How Kids Can Be Smarter

There’s a science behind what makes kids happier, what type of parenting works best and what makes for joyful families. But what makes children – from babies up through the teen years – smarter?

Here are 10 things that science says can help:

1) Music Lessons

Plain and simple, research shows that music lessons make kids smarter. In fact musical training helps everyone, young and old. A growing body of research finds musical training gives students learning advantages in the classroom. Now a study finds musical training can benefit Grandma, too, by offsetting some of the negative effects of aging.

2) There are no Dumb Kids

Dumb kids are considered dumb because they spend more time on the field than in the library. But what if a child devotes time to both?

Being in good shape increases kids’ ability to learn. Indeed, in a 2007 study, German researchers found that people learn vocabulary words 20 percent faster following exercise than they did before exercise. A three-month exercise regimen increased blood flow to the part of the brain-focused on memory and learning by 30 percent.

3) Adults May Not Read to Kids, But Read With Them

Kids may not just stare at the pictures in a book while adults do all the reading. Better to let the little ones read along. Research shows it helps build their reading skills when shared book reading is enriched with explicit attention to the development of children’s reading skills and strategies, then shared book reading is an effective vehicle for promoting the early literacy ability.

4) Sleep Deprivation Makes Kids Stupid

Missing an hour of sleep turns a sixth grader’s brain into that of a fourth grader. A loss of one hour of sleep is equivalent to [loss of] two years of cognitive maturation and development. There is a correlation between grades and average amount of sleep.

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

Self-discipline beats IQ at predicting who will be successful in life. From Charles Duhigg’s excellent book “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business”: “Dozens of studies show that willpower is the single most important keystone habit for individual success… Students who exerted high levels of willpower were more likely to earn higher grades in their classes and gain admission into more selective schools. They had fewer absences and spent less time watching television and more hours on homework… Selfdiscipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.”

6) Learning is an Active Process

Baby Einstein and brain-training games don’t work. In fact, there’s reason to believe they make kids dumber. The products had no positive effect on the vocabularies of the target audience, infants 17 to 24 months. Some did actual harm. For every hour per day the children spent watching certain baby 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’s active. The brain evolved to learn by doing things, not by hearing about them. This is one of the reasons that, for a lot of skills, it’s much better to spend about two thirds of the time testing them on it rather than absorbing it. There’s a rule of two thirds. love. They get better performance reviews, have more prestigious jobs, and earn higher salaries. They are more likely to get married, and once married, they are more satisfied with their marriage.

9) Peer Group Matters

The genetics of parents have a huge effect on their kids. But the way the kids are raised? Not nearly as much. On intellectual ability and certain aspects of personality, biological children are fairly similar to their parents. So what other factor has an enormous effect on children’s behavior? Their peer group. Living in a nice neighborhood, going to good schools and making sure your children hang out with good kids can make a huge difference.

10) When Parents Believe in Their Kids

Parents believing that their kids are smarter than average makes a difference. In a study, when teachers were told certain kids were sharper, those kids did better – even though the kids were selected at random.

There’s good reason for kids to be smarter. As P.J. O’Rourke once said: “Smart people don’t start many bar fights. But stupid people don’t build many hydrogen bombs.”