Positive Stories of Having a Baby in Graduate School

I've explored the science behind what makes kids happier, what type of parenting works best and what makes for joyful families.

Simply what makes children — from babies upwardly through the teen years — smarter?

Hither are x things science says tin help:

1) Music Lessons

Plainly and elementary: enquiry prove music lessons make kids smarter:

Compared with children in the control groups, children in the music groups exhibited greater increases in full-scale IQ. The outcome was relatively minor, just information technology generalized across IQ subtests, alphabetize scores, and a standardized measure of academic achievement.

In fact musical training helps everyone, young and old:

A growing body of enquiry finds musical training gives students learning advantages in the classroom. Now a Northwestern University report finds musical preparation can benefit Grandma, too, past offsetting some of the deleterious effects of aging.

(More on what the music you love says almost yous hither.)

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2) The Impaired Jock Is A Myth

Dumb jocks are impaired considering they spend more time on the field than in the library. But what if you make certain your child devotes fourth dimension to both?

Being in proficient shape increases your ability to learn. Later exercise people selection up new vocabulary words 20% faster.

Via Spark: The Revolutionary New Scientific discipline of Exercise and the Brain:

Indeed, in a 2007 study of humans, German language researchers found that people acquire vocabulary words 20 percent faster following exercise than they did before exercise, and that the rate of learning correlated directly with levels of BDNF.

A 3 month practice regimen increased bloodflow to the part of the brain focused on retentivity and learning past thirty%.

Via Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Practice and the Brain:

In his written report, Small put a grouping of volunteers on a iii-month exercise regimen and so took pictures of their brains… What he saw was that the capillary volume in the retentiveness area of the hippocampus increased by xxx per centum, a truly remarkable change.

(More than on how exercise tin make yous and your kids smarter and happier hither.)

iii) Don't Read To Your Kids, Read With Them

Got a little one who is learning to read? Don't let them but stare at the pictures in a book while you practice all the reading.
Call attention to the words. Read with them, not to them. Inquiry shows it helps build their reading skills:

…when shared volume reading is enriched with explicit attention to the development of children'due south reading skills and strategies, then shared book reading is an effective vehicle for promoting the early on literacy ability even of disadvantaged children.

(More on things most parents do wrong hither.)

iv) Slumber Deprivation Makes Kids Stupid

Missing an hour of slumber turns a sixth grader'south brain into that of a fourth grader.

Via NurtureShock:

"A loss of i 60 minutes of sleep is equivalent to [the loss of] two years of cognitive maturation and development," Sadeh explained.

There is a correlation betwixt grades and boilerplate amount of slumber.

Via NurtureShock:

Teens who received A'due south averaged almost fifteen more than minutes slumber than the B students, who in turn averaged fifteen more minutes than the C'south, then on. Wahlstrom's data was an nearly perfect replication of results from an earlier study of over iii,000 Rhode Island high schoolers by Brownish's Carskadon. Certainly, these are averages, but the consistency of the two studies stands out. Every fifteen minutes counts.

(More than on how to sleep improve hither.)

5) IQ Isn't Worth Much Without Self-Discipline

Self-subject beats IQ at predicting who will be successful in life.

From Charles Duhigg'due south fantabulous book The Ability of Habit: Why We Practise What We Do in Life and Business:

Dozens of studies testify that willpower is the unmarried almost important keystone habit for individual success… Students who exerted high levels of willpower were more probable to earn college grades in their classes and proceeds admission into more selective schools. They had fewer absences and spent less time watching telly and more hours on homework. "Highly cocky-disciplined adolescents outperformed their more impulsive peers on every academic-performance variable," the researchers wrote. "Cocky-discipline predicted academic performance more robustly than did IQ. Self-discipline also predicted which students would improve their grades over the form of the schoolhouse year, whereas IQ did not.… Cocky-discipline has a bigger effect on bookish performance than does intellectual talent."

Grades accept more to do with conscientiousness than raw smarts.

Via How Children Succeed: Grit, Marvel, and the Subconscious Power of Character:

…conscientiousness was the trait that best predicted workplace success. What intrigues Roberts almost conscientiousness is that information technology predicts so many outcomes that go far across the workplace. People high in conscientiousness get improve grades in school and college; they commit fewer crimes; and they stay married longer. They live longer – and not just because they smoke and beverage less. They have fewer strokes, lower blood pressure, and a lower incidence of Alzheimer's disease.

Who does best in life? Kids with dust.

Via Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates United states.

The best predictor of success, the researchers found, was the prospective cadets' ratings on a noncognitive, nonphysical trait known equally "grit"—defined as "perseverance and passion for long-term goals."

(More on how to amend self-subject hither.)

half dozen) Learning Is An Active Procedure

Baby Einstein and braintraining games don't work.
In fact, there's reason to believe they make kids dumber.

Via Encephalon Rules for Babe: How to Heighten a Smart and Happy Child from Nada to 5:

The products didn't work at all. They had no positive effect on the vocabularies of the target audition, infants 17-24 months. Some did bodily harm. For every hour per solar day the children spent watching certain infant DVD's and videos, the infants understood an average of six to eight fewer words than infants who did not watch them.

Real learning isn't passive, it'south active.

What does Dan Coyle, writer of The Talent Code recommend? Stop only reading and test yourself:

Our brains evolved to learn by doing things, not past hearing about them. This is i of the reasons that, for a lot of skills, information technology's much better to spend about 2 thirds of your time testing yourself on it rather than absorbing it. In that location'south a dominion of two thirds. If you desire to, say, memorize a passage, it'south better to spend 30 percent of your time reading it, and the other seventy percent of your fourth dimension testing yourself on that noesis.

(More than on how to teach your child to be a hard worker in schoolhouse here.)

7) Treats Tin can Be A Skillful Affair — At The Right Time

Overall, it would be better if kids ate healthy all the time. Research shows eating makes a deviation in children'due south grades:

Everybody knows you should eat breakfast the day of a large test. High-carb, high-fiber, slow-digesting foods like oatmeal are best, research shows. But what y'all eat a week in accelerate matters, too. When 16 higher students were tested on attending and thinking speed, so fed a five-day high-fatty, low-carb diet heavy on meat, eggs, cheese and cream and tested again, their performance declined.

At that place are always exceptions. No kid eats healthy all the fourth dimension. But the irony is that kids oft get "bad" foods at the wrong time.
Research shows caffeine and sugar tin be encephalon boosters:

Caffeine and glucose tin take beneficial effects on cognitive operation… Since these areas accept been related to the sustained attention and working memory processes, results would suggest that combined caffeine and glucose could increase the efficiency of the attentional system.

They're as well potent rewards kids love.

So if kids are going to occasionally eat candy and soda maybe it's better to requite it to them while they study then when they're relaxing.

(More on the best way for kids to study here.)

8) Happy Kids = Successful Kids

Happier kids are more likely to turn into successful, achieved adults.

Via Raising Happiness: 10 Elementary Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

…happiness is a tremendous advantage in a earth that emphasizes performance. On average, happy people are more than successful than unhappy people at both work and love. They get ameliorate performance reviews, have more prestigious jobs, and earn higher salaries. They are more likely to become married, and once married, they are more satisfied with their marriage.

And what's the first pace in creating happier kids? Being a happy parent.

(More on how to raise happy kids here.)

9) Peer Group Matters

Your genetics and the genetics of your partner accept a huge effect on your kids. But the way you heighten your kids?
Not almost as much.

Via Malcolm Gladwell'southward The Tipping Point: How Petty Things Can Make a Big Difference:

On things like measures of intellectual ability and certain aspects of personality, the biological children are fairly similar to their parents. For the adopted kids, however, the results are downright foreign. Their scores take zero whatsoever in mutual with their adoptive parents: these children are no more similar in their personality or intellectual skills to the people who raised them, fed them, clothed them, read to them, taught them, and loved them for sixteen years than they are to whatever ii adults taken at random off the street.

So what does take an enormous bear upon on your children'southward behavior? Their peer group.

We usually only talk about peer pressure when information technology'south a negative but more than oft than not, it's a positive.

Living in a squeamish neighborhood, going to solid schools and making sure your children hang out with good kids tin can make a huge departure.

What's the easiest mode for a college student to better their GPA? Choice a smart roommate.

Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Functioning at Work:

Ane report of Dartmouth College students by economist Bruce Sacerdote illustrates how powerful this influence is. He institute that when students with low grade-signal averages simply began rooming with higher-scoring students, their class-point averages increased. These students, co-ordinate to the researchers, "appeared to infect each other with skillful and bad written report habits—such that a roommate with a high grade-indicate average would drag upward the Yard.P.A. of his lower-scoring roommate."

(More than on the how others affect your beliefs without you realizing it here.)

10) Believe In Them

Believing your kid is smarter than average makes a deviation.

When teachers were told sure kids were sharper, those kids did better — even though the kids were selected at random.

Via The Center of Social Psychology: A Backstage View of a Passionate Science:

…Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968) did the aforementioned study in a classroom, telling elementary schoolhouse teachers that they had certain students in their class who were "academic spurters." In fact, these students were selected at random. Absolutely zip else was done past the researchers to single out these children. Yet by the end of the school yr, xxx percent of the the children arbitrarily named as spurters had gained an boilerplate of 22 IQ points, and almost all had gained at least 10 IQ points.

Sum Upwards

1. Music Lessons
2. The Dumb Jock Is A Myth
3. Don't Read To Your Kids, Read With Them
4. Sleep Impecuniousness Makes Kids Stupid
5. IQ Isn't Worth Much Without Self-Discipline
6. Learning Is An Active Process
7. Treats Tin can Be a Adept Thing — At The Correct Time
8. Happy Kids = Successful Kids
9. Peer Group Matters
10. Believe In Them

Ane final note: Intelligence isn't everything. Without ethics and empathy really smart people can be scary.

As P.J. O'Rourke in one case said:

Smart people don't start many bar fights. But stupid people don't build many hydrogen bombs.

So if you lot want to learn how to heighten a happier kid get here and a more well-behaved child become here.

I promise this helps your child be brilliant.

Related posts:

Good Parenting Skills: vii Research-Backed Ways to Enhance Kids Right
How To Accept A Happy Family – seven Tips Backed By Research
How To Raise Happy Kids – 10 Steps Backed By Scientific discipline

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Positive Stories of Having a Baby in Graduate School

Source: https://time.com/12086/how-to-make-your-kids-smarter-10-steps-backed-by-science/