Introduction
A child is a fire to be lit, not a vase to be filled.
In the great expanse of desert that Aboriginal Australians inhabit, fire plays a major role. As the wet season approaches, dark billowing clouds roll in and the night air rumbles with thunder and crackles with lightning that sparks from one horizon to the other. On these lush humid evenings, Lightning Man dances.
According to Bilawara, an Elder of the Larrakia people, the creation and maintenance of fire has always been important for her people. Making fire takes patience and effort. Sometimes it was obtained from lightning strikes that were seen as a gift from the Lightning Brothers. This gift must not be wasted, so the glowing fire sticks were carried from camp to camp, transferring the spark from site to site.
These rituals can also be likened to unlocking your child’s genius. Parents can nourish and feed their child’s curiosity and abilities by exploring the world with them and transferring these sparks of genius when possible. At first the task of fuelling genius is time-consuming, but easy. Following a child’s interests, watching as they set ideas alight, and encouraging them to take hold and gain strength fills the heart with wonder.
All too often, however, in middle childhood the initial fires of genius that burned so brightly falter and there is a risk that they may become snuffed out. If this happens children dim down, fear trying new things and worry about making mistakes. Sadly, they are left with a stunted version of their abilities – and themselves.
At this time the power of parents to ignite the blaze of brilliance becomes truly inspiring. Fortunately you have at your fingertips the best laboratory for unlocking your child’s genius – it’s called the world. By exploring, creating and playing in it, you can expand your child’s mind. By taking time with them to delight and wonder and be curious, you ignite sparks that will flicker and flourish throughout their lives. What a gift to give.
This book is designed to help you to raise your children to discover their full potential. All children have far greater capacity and inner genius than either they or we realise. This book is about ways to unlocking that potential. It is NOT about rushing them, fast-tracking them, hothousing them or having them leap years ahead at school. It is about raising them intentionally to let their natural genius flourish. It’s a book about parenting children so they can blossom and develop into their own form of creative, imaginative genius. As you will see in the chapters that follow, this is much more about play, fun and exploration than it is about work. Hard work has its place of course, but it is much more likely to be successful when we convert parts of it into play.
It wasn’t so many years ago that we thought brains stopped developing at around the age of eight. Modern neuroscience has made that idea as unbelievable as the idea that the earth is flat. The idea that intelligence was something you got at birth and couldn’t do much about has also been shaken by the same area of science.
To add to this turmoil, our modern understandings of the term ‘genius’ are looking wobbly. Before the Middle Ages, genius was seen as an innate spark or characteristic of inquisitiveness within all people. Since that time the term has been increasingly used to describe a small group of elite people who possess skills at a lofty level while the rest of us non-geniuses sit around twiddling our thumbs and waiting for the bright guys and girls to come up with the answers.
You don’t have to spend too long hanging out with so-called geniuses to realise they also possess areas of great ignorance and stupidity. Similarly, you don’t have to spend too long working with children who are labelled not-so-clever to learn that most, if not all, have areas of incredible creativity and skill.
Every child can develop the skills and knowledge base to bring to the fore every iota of genius available to them. In the following chapters I cover the skills parents can help to develop in children that will apply in whatever direction the child’s interests and passions take them.
Self-knowledge, concentration, decision-making, imagination, motivation, determination, memory and creativity are the foundation skills everyone needs if they are to unlock their genius.
Your child’s genius will only be unlocked when you take the time to plan, enrich, explore and help them discover their spark. In a world that requires children to study more and play less, we need to help them play more, reflect, consider and analyse more – and, most of all, dream bigger dreams.
To consider what parents can do to ignite this spark we need to add to our analogy of the fire guardians of Aboriginal Australia with the good old half-glass of water concept.
As we know, your point of view is critically important. What can you see in the image below? While the optimists are looking at the glass as half full and the pessimists are seeing the glass as half empty, the opportunists are drinking the water.
After many years of working with young people, I know that you can’t do much with the top half of the glass. What you can do is to discover what is in your child’s glass and help him or her to make more of it. Whether you want to think of it as the charge in their battery, the fire in their belly, the passion in their heart or the petrol in their tank, the point is that you need to take that strength and build on it.
If you adopt the ideas in this book you will be out of step with what most parents do. We live in a world where television screens get larger but children get fatter, more anxious and timid and less happy. Schools rank children on marks in literacy, numeracy and science rather than key issues that predict genius – effort, determination, imagination and the willingness to make mistakes and keep going. The effectiveness of schools is not even based on children’s ability to impart the skills that predict academic success: positive relationships, the ability to identify similarities and differences, note-making, and giving and utilising feedback.
This book is not designed to be read in a rush or all in one go. Please take Unlocking Your Child’s Genius on as a slow read to be digested over time. There are things that you can act on in this book that will create an immediate impact on your child’s genius while others are longer-term projects that take time to weave their magic.
For example, one of the most powerful ways you can help your child develop is to give them the opportunity to have a range of experiences. Have a look through the experiences listed at the end of Chapter 2 and make a list of activities you plan to do with your child over the next few months. Other high impact things that you can do immediately are outlined in Chapter 14 (Powering up the genius brain) and Chapter 15 (Setting up family routines and rituals).
At the end of most chapters I’ve included tables that give you some ideas for experiences, games and activities that will engage and inspire children, and help to unlock their inner genius. Go through the lists of these ideas, marking those that you have already done with your child and circling those that you plan to do in the coming months.
The longer-term projects take more time but they don’t need to be daunting. Building creativity, ingenuity and character are lifelong projects. If you are able to take on a process of sustained parenting to bring out a child’s genius, read a chapter at a time and think about how you can create changes and opportunities for you and your child. Remember the lesson of the hare and the tortoise – slow and steady wins the race.
Best wishes, play and have fun!
Andrew Fuller
Please note that while I use the term parent throughout this book, I am referring to any adult – parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle or carer – who is raising or caring for a child.