In today’s fast-paced world, many young parents are worried about their children’s intelligence and coping abilities. While intelligence is purely a biological trait determined by genes, parents can definitely help their children become smarter and more competent by following these tips: 

1.Talk to your child frequently

When you talk to your child, it helps them feel secure, loved and cared besides enhancing language skills. Also encourage your children to talk more with you and share everything that they think and feel. This will help them to also understand themselves and their thoughts better. Keenly listen to them when they are talking to you, show interest in their talks so that they feel comfortable in communicating to you. Also as children are talking, they come up with a lot of questions; do not dismiss them but give them logical responses. Further, studies reveal that children who develop strong communication skills at home from right from childhood, are able to develop confidence and also are able to articulate their feelings and aspirations better and stand up for themselves when they grow up.

2. Be openly affectionate with your child

When a parent hugs and shows affection, it has a strong impact on the child’s emotional and mental well-being. The child thereby develops a positive outlook, and also learns to be affectionate towards others. When the child feels secure at home, it definitely helps him/her to grow confidently and learn better. Besides, scientists and doctors recommend that children should be hugged, patted and loved by parents, so that they will grow up to be happy individuals without any emotional or psychological barriers. This will also help them develop a good intellect to learn, understand and adapt better.

3. Encourage reading and also read with your child

There are many benefits of reading. The most successful people in the world are voracious readers as we all know.  When you read to your child, he/she develops an appetite for knowledge, they also get interested in the habit of reading, which will help them promote their thinking and questioning abilities. Reading will help children develop background knowledge of a variety of subjects and will also help them develop keen insights. When children read books, it will not only help them build vocabulary, but will also help them lay a good foundation stone to build their knowledge base.

4. Allow them to explore

Help your children explore their passions, talents, desires, aspirations and goals. Help them understand and explore the activities they want to pursue. You can also ask them to understand which sports activities they are interested in and would like to pursue. According to scientific studies and research, music uses different parts of the brain at once to process rhythm, emotion and movement, hence learning music can be very fruitful. Playing instruments can help them in building the functional skills such as movement control. While dance enables kids to learn rhythm, coordination, and builds motor skills. Sports helps children develop physical and emotional strength and also provides enough exercise for the mind and body.

5. Celebrate Curiosity and encourage questioning

Many children are born curious and wish to know everything that is happening around them. They will want to know why are leaves green, why can’t we see air, etc. No matter how funny or weird the questions are always encourage them to be curious and answer their questions patiently. Also encourage them to find logical answers to many questions, which you may not know. It could be through books, or the Internet.

6. Thinking skills

Often many parents want to protect their children and keep guiding them about the do’s and don’ts. Sometimes it is better to encourage them to think and decide for themselves especially when they face some problems. Also, parents should make it evident that thinking is fun. Parents can start encouraging children to think from small issues such as thinking in advance to what to pack for lunch the next day, or how best to spend pocket money, how to decorate the house for festivals, what to do during vacations. When the children reach adolescence they can start thinking critically on various things.

7. Creative Innovation

Parents should try not to attempt their children’s project works but rather allow them to do independently. This is to help the children learn and understand and also try something on their own. Encourage your child to have a “can do” attitude and always keep motivating them. You can help them by giving a few reference points but let them work on their projects independently. This will also build self-confidence and self-esteem.

8. Skill building

Children should learn many skills from their childhood itself. They should learn life-skills such as first-aid, planting saplings, laundry, cleaning dishes/house, preparing simple meals, cleaning, grocery shopping, wrapping a gift and many other small tasks. Children should also develop digital skills which mostly are taught to them in schools, but they can practise them at home.

9. Learn consistently

Parents should tell their children that learning is a lifelong process and learning does not stop any time. One has to keep learning and updating continuously. Parents can motivate children to keep learning something new by themselves  by demonstrating enthusiasm and also by learning something new for instance, a new recipe or a new art and sport.

10. Allow your children to play computer games, however monitor the time

Most parents have doubts whether to allow their children to play computer games and how much time should they allow their kids with the screen-time. Parents should help their children to prepare for tomorrow’s advanced digital world and should allow them to play child friendly computer games sometimes. The child-friendly games can teach the kids letters, mathematics, music, phonics and many other things. However, parents can limit the time to not more than 20 minutes per day.

Also Read: Benefits of children playing sports & games