We all want our kids to enjoy the social and professional advantages conferred by high intelligence, but few parents understand how to effectively nurture this trait. Though a wealth of purportedly intelligence-boosting toys, apps, books, and games exist, the evidence behind them is mixed and often insufficient. In fact, research has shown that many simple, traditional childhood activities rank among the best ways to support healthy intellectual development: Playing with blocks, for example, has been shown to improve kids’ spatial, reasoning, and motor skills, in addition to promoting creativity. Likewise, reading to your child each night and making time for imaginative play will do more to enhance her ability to learn than even the most advanced educational apps.
The way we discuss intelligence with our kids can also influence their development in unexpected ways. Experiments suggest that praising kids for being smart (rather than praising them for working hard) actually tends to inhibit their performance, because it teaches them to focus on how smart they appear to others. As a result, they start to avoid challenging tasks that may make them look “dumb.” Similarly, telling kids that intelligence is a fixed, inherent quality can hinder their development by making them less likely to learn from their mistakes.
To help kids build their cognitive skills, we need to prioritize interacting with them while giving them the tools and beliefs they need to see the world as a place of limitless possibility. We need to encourage them to explore, experiment, and challenge themselves. Below, we’ll break down five of the best ways to foster intelligence in your child:
Encourage unstructured, imaginative play.
Structured activities - activities where kids are told what they should do, and when - can be useful for teaching kids specific skills, like how to play an instrument. When it comes to improving core cognitive abilities, however, unstructured play (also known as child-led play) is the clear winner. Unstructured play may involve playing with blocks, play dough, figurines, or doing crafts. The important thing is allowing your child to plan and alter her project at will, rather than having her follow precise instructions.
Manipulating physical objects during unstructured play helps kids understand how to interact with the physical world around them while simultaneously teaching them to think more creatively. Other types of unstructured play, like group play and role-playing games, improve kids’ emotional and social intelligence. Simulating real-world situations through make-believe helps kids process their emotions, experiment with multiple solutions to complex problems, and develop better coping skills. The latter is especially important to cognitive development, because kids who can manage frustration and disappointment are much more likely to take on new challenges - and stick with them.
Read to your child often.
Most parents know that reading to young children confers better lifelong literacy skills. Numerous studies have shown that early readers go on to read more later in life, and they typically demonstrate superior language fluency, a broader vocabulary, and greater general knowledge. What parents often don’t realize, however, is just how powerful a tool reading can be for improving their child’s social and emotional intelligence, along with her critical and abstract thinking skills.
Reading stimulates cognitive development more than listening to audio or watching images because it activates multiple areas of the brain. When kids read, they must interpret complex interactions between characters and mentally construct fictional worlds while quickly processing verbal information. The interactive aspect of reading with a parent is also important for kids who aren’t yet old enough to read on their own: As well as being a valuable bonding experience, reading with your child is a great way to make her more empathetic and give her better conflict resolution skills. When we help our kids relate to the lives of fictional characters, we teach them to consider multiple points of view and see the world through others’ eyes.
To maximize the cognitive benefits of reading, talk to your child about the stories you read together immediately after completing them. Ask your child questions to prompt her to consider characters’ actions and feelings more deeply; e.g., “If that happened to you, what do you think you would do?”, “How would you feel if that happened to you?, or, “Why do you think that character reacted the way he did?”
Parents should also be aware that it’s never “too early” to start reading to their kids. You can begin reading to your infant even if she isn’t old enough to talk or understand language; she’ll still benefit from the opportunity to start connecting certain sounds with feelings and words. When reading to a baby, choose simple books that contain brightly-coloured images and repetitive or rhyming text. You should also opt for books made of cloth or plastic when reading to a child under two years of age, as babies like to grab and chew books. (This exploratory behaviour helps babies learn, so it should be accommodated.)
Help your child learn basic math skills.
In Canada and the United States, there’s a strong emphasis on learning language skills early, but the same cannot be said about math skills. Relatively few parents help their kids learn fundamental math concepts at home before they begin school, while over half of all parents read to their preschoolers 5-7 times per week, according to the Canadian Scholastic Reading Report. Similarly, most preschools spend little (if any) time on math, with Great Schools reporting that just 58 seconds per day are devoted to teaching math at these institutions, on average. This is a grave oversight, because developing math skills early in life is strongly associated with future academic success, stronger problem-solving skills, and better spatial awareness. Learning math at home also gives kids a positive impression of mathematics, thereby making the subject less intimidating when it’s encountered in an academic setting.
To help your child learn math at home, don’t over-emphasize verbal counting or memorizing written numbers, as these activities only facilitate rote learning. Instead, use physical objects (like blocks or toys) to represent numbers. Show your child how many objects “two” and “three” are, then slowly introduce addition and subtraction by adding and removing objects. When you’re done, let your child play with the objects so she can grasp the concepts you’ve shown her.
Promote physical activity at home.
Kids who enjoy being active have lower rates of childhood diabetes and obesity, but the benefits of regular exercise don’t end there: Studies suggest that being physically fit is also associated with a better ability to concentrate and process new information. During one study where kids were asked to identify different types of animals from fast-moving images, the most aerobically fit children in the group both named the animals more quickly and exhibited more complex brain activity on imaging tests. (Hillman et al, 2005) Other studies have shown that active kids tend to have more brain volume in the hippocampus, which is associated with a stronger memory. (Chaddock-Heyman et al, 2014) These advantages may be especially profound for children struggling with learning disabilities and ADHD.
Instill a growth-based mindset in your child.
Having the right attitude towards intelligence is an important component of learning. Kids can be given all the necessary basic reading and math skills, but if they don’t believe in their ability to use them, they won’t live up to their full potential.
According to research conducted at Stanford University, parents should cultivate a “growth-based” mindset in their kids and avoid fixed or static notions about intelligence. Kids who understand that there’s always capacity for learning and improvement form and pursue more ambitious goals than kids who believe their intellectual abilities have a natural limit.
To prevent your child from seeing intelligence as a fixed quality, focus your attention (and praise) on her willingness to try new things and how hard she works - not just the results of her efforts. For example, rather than congratulating your child for her good grades, say something like, “I really admire how hard you’ve studied this term,” or, “I was so impressed by the way you experimented with different solutions to that problem until you found the right one.” Emphasizing your child’s learning process, not the specific grades she achieves, will keep her curiosity alive and combat the idea that in order to be smart, one must always perform perfectly. You’ll also call attention to your child’s unique strengths (e.g., her persistence or willingness to experiment), so that she can fully appreciate her individual learning style.
When you make a point of fostering intelligence in your children, you do more than just increase their cognitive capacity: You show them how to take joy in learning, find fulfillment in exploring who they are, and develop a sense of purpose. These gifts will enhance your child’s quality of life immeasurably, and constitute success in their own right.
