking. After you have been listening to him for 10 minutes, you know you are not going to be able to add more than a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ to something he has said because he will probably continue talking until he is so tired he can’t speak any more.

The ‘show-off’ is not very different from the ‘monopolizer’. Here is the person who wants to attract attention to himself. Even if he has nothing to offer he still wants to be in the centre of the talk.

And the ‘repeater’ is a well-familiar type. He will repeat not only something he has said but also something someone else has mentioned. Hasn’t this kind of talker bored us since time immemorial?

There is also the type that I call the ‘detail man’. He usually enjoys what he is telling so much that he cannot leave out the smallest detail. Often, after he has been speaking for a short time he finds he has lost audience because they are not so interested in all the details as he is.

And now I almost want to say God for the ‘interrupter’. The good thing about this type of conversationalist is that you can depend upon him to interrupt the ‘monopolizer’ or the ‘detail man’.

And, of course, there is the ‘silent’ one. This speaker has nothing to say. It may be that he has no information to offer or it may be that he is afraid to say something because he is too shy. Or perhaps he is the one who remembers that silence is gold.

I personally believe that most communication is good. I am all for discussing things, but the talker must remember that conversation must serve a purpose. What he says must always be to the point. For life is short, and nobody wants to spend hours listening to people that talk and talk and never think.

THE MYSTERIES OF DREAMS

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It’s a universal human experience. You put your head against the pillow at night and slowly fall asleep. Soon you enter a weird and wonderful world. It’s a world in which you might find yourself walking around school in your pajamas or chasing the school bus after you missed it. You could be flying under your own power or talking with a long-deceased relative. You’ve entered the world of dreams.

People have always dreamed, and dreamers have always wondered what their mysterious nighttime visions meant. Some philosophers in ancient times believed that dreams were important messages from the gods or visions of things to come. As the centuries went by, many other philosophers and average people developed their own theories about the purpose of dreams and what dreams mean. And finally, dreams became a subject of scientific study.

In his 1900 book, Freud described how he asked his patients to tell him everything they could remember from their dreams. Freud believed that dreams were “the royal road to the unconscious.” He concluded, on the basis of his talks with the patients, that dreams are caused by disturbing wishes, such as sexual desires or aggressive impulses that a person represses in waking life. These unacceptable thoughts, according to Freud, are often disguised as symbolic elements in dreams. For example, fire may symbolize feelings of hostility, while water may stand for sexuality. The symbolism in dreams needs to be interpreted, in order to be understood. Freud believed that symbolism is necessary in dreams, because straightforward thoughts about unacceptable desires and feelings would arouse anxiety and awaken the dreamer. Thus, Freud proposed, dreams are the guardians of sleep.

Freud’s questioning of his patients led him to believe that dreams are usually brief and that dreaming itself is rare during sleep. Furthermore, a dream usually incorporates some minor event from earlier in the day – a piece of “unfinished business” of some kind. But at a deeper level, dreaming is a unique state of consciousness that is caused by suchurges as hunger, thirst, and sexuality that arise during the night.

Jung rejected Freud’s idea that dreams are related to wish fulfillment. Jung’s main conclusion was that dreams express aspects of the personality that are not fully developed in waking life. For example, people who neglect their spiritual needs may experience strong religious feelings in their dreams.

In order to understand what their dreams mean, dreamers need to become familiar with the kinds of symbols used in myths, fairy tales, and religious rituals. For instance, as in tales involving the “big, bad wolf,” a dangerous animal may symbolize some person or event that is a threat to the dreamer. And, as in Christian theology, wine may represent blood or salvation. Jung claimed that people in modern Western civilization often ignore such symbolic language, and so they need help in understanding what their dreams are trying to say to them.

Although most psychiatrists disagreed with some of the ideas of Freud or Jung, many of them accepted that dreams have symbolic meanings.

Do Dreams Have any Meaning? Taking the idea that dreams have meaning, but rejecting the explanations of Freud and Jung, many scientists have developed their own theories of dreams. For example, several researchers have proposed that dreams have a problem-solving function, suggesting possible solutions to emotional problems. Other researchers, however, point out that few dreams seem to provide even a hint of a solution to such problems.

In order to answer the question, “What do my dreams mean?” we may have to wait for further advances in the study of dream content and breakthroughs in the study of brain function. In the meantime, when you go to bed at the end of a long day and close your eyes, you might simply look forward to the fascinating show that your brain will be putting on for you.