How to Improve IQ for kids? Why Is It important?

What exactly is IQ or just say ‘intelligence’? 

Do you ever wonder where we get our general mental capability, which includes the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think conceptually, apprehend complex ideas and learn quickly from experiences?

This is what reasonably defines Intelligence or IQ. It is not merely narrow academic skills or book learning. Rather, it highlights a deeper and broader capability for comprehending our surroundings. It involves a representation of behaviors associated with attention, perception and learning that we would certainly want to include as key aspects of intellectual functioning.

IQ is considered as one of the main factors in one's fortunate career, with other factors which are equally important for example dedication, motivation, self-confidence and social skills.

Higher IQ for kids gives them a better chance of being successful at school and professionally. Your child’s IQ can be measured from the results obtained from specially designed tests. 

A child’s intelligence is strongly influenced by their surroundings, like the child's home environment, education and availability of learning resources. Other than these factors parenting plays the lead role.

Parents should create a template for close relationships with their children. Early attachment to your child’s emotional and social development, also helps build your child’s intelligence. Being accustomed to your child provides a ‘safety net’ for your child’s brain.

How to improve IQ for kids?

Boosting does not necessarily mean filling up your child’s brain with knowledge. Here are some of the major points one should keep in mind while wanting to boost their child’s IQ. 

• Praising works as a backfire 

Praising your child can be a great motivator but too much emphasis on praising ‘intelligence’ and pushing their kids can also make kids focus on wrong goals. Research shows that certain kinds of praise actually backfires or undermine motivation and leave kids feeling helpless when they fail. Praising kids for their ability makes them focus on looking good, not on learning. Praising kids for their intelligence avoids them to take up new challenges, instead, they prefer easy tasks to keep proving themselves by doing well. This actually is counter-productive. On the other hand, kids praised for their efforts were more interested in learning new strategies and preferred tasks that were challenging. Intelligence without accepting challenges is just like a bird without wings.

•  Sleep and learning 

Our kids are more likely to hold on to what they have learned and more credible to achieve new insights if they go to sleep shortly after their studies. Your child doesn't need to sleep the whole night for the effect to work. 60 min naps are just as effective. Therefore, kids with flexible academic schedules are at a clear-cut advantage. 

It makes absolute sense for children to schedule their studies before naps and bedtime. Also, children with chronic sleep restriction have a lasting effect on cognitive performance. For most of the parents, the question - how to improve cognitive skills in students is left unanswered. You’ll find that this is one of the ways by which you can improve cognitive skills in students. The cognitive skills includes problem-solving, visual perception, logical reasoning etc. 

• Free Choice 

When your kids get to choose what they want to do, they show greater motivation and perform better. In contrast, some kids show more interest when their choices are made for them by trusted authority, parents or peers. Each kid has different capabilities with different ways of adapting and learning. There is no one approach that fits all to classroom learning.

• Spatial Intelligence 

Spatial intelligence is defined by the capability for mentally retrieving, rotating, retaining, generating and transforming structured visual images. Your kids can attain success in fields ranging from architecture, engineering and visual arts, they just require spatial skills. It is proven that kids with spatial thinking are an essential prognosticator of achievement in STEM, science, mathematics, technology, engineering and visual arts.

• Games and toys

Games and toys can also enhance your kid’s cognitive skills. There is immense importance of cognitive skills in today’s world for students. Toy blocks enhance spatial, verbal solving and maths solving skills. Playing promotes advanced learning, memory and growth of the cerebral cortex.

So, yes your child’s IQ can be boosted as “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”   

Learning is an active process and kids' brains eventually evolve to learn by doing things and not just hearing about them.

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