There is no reasoning someone out of a position he has not reasoned himself into.
When you live life close to the edge there is always a chance from time to time that you might bleed a bit. Many people are content to dim their lights, to dream smaller dreams than they otherwise might and to live under a glass ceiling largely of their own creation.
When you unlock your child’s genius, they will stand out. They will think differently to the mainstream, concentrate on their passions in a world distracted by entertainment, and create and link ideas in outlandish ways. Your child will be a creator not just a consumer.
By standing out, they may become the target of other people’s envy. Humans are most powerfully derisive and dismissive of the people who threaten their ideas.
For this reason, it is necessary to help your child also develop a strong moral compass. Genius is often humble and patient rather than boastful and rushing. The focus of genius is often on the fun they can have while making a positive contribution to the world.
To do this you need to help your children set their moral compass by the stars rather than the other boats in the harbour. Teach them to aspire to high ideals. To look for the best within themselves as well as others.
Character is who we are and what we do when we think no-one else is looking. It is about integrity, doing what you say you will do, having your actions match your words and doing the right thing even if no-one else sees it.
Children learn what they live. The experiences that we give children in homes and in schools are incredibly important because those experiences shape their brains.
Most of our values are absorbed rather than consciously learned. It is by observing the world around us and also by acting in those ways ourselves that we shape our own moral compass. For parents this means that living a life of kindness and loving compassion, adventurousness and a willingness to explore life and ideas will rub off onto your children.
There is no point having genius if you don’t know how to use it to make a positive difference in the world. This chapter covers some of the positive aspects of character your child will need to make a positive contribution in the world. Obviously, desirable characteristics like honesty, integrity and kindness are all part of being a good person and a good genius. In my book Tricky Teens, I have written about the essential conversations parents need to have with their children. If you are interested in a more detailed discussion of this issue you may wish to read this book.
We live in the age of interruption in which continuous, undistracted thought and conversations are a rarity. Parents and teachers can steer children towards focusing for longer and longer periods. Games, artworks, conversations and projects that take time to complete all help build concentration.
In a world that seems designed to want to pacify our Rex by either distracting or entertaining him, this takes ferocity of spirit and a singularity of focus. As Stephen Covey beautifully put it, ‘The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.’
Questioning cherished beliefs can get you into a lot of hot water. And yet, it is through questioning the status quo that geniuses get their impulses to change the world.
Having conversations with your children around the dinner table starting with ‘why is it so?’ and ‘why couldn’t it be more like …?’ fuels the fires of imaginative thinking. Nourish and nurture curiosity. As parents, be prepared to watch ideas come forward half-baked and not fully thought through. Play with ideas, twist and turn them until they spark and catch the light.
Teach your children not to take all of their ideas out into the world too early. People can disparage and ridicule worthwhile ideas when they are half-born. Instead teach them to discuss these at home and provide a hatchery for new ways of looking at the world.
Parents can also introduce the idea of discussing thought experiments with their children (see http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-most-famous-thought-experiments.php).
In a rushed world of expediencies, thoughtfulness stands out.
In a world that demands instant gratification, it’s the person who plans that will stand out. The future belongs to those who plan for it and create it.
Showing your children ways to plan, to weigh up alternative ways of achieving an outcome, and to consider consequences of actions is a remarkable skill. Many people don’t do this. Instead they act on the first thing that pops into their mind, and if that doesn’t work they then act on the next thing that pops into their mind. A world that doesn’t plan can waste a lot of energy doing things that don’t need to be done.
Planning develops intentionality. Teach children that there is a link between means and ends. Very few good ends or outcomes come from acting in ways that are immoral or abusive.
Intentionality leads to trustworthiness and clarity of action. Geniuses generally don’t waste much time. They follow their interests passionately and with singular, intentional focus.
Despite this, most geniuses don’t describe what they do as work. Most geniuses talk about the joy they had in pursuing and discovering an idea or concept. It is only later that they might consider what they were doing to be work.
Genius does not always follow the well-worn path. It strikes out on its own, finding new ways to move forward and new destinations to arrive at. Inevitably, this level of exploration will bring times of uncertainty. The best way forward will not be clear.
There are times when we need to act like a hunting dog. To stop. Stand still. Ears pricked. Sniffing the breeze and watching for signs and hints.
The modern world has little tolerance for uncertainty. In a world that requires deep thinking to create solutions to complex problems, a tolerance for ambiguity and doubt are critical. Not knowing is more important than pretending you know.
As the author F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.’
After a time of consideration, we need to make our best call. The process of consciously deciding is so rare that we don’t drop ideas or actions that have proved to be not useful. Many of us go into an endlessly repeating cycle.
Teach your children how to make the best decision they can at the time and to then give themselves time to see if it works before either continuing on or pausing to make a new decision.
As geniuses set out to create new areas of knowledge and skill, setbacks are inevitable. Teaching children to strive to expand their world will help them push at the boundaries of current understandings, limitations and knowledge. Setbacks come with striving and striving builds expertise.
Loss of motivation is most often about anxiety. Helping your children to know that everyone gets anxious but not everyone lets their feelings stop them is important. Geniuses take charge of their own learning; they develop and follow simple systems. You may not have been taught how to do this when you were young but you can teach your children how to do it.
In a world obsessed with outcomes and rankings, it takes resolute parents to place their energies into commenting on effort rather than results, on the process rather than the product, on awareness rather than outcomes. Tell your children that they are geniuses. Remind them that they are capable of great things and then focus the vast majority of your comments on the efforts they make.
Freeing children from outcomes allows them to explore, refine and implement their own genius in their own way.
The world will change dramatically between now and the time your children are at the peak of their career or powers. As you can’t foresee what will be valued in the future, give up being the judge of it now. What you can do for your children is to help them fulfil their potential by believing in themselves and feeling confident to take actions to improve in the areas they are interested in. By commenting positively on their level of energy, effort and interest, you build this.
A sense of humour is common-sense dancing.
The world says it values creativity and imagination but it doesn’t really. Schools have largely narrowed their focus to the areas they are assessed as effective by – numeracy and literacy. Look around at the adults you know. How many of them actively play? Oh, they might play a sport, or place a bet or watch football but how many of them play at something for its own sake? They might compete but I suspect very few play.
Consider role modelling the importance of this by reintroducing play into your own life. If you need some inspiration, Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and Nick Bantock’s The Trickster’s Hat: a mischievous apprenticeship in creativity are great places to begin.
Having your child see you play, whether it be drawing, reading, dancing, singing, clay modelling, knitting, writing, painting, sculpting, weaving or doodling, sends a powerful message. Play is the source of our imagination and creativity and it is something everyone can do.
We have more ways than ever of storing information and yet it seems more people than ever feel overwhelmed. Take stock. Implement some of the ideas in this book about storing, sorting and organising information.
Many people seem almost paralysed into inaction by feeling overwhelmed by the rate of change and the amount of information. Geniuses contribute to society by being able to bring clarity and a vision of what’s possible to others. Being able to pick out the essence of an idea, store it, organise it and apply it in new ways allows genius to flourish.
If you were to do only one thing out of this entire book to unlock your children’s genius, it would have to be helping them improve their memory. The relationship between memory, intelligence and genius are intertwined. Improve memory and you create skills your children can utilise for their rest of their lives.
There are many technological aids you can use to increase the power of memory and learning. I have consciously not included many of these in this book, as many of them will be upgraded before you get all the way through it. For that reason I will make regular updates on these tools on my website: www.andrewfuller.com.au and on my Facebook page The Learning Brain.
Building on your children’s strengths but encouraging them to do some of the tough stuff first may sound like a contradiction, but it’s also the pathway to unlocking their genius.
Genius often involves having the courage to venture into areas where we don’t feel so competent and capable. Knowing that making mistakes, and learning how to slowly correct them in areas that we first find challenging, is the sometimes slow and methodical way to improve ourselves. Repetition is the basis of mastery.
Help your children to have tryouts, experiments or have-a-go moments when they practise the things they aren’t feeling confident in. The key idea for parents when helping to unlock their children’s genius is extension and expansion not acceleration.
Of all of these areas, the most important is relationships. For the vast majority of us, there is no more powerful determinant of our level of happiness than the quality of the relationships we create in our lives.
Teach children how to create good relationships and how to fix one up when troubles arise. Help them to follow the golden rule of relationships: treat other people as you would like to be treated.
Help your child to realise that no-one has correct opinions all the time. As geniuses often think and act differently than the mainstream they can be targeted and hurt by people who are threatened by their ideas. Help them to see the fear that often lurks behind bullying and oppression but not to see it as right or acceptable. People deserve to be treated well and that includes your child.
My friend and colleague Neil Hawkes is fond of citing the philosopher Goethe on this point: ‘If we treat people as they are we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.’
Most insights of genius come about when people are playing with ideas, concept-juggling and shifting the thoughts in their minds.
So to all of you who are prepared to unlock the genius of your child, thank you for taking this journey with me. I hope this book lingers around your house dog-eared and marked, and is picked up and used from time to time.
In helping your child unlock their genius, there are two more things you can do – learn to revere and respect whatever genius you can find in yourself, and play more.