Category Archives: Child Development

Making Kids Smart Isn’t Tough

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On my last trip I had the great joy of seeing two brilliant little children, one a 2 years old and the other 3, both of whom demonstrated once more what the future could be.  Both of these children, a boy and a girl, have digit spans of 5 (the processing abilities of a typical 6-7-year old and the processing level of many children in junior and senior high school and, sadly, many adults as well. Both of these children have been using our NACD Cognition Coach apps, and the results are right there in your face.  These little wonders are absolutely delightful, and true to their superior processing skills, they are very conversational, have good vocabularies, mature in every way, inquisitive, happy and really smart. Talk about fun!

Being with these kids and seeing what “smart” is and realizing that this is something that virtually all children could achieve is very reassuring and motivating.  We really can all be smarter, and successful outcomes in education should be focused much less on curriculum and much, much more on simply making kids smarter.  I would love to have the time to do a little study, and to test successful people, such as entrepreneurs, the top doctors, attorneys, scientists, etc. on elementary and middle school curriculum.  I know what the results would be, I would just like to have the data to make the point.  The point being that memorizing a bunch of stuff to take a test and then forgetting it doesn’t produce success. If we built a list of the actual core knowledge of successful people it wouldn’t look much like the stuff that most school curriculums are made of. I do however suspect that one of the common ingredients found in successful people, be they plumbers who have build a successful company or the successful developer, the neurosurgeon or engineer is that they are smart.

Making kids really smart isn’t all that tough; we have been developing techniques to develop short term and working memory the foundation for cognition for forty years and through our work with children and adults with developmental issues and helping them maximize their potential we have have really learned how to help typical children be truly exceptional. In about time then a child spends in brushing their teeth everyday targeted input can dramatically accelerate the process that can make them smarter. Smarter means, they enjoy a richer life, learn faster and better, derive more from their educations, increase their life and career options and raise the odds for living a happy and successful life. Smart is good and smarter is better and you simply can’t be too smart.

What Develops Changes and That Which Changes Can Be Developed

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I’m in LA and I just saw a great little eight-year-old boy who happens to have Down syndrome. He has a wonderful family who are doing all they can to help him in his development. He attends school and is in a special education class with kids with mild problems. He is the best reader in the class, which has everything to do with what he has been doing at home for years and nothing to do with school. If he were in college, he would evidently be a film major, because watching TV appears to be the primary activity in his school day, particularly on Fridays. Every Friday is TV day. Not that they don’t watch TV on other days, which they certainly do; but Friday is all TV. Ten children, four teachers (want to do the math and figure out how much that is costing us?), and what do they do to help these children develop? They watch TV–and not even “educational” TV. They watch movies.

Sadly, a significant chunk of the neuropsychological world and the educational world still doesn’t get that the basis of brain function is neuroplasticity, and that we can change and develop if given the opportunity. Perceive us as limited, and provide “opportunity” based on that perception, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for all of our children and us as well.

You would think that after all these years this nonsense would no longer make me angry; but if anything I just get angrier.

What develops changes, and that which changes can be developed; and that includes working memory and intelligence.

Eye Contact

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autism_articleI just passed a billboard on the freeway that had a picture of a child and said something like (I was perhaps traveling a little fast and only caught the sign out of the corner of my eye): “Avoiding making eye contact is a sign of autism.” Really!

A child not making eye contact might be a sign that they have a visual problem, are lying, or anxious, or insecure, or even doing something terrible like visualizing and thinking. Is it true that many autistic children make poor eye contact? Yes. But do they “avoid” eye contact? No. “Avoid” implies that the child is consciously not doing something, like connecting to you. This perception harkens back to the old psychiatric perception of autism and links to the old refrigerator mother nonsense.

Autistic children who have not yet developed good central vision, and who more often than not function largely with their peripheral vision, do not make good eye contact simply because they can’t; and if you try and force many of them to look at your face, you are in fact making it very difficult for them to see you.

I hope parents of autistic children can avoid those professionals who feel that their children choose to avoid making eye contact with them.

Intention

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Strategies won’t work if you don’t believe that the outcome is really possible.

In my last post I introduced you to Lia, an exceptional young lady with an exceptional mom who believes that her daughters can do exceptional things. When Ashly works with her girls, she does so with the expectation that they can and will do exceptional things. As obvious as this sounds, the lack of such intention presents one of our greatest challenges.

Strategies won’t work if you don’t believe that the outcome is really possible.

Whether I’m giving a parent yet another strategy to address their child’s behavior, or a motor development program for their developmentally delayed child, or you try another diet or a new exercise program, or as a nation our government is trying yet another approach to solving some international issue, our intention, which is a reflection of our belief, can determine or undermine all of our efforts and strategies, affecting the results. As an example: Mom says “no” for the five thousandth time to Johnny for an inappropriate behavior; but her expectation is that he is going to do it another five thousand times and that he really can’t help it, or that she can’t really stop it. Her intention is to do her job and give him the feedback that his behavior is wrong; but Johnny reads the part of her intention that is that she really doesn’t believe that it is going to stop. Whether she has a consequence that goes with the “no” really doesn’t matter, because her intention will affect her behavior and Johnny’s. And to compound the issue, Johnny is going to fight and resent the consequence because he knows it is really only punitive and that mom doesn’t expect him to stop regardless of the consequence.

A number of years ago I created “Visceral Response Technology,” a system/protocol to change perception, increase awareness, and change responses and attitudes by changing a person’s visceral/gut response. Education alone often does not significantly affect our visceral response, attitude, belief system, or expectations. Changing all of that requires creation of a new perspective, a new conceptual construct.

Bottom line: if you don’t really believe you can do it, you probably won’t.

Believe it and make it so.