I took a psychology course at the state college down the street this summer and thankfully my professor asked us to read an article about how to raise smart children! I learned in this article that I am doing it all wrong! Through studies it is proven that actual IQ or what we call intelligence, has nothing to do with how successful a person will be later in life. In fact, those with high IQ don't make as much money as those with average IQ maybe because they didn't learn to work as hard for a better grade in school? There was a common key factor in the hundreds of children that took part in this experiment, it was a " growth mindset. " These successful children were not told over and over that they are smart as children, what they were told, and what it was found in their psychology was that they did not believe that intelligence is gift, or trait that you either had or did not have. They were told that intelligence is earned through study, and not giving up even when a challenge is present. The children who did not do well in school had a
" fixed mind set " where they believed that intelligence was something you either had or did not have.
So I think I posed this all wrong as I told Brooke a few days ago, " Brooke, I read an article in my class that said that being smart is something that is earned through working hard. You will actually become more smart if you know you just need to keep working at something really hard, and just keep trying. "
So it wasn't so bad that Brooke misunderstood me........ about twenty min. later I went in her room and it was perfectly clean, the bed was made and she was dressed and ready to go. I was pleasantly surprised because normally I have to ask her to do these things. I was even more surprised when I went into Will's room and his bed was made by Brooke and his toys all cleaned up.
I didn't think anything except that Brooke was trying to be a really big help that day and I praised her for her help!
Well, when the next day she had done the same thing to both rooms with out me asking, I was thinking, Wow, Brooke is really a go getter! Then as she asked to use my tablet and told me she was ready to watch some learning videos because she did her work already, I realized I didn't explain this article very well! She thought you actually had to do hard work and then try and learn and it would make you more intelligent.
She is so determined to be intelligent! She didn't understand I meant when you are at school and a problem is hard, just know if you keep working at it, you will get it eventually. I can see now why she didn't grasp what I was telling her! It was because nothing is ever hard or challenging for her because she has that " growth mindset " already!
I think I am going to wait a few days before I re-explain the article. It's nice to take advantage of my little hard working cleaning girl in the meanwhile ;) and having a child working hard in the house and then watching learning videos is like dream land for a Mom. I will tell her I meant when something she is trying to learn is hard to keep working hard to learn, is what I meant! Not that she had to clean the whole house in order to learn or be smart! hahaha.....
Brooke is such an amazing child to have! I am so lucky!!!!
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