Know Your Child's Intelligence

I hope you learned something about your child's learning style while reading the series on Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. Dr. Gardner researched and found out that children and adults seem to learn and show how smart they are in a lot of ways. He also noticed that different parts of the brain seem to be tied to the different ways of being smart. Most people have some portion of each of the intelligences, but usually one or two of the intelligences will be more dominate. Review each of the 8 intelligences carefully, and try to decide which one or two is the most dominate in your child. Then, talk to your child and tell them their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, have them participate in strengthening the weaker intelligences and have fun and take advantage of the dominate ones. This should be a fun thing to do with the entire family.

Teachers today are aware of these findings on Multiple Intelligences. They should be using them in their daily instruction. If your child is having difficulty with learning, it could be the way the material is being presented. Talk to the teacher and let him/her know that you are aware of your child's learning style. Maybe you both can come up with a plan together to help your child succeed. If you or the teacher feel the problem is more serious, don't hesitate to have the child tested and evaluated as soon as possible. The earlier a problem is diagnosis and treated, the better the results. There are so many new findings and treatments for learning delays, disabilities, and other interferences.

Starting Sunday, November 1st, I am going to do a series on the three learning styles. It will be very informative and will help you and your child understand exactly learning takes place and how to be successful academically. Please write me if you have any questions or topics of interest and I will try to answer or find an answer to your questions. I wish you the best education possible for your child and loved ones.

Debbie