What? That makes no sense. Attractiveness and intelligence are not mutually exclusive, and unattractive people are not necessarily intelligent either.
BTW that comment was tongue-in-cheek and is not to be taken seriously.
-
Join the MyBroadband community
South Africa’s biggest forum. Discuss, discover, and connect with thousands of members.
-
Question of the Day: Have you ever been to an airshow?
Childhood development
- Thread starter blunomore
- Start date
What? That makes no sense. Attractiveness and intelligence are not mutually exclusive, and unattractive people are not necessarily intelligent either.
BTW that comment was tongue-in-cheek and is not to be taken seriously.
The golden rule is to not get hung up on the developmental milestones. They're an average.
It is supposed be the stage during which the child learns to co-ordinate the eyes along with spatial awareness. That's one of the reasons why putting a child in a walker is considered at best not recommended.
cerebus
Honorary Master
At this age there's weeks where I think my children will be neurosurgeons and other weeks where I'll be quite happy if they can learn to eat a plate of food without 3/4 of the contents ending up on my walls.
Pfft, that's just to make the stupid people feel better about themselves
I don't think that there is any one thing like when the child learns to walk and talk that is an indicator of intellectual capacity. You'll just have to wait and see.
Some people like Einstein took a long time just to start talking but then again others like Gauss were already calculating employee payrolls in their head at age two.
Lol. Genius comes in different forms. Eg: Stephan Hawking, poor motor skills, intellectual heavyweight. Eg: Mike Tyson, poor academically, genius in the ring.
Slightly off topic but the BBC documentary called Child of Our Time is pretty good and covers many topics related to the development of children.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_of_Our_Time
Lol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_of_Our_Time
Lol.
Nicodeamus
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2006
- Messages
- 14,477
- Reaction score
- 4,530
You know my dad said something very similar when I was younger
I could basically add, subtract and multiply any number when I was 3 years old, I also used to be quite good at languages, could speak English and Afrikaans quite well at a young age, but boy I was organized and couldn't learn to swim or ride a bike before I was 10 years old. I think it also took me about 1 year longer to crawl than my brothers or sisters.
Either way, some kids learn things faster than others, some kids peak with their intelligence at a young or later age and eventually we all flatten out at one stage.
blunomore
Honorary Master
Ahhh, that brings me to another question: is intelligence nature or nurture ? In other words, if both parents are of below average intelligence , does their child basically have no chance of being the next Einstein ? Are you born with it or can it be imparted in the way you are raised and the exposure you get ?
EnchanterG
Expert Member
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2008
- Messages
- 1,888
- Reaction score
- 4
It's a bit of both, but I feel it leans heavily toward nuture. Cognitive ability has been shown to be linked to hereditary, but in all but the most severe cases this has been overcome through adaptive teaching methods.
To whit, you could breed a pair of highly intelligent humans and produce a below average intelligence child.
So I say it again, more important than the pedigree of the parents is understanding how the child prefers to learn. Its just more often the case that parents that 'aren't as intelligent' - to use a crude term - don't realise the importance of stimulating their youngster. They also don't often have access to as many developmental aids as 'smarter' parents.
Stimulation takes the form of play with various objects, various activities and games such as sing alongs etc. These help build connections in the brain that are linked with cognitive devolpment.
A bit of both I think. I remember seeing a documentary following the intellectual development of several people from the time they were babies until they were 30. The ones who were engaged from an early age (taught to read earlier/do maths earlier/musical training) ended up smarter (based on IQ) on average than those that were not. This is not to say that genetics is not important, some of the kids that did not recieve an early education still ended up with a higher IQ than those that did.
Keep in mind that things like that just helped the kids reach their intellectual potential, not everybody has genius potential no matter what you do. Conversely a child with that kind of potential that grows up in poor living conditions, gets a poor education etc. will also probably not end up as smart as he could have been.
Children don't require developmental aids or any of these electronic, supposedly educational, toys. The latter may even be an impediment to a very important part of childhood development and learning - using your imagination. We haven't yet come up with a better way for them to learn than play. The short attention span, spending only brief periods on one activity before moving onto the next is in fact a highly efficient way to learn large amounts of information. It’s a good idea to be very cautious about trying to introduce literacy or numeracy too early. Doing so is at best of questionable value and may actually be harmful. That can be because it results in attempts to structure the bulk of a child’s time and thus takes away time from the more important unstructured play, as well as because of the ensuing negative impact if the child simply isn’t ready. In the latter case you can end up with a child that appears stupid, feels like a failure, probably hates learning, and is ultimately impeded throughout their education both by the deficit of not having those fundamentals because they were taught at the wrong time and their negative perception. And yet that child quite probably, like children generally, started out as a voracious learner, with endless curiosity.
Storytelling appears to be preferable for development of language skills, but even simply reading or just talking to the child will obviously be beneficial. Pre-literate societies would of course tell stories from memory. It’s interesting that reading out of a book is not, as we might think, necessarily better. An illiterate parent obviously cannot expose their children to reading and thus those children will need to learn it somewhere else. But for all children there is likely no need for formal reading instruction – they pick it up simply from exposure just like they do speaking.
The world around us is filled with interesting objects and opportunities to learn new things.
So even the poorest person has all the tools they need to provide a young child with a rich, stimulating environment. It doesn’t require anything special really, just the parents’ time and involvement.
Storytelling appears to be preferable for development of language skills, but even simply reading or just talking to the child will obviously be beneficial. Pre-literate societies would of course tell stories from memory. It’s interesting that reading out of a book is not, as we might think, necessarily better. An illiterate parent obviously cannot expose their children to reading and thus those children will need to learn it somewhere else. But for all children there is likely no need for formal reading instruction – they pick it up simply from exposure just like they do speaking.
The world around us is filled with interesting objects and opportunities to learn new things.
So even the poorest person has all the tools they need to provide a young child with a rich, stimulating environment. It doesn’t require anything special really, just the parents’ time and involvement.
cerebus
Honorary Master
I kind of think it's important to realize that even if a child really is gifted and intelligent and curious, there's no substitute for actual age-related maturity. In other words a 4 year old will almost never be able to get the same depth of story that a 5 year old can even if they are actually more intelligent than the 5 year old. Premature learning can be quite damaging.
It doesn't matter if your child is a genius or not! Wat is important is that they should be raised without limits. Have them know that it is ok to follow their dreams and if they are really passionate about something, to go for it. A child growing up thinking the sky is the limit has a lot of ambition and most of the time get far in life, where if a child growing up always doubting him/herself it destroys their ambition and they end up living average lives when they could be doing so much more.
We tend to miss "the genius" in ourselves, not because we cannot do it, but because we don't believe!
We tend to miss "the genius" in ourselves, not because we cannot do it, but because we don't believe!
cerebus
Honorary Master
I can't exactly say I agree with this. A lot of children get raised to thinking that they are just special as unicorn teeth, and therefore entitled to sail along without making the slightest effort.
blunomore
Honorary Master
I think kids should indeed be raised with limits ... maybe we are just talking past each other, though.
IMO, kids cannot do / say whatever they want without learning that all our actions have consequences. That is what I mean by limits. I think you guys were referring to something else, though ?
As far as making children believe they are special, I think we should definitely do that. There is a difference though, between telling a child she is special and beautiful and clever versus telling a child she does not need to put in any effort in life.
I'm not talking limitless, as in discipline. Of course children should have limits, but the limits i'm referring to is not to put your child in a box and have them feel that they are not adequate enough to try something new. I'm talking about helping them reach their full potential... a.k.a Not putting a limit on their potential or ambition.