It’s time for the next “Turn Your Child Into a Genius” e-zine. I hope you enjoyed the previous one, and that you have tried some of the suggested activities with your children.

Please join TurnYourChildIntoaGenius Yahoo group, and let us know about your experience and results. Introduce yourself and your children, so that all of us can learn from each other and create a support group. This will be a very exclusive club!

(To join, send an email to turnYourChildIntoaGenius-subscribe@yahoogroups.com ).

Today’s topic is Visual Discrimination. Would you like your child to develop phenomenal creativity? Brilliant problem solving skills? A perception for details far superior than you have ever seen? Genius imagination? Here is your chance to help your child develop all these, and improve your own skills in the process! These are fun and enjoyable activities, that require no special equipment, no expense, just a little bit of practice will show huge benefits. As usual, we will talk about different age groups, and age appropriate activities.

The Subconscious Mind: We all use only a small part of our brain. A genius part of our brain, the subconscious mind, is neglected by most of us. Our subconscious mind, which is the seat of our intuition, holds far more information than our conscious mind. It is said to know the answers to all of our problems. It is constantly active, but we have learned to ignore it, therefore we don’t use its enormous capabilities. We have a bank of knowledge in our subconscious mind, that we did not learn how to access. Several techniques were developed in order to tap our subconscious mind, some of them are based on careful observation and development of our visual discrimination.

Young children did not yet learn how to ignore their subconscious mind. Children are easily taught how to access this part of their mind. The following activities will develop the visual discrimination, and get your child into the habit of detailed observation. The advanced activities will prepare your child for the important skills of thinking in pictures, visualization, and visual creative problem solving.

Infants: Very young babies take the first few weeks of their lives to mature the connection between their eyes and their brain. You can help your newborn develop their eye-brain connection and mature their eye focus skill by showing them an image. The trick is to show your newborn an image that is big enough (for example, 10”x8” or bigger) and has bold colors. It can be a simple picture at first, preferably one of a close person, for example Mom or Dad. You hold the picture in front of your baby, and watch the baby’s eyes. Wait until the baby focuses on the picture and hold it there for a second or two. Do this several times a day. You will notice that the baby takes less and less time to focus its eyes on the image. Normal babies may take 6 to 8 weeks to get to the point that they can easily focus on an image and perceive the details, but if you help your baby in this manner, it will speed up the process.

Since ‘Mom knows best’, you will know when your child is ready for the next step. At that time you can start showing a picture of an object and say the name of the object. The child

will develop his vocabulary and visual discrimination. You can show the same image several times in a row, and then switch to a different picture. Do this only when the baby and yourself are in good mood, and turn it into a fun, relaxed and joyful activity. Show your baby lots of love when you are done.

I suggest you prepare a set of pictures ahead of time, probably about 25 pictures. Remember, the pictures should be in bold color, and at least 10”x8”.

Next Step: From there, you can start discussing the pictures with your child. If your baby cannot talk yet, you can advance to a more detailed image, and go from one detail to another, pointing them out. Then you can describe what is happening in the picture, what action is taking place, observe the people or the objects, describe them, paying attention to the smallest details. Next session you can get into finer details. You can do this a few times in a row, but after 3 times, I recommend starting on a new picture.

Please know that your child is learning much faster than you expect. Watch your child, and make sure you are not too slow. You want to avoid boring your young child, or you lose his attention.

When the Baby Can Talk: This becomes very exciting. You take turns with your child, observing an image and describing it. From the very obvious details you can go to the less obvious details, and then you can start imagining and developing a whole story around the picture. You will discover that the more you observe the image, the more details you will notice. This will develop the child’s visual perception and imagination. You can do it for a few minutes a day, or for a longer period of time (in my opinion, you should not take more than 30 minutes), but the longer you do it, the finer the details that you will observe. You can start with a few minutes a day, several times a day, and increase the period of time gradually.

This activity is appropriate for a variety of age groups. It is a great pastime, and it lets you take advantage of wasted time, for example at the doctor’s waiting room or in line at the bank. When you are out of the house, you can observe your environment, and discuss your surroundings. Turn it into a game – take turns describing the subject, or imagining a story. For example, what are these people doing? What kind of family do they have? What kind of a house? How does this person feel right now? (Observe expression on their face).

After a very short period of time of practicing these activities, you will notice the results. You will notice a huge change in you too! Please, let us all know what you are observing.

This gets more and more interesting and beneficial as we progress through the activities.

When you feel that the time is right, you can start practicing your child’s memory. You observe an image for a few minutes, then you take the image away, and try to remember the details. Take turns describing the image, and the person who remembers more details – is the winner. You can prepare ahead of time a few questions about the picture, and ask the questions after the picture was taken away. For example: how many of a certain objects, what color is a certain object, and so forth. Within a short period of time, the child will be able to remember many details, and very fine details, too. You will discover that your own memory is improving too.

Visual memory can be improved indefinitely! I know a boy who, at the young age of 8, played chess without looking at the board (blindfold). He beat his chess teacher in a game, even though the teacher was allowed to look at the board.

For school aged children: All the activities described above, (except for the one for infants) are appropriate for all ages. With school aged children, you can invent some games, or compete with them, and you can vary the games. You can take time looking at an image and describing it in more and more detailed fashion. Then take it away and see who remembers more details. This game trains the perception as well as the memory. Then you can progress to the imagination and creativity stage, when you invent a story around the picture, and try to guess how the people in the picture feel, what brought them to the “present” situation and so forth. (Of course, these are just examples). See if you can write a little story about the picture at hand.

My kudos to you for being a great parent! Next week we will look into some other enjoyable activities that can give your child the edge and turn him into a genius!

If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to email to me at esther@all-gifted-children.com. I promise to answer every e-mail.

Lets change the world by turning our children into geniuses !

Esther Andrews

Dear Friend,

I can’t believe it is March already! The time has flown by,
the winter is over, and spring is coming. I love spring with
it’s warmer temperatures, the scent of flowers in the air,
and clouds of white blooms on the cherry trees.

Spring gives us an opportunity to take our
children out in the fresh air, and to teach them about
nature and their surroundings. Lets take advantage of
all opportunities to teach and inform our young ones.

Discipline is a hot topic among parents. I get many
emails from parents, asking about effective discipline methods
that are not disruptive to the relationship between
parents and children. Today I have an article for you about just
that: Discipline – Easy and Effective. Please read it and let me
know what you think.

To your success!
Esther Andrews
http://www.all-gifted-children.com

Every parent wants a child whom they can be very proud of. It pays to be able to raise a child who can contribute a lot to the community. Thus, if you think that you want your child to be a gifted one, then it is best to learn how to develop the child’s genius.

There are many parents who will aim at improving the talents of their kids. They can enroll in classes and clinics that will enhance the innate skills discovered. This is a good way to make sure that your child get to develop his or her potential. However, many studies by expert reveal that it is better to aim for this while the baby is still in the womb of the mother. There may be many possible ways on how to develop your child’s genius. What matters most is that you know the options so that you can properly aim for the goal.

How to Develop Your Child’s Genius

Many things can be explored to develop the child’s genius. Here are some of the points to keep in mind to ensure that same goal to your own kid.

1. Encourage the Child. One good way to develop child’s genius is to have reinforcement from the parents. Words of encouragement and praise will definitely inculcate in the child the feeling of worthiness. This is the key to make sure that the child aim for more.

2. Train the Skills and Talents. It is best to observe your child constantly. Give your child the chance to explore different things that a kid will enjoy or be interested in. Look for the skills and talents your child will display. If you find that your child is natural in a certain sport, skill or art, then make sure that he or she gets to hone it. Enrolling in a clinic or class will make sure that your child’s genius will not go to waste. Support your kid all throughout and this will definitely improve the talent and potential.

3. Caring for the Baby in the Womb. It is best to develop the child’s genius while he or she is still in the womb of the mother. Research shows that the baby at this stage can be very sensitive to the environment. Thus, providing an encouraging and stimulating atmosphere can develop the child’s genius early on. The mother must have a calm and happy environment to ensure the good disposition of the baby in the womb.

At the same time, there are certain things that the mother can do to stimulate the brain and senses of the child. It is helpful to listen to Classical music that is believed to aid in the development of the potentials of the child in the womb.

4. Talk Often to the Baby. Another good thing that can stimulate the child’s genius is to talk to the baby often. The senses of a child can be developed faster if these are constantly trained by the day-to-day activities initiated by the parents.

These points will help you to learn the possible ways on how to develop your child’s genius. Make sure you get to maximize the potential of your kid. This is not only for your own pride. The development will definitely contribute in the self-fulfillment of your child, especially when he or she grows up.

That their ascent up the ladder of achievement had started early was obvious from watching their happy parents, as they sipped wine on the lawn afterwards. The parents had, many of them, done most of the things that they could and been all the things that they had to be, in order to reach this point on this warm day, their children poised balletically for flight into the adult world.

But what were these things? Yesterday the University of London’s Centre for Longitudinal Studies (based at the Institute of Education) published its outline findings into the attainment of a cohort of 15,500 children born between 2000 and 2002. The study found that by the time that the kids were three years old the offspring of graduate parents were ten months ahead of children from relatively unqualified parents in vocabulary, and a year ahead in their comprehension of sizes, shapes, colours, letters and numbers. And while this may be an expected advantage, it is still a hell of a gap to have opened up at such a young age.

Gender made a difference, the girls being on average three months ahead of the boys (which doesn’t matter, because by the time you grow up and become, say, a newspaper columnist, the gap has all but closed, apparently). But for the rest, there could only be speculation as to exactly why such a gulf had opened up. The Guardian credited wealth and class as being behind the figures. Heather Joshi, of the institute, cautiously suggested that there was a connection with poverty or family income. In the days of Dr Eysenck we would doubtless have had the link made between IQ and genetics.

There were some intriguing possible clues in the way in which different groups measured up.

Children from Bangladeshi families were a year behind white children in tests measuring “school readiness”; West Indian and African children were six times more likely than whites to be behind. But Scottish children were two months ahead of the UK average in “school readiness”. Professor Joshi provisionally accounted for some of this by suggesting that some immigrant households had mothers who couldn’t go to work, and the children therefore missed out on the benefits of childminders and nurseries.

But why would money buy a two-year-old an understanding of shapes and colours? Why would a nursery give the same child an expanded word-hoard? If we were to take £10,000 a year from the wealthy and simply give it to the families of the most “backward” of these children, would we expect a dramatic change in their vocabularies at 3?

Also yesterday we discovered that, notwithstanding the superior school readiness of the Scots kids, their country was bottom of the Federation of Small Businesses’ annual index of wealth, comparing ten similar-sized countries in terms of economic performance and lifestyle. This position, it turned out, was almost entirely due to the poor health suffered by the average Scot.

Again: why? Why do Scots die when Sassenachs live? On the Today programme the writer and musician Pat Kane suggested that this was partly due to the “legacy of early industrialisation”and partly Scottish depression caused by not running their own separate country. Give the people independence, he seemed to be suggesting, and watch the heart patients throw away their stents and power-walk.

This was a fun idea. But also yesterday, the Institute of Education published a childhood obesity study using the same cohort. This showed that one quarter of three-year-olds were overweight, but that there were dramatic variations between ethnic groups. Nine per cent of Indian children were overweight, compared with a quarter of whites and a third of African and Caribbean children. The Scots did better than the Welsh.

Why would Indians be less depressed about having a say in society than whites? Or does Scottish nationalism somehow unconsciously ape the cultural conditions of Hinduism?

The reason why some children do far better than others is obvious from the walk home from school. It was clear to me the moment one parent in my daughter’s class complained that her six-year-old son, to whom she gave Coca-Cola just before he arrived in school, was in no condition to do the boring reading that the school expected them to accomplish together in the evenings. Boys play football, she announced.

Babies need to be talked to, toddlers need to be read to, children need to be considered. Kids need to be fed decent food. Except in instances of dire poverty, money itself is rarely the explanation as to why these things don’t happen. Perhaps one reason for the growing advantage of the middle classes is not that they are richer, but that they assimilate better all the dire warnings about face-time, junk food and smoking. None of it is a mystery, Pat – watch the Scottish mortality statistics improve as a consequence of the year-old smoking ban.

So it’s about culture. Last weekend I was forced by my ten-year-old to see a witless Hollywood comedy about a black journalist who moves his step-family to the countryside. Had the film been about a white middle-class family then I think it unlikely that the 12-year-old son would have been depicted eating Pop-Tarts for breakfast, or that the father’s useless and macho attempts at parenting would have been so sympathetically portrayed. “This,” the film seemed to be suggesting, “is how we do it.” And a bad, bad way it was.

There are too many families who don’t have books in the house, who don’t limit TV watching, who don’t set boundaries, who don’t set their children an example. There are too many families who don’t or can’t care that much about their very young children. Maybe they don’t care because they weren’t cared about. Perhaps such cultural poverty is as much a cause of actual poverty as a consequence.

This illustrates the need for early intervention, which is quite another column. But, crudely, the message of these studies is that we should now pay the Scots to bring up our children, but let the Indians feed them.

WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR CHILD TO BE BRILLIANT, GIFTED, A GENIUS?

When my daughter was born, I have had no idea how to take care of her. I didn’t even know how to change a diaper, or how to hold a baby.

But I knew that I want to give her the best chances for a good, successful, fulfilling life a child has ever had.

When my son was born, I already had some experience, but – again – I have decided to give him the best opportunities I could.

I have started my own research. I have read every book on the market, I have tried my own methods, I have talked with parents of gifted children, I have watched what parents of the most brilliant children are doing with their kids. I have tried every technique I have heard about on my own children.

I went from an inexperienced, new mother, to a mother of 2 highly gifted children, and later became the principal of the “School for Gifted Education”.