Parenting Children's Talents

Parent As Advocate: How to become your own expert to help your children

When children struggle learning in school, sports or the arts, parents may hire experts to help.  While children should learn how to manage their relationships with the experts, parents need to monitor how well the experts are doing.  This can be challenging because parents are not experts in those field, but there are some simple steps you can take to become more of an expert yourself.

First, parents should read and talk with other people about the field in which the expert is helping the family.  The more you understand the basics about the expert’s field and approaches, the better you can ask the right questions and evaluate progress.

Second, parents should not abdicate their responsibility to experts.  Ask the expert questions about what they are doing and why, without being judgmental or overly intrusive, and get involved if appropriate.  This will help you learn even more about the field and techniques being used.

Third, parents should learn from the experts the techniques they can use at home with their child to practice between sessions. This homework is a great way for parents and children to work together and deepen their relationship.  Parents also learn techniques they can use with their children for years to come.

Finally, based on children’s age and maturity, parents can help them understand the “why” behind what the expert is asking them to do, instead of blindly following instructions.  The more children understand how and why a process helps them, the more they can start becoming their own experts and empowered as individuals just like their parents.

To learn more about being an effective advocate for your children, you can buy a special workbook that explains how parents can nurture their children's talents in age-appropriate ways at A Talented Mind Store.

Consistent Parent Advocacy: Importance of staying consistent as an advocate for your children

Being an effective advocate for children’s talents or disabilities requires parents to be consistent with their support.  Research has shown that, beyond genes, intensive practice over the years is the most important contributor to children and adults developing a talent to the highest level possible.  Studies have found that it takes about ten years of practice to develop an expertise.  Therefore, parents need to be strong advocates for their children’s talent development by helping them maintain the discipline needed.  This requires parents to be consistent in their support and advocacy.

All parents have stories about how they “run out of gas” at times and are not always consistent in helping their children stay on course.  While parents want children to eventually be self-reliant when working toward a goal, most children will choose the path of least effort if given their own choice.  Developing a talent requires children to move through three levels of mastery, each requiring greater demands on their abilities, time, focus and energy.  These three levels also require parents to be consistent advocates and supporters of their children over many years.

Stage one is called Exploration during which children experiment to find the talents they enjoy.  Their first instructors are often their parents or a local expert.  Stage two is called Precision during which children develop their talent to a level that requires more advanced training.  This stage usually requires a new, more advanced instructor, with parents maintaining a watchful eye and providing structure at home to practice.  Stage three is called Personalization during which more advance techniques at professional schools are taught and children form their identities around their talent.  Parents continue to provide the emotional and financial support needed but are even more removed from the child’s instruction.

While children move through these stages over many years, parents need to stay consistent in their advocacy and support.  Behind every talented performer is a supportive, healthy family that helps the child remain consistent by providing unwavering support and encouragement.

To learn more about being an effective advocate for your children, you can buy a special workbook that explains how parents can nurture their children's talents in age-appropriate ways at A Talented Mind Store.

Tip For Parent Advocates: Know how strongly you identify with your children

Like other social groups in which parents belong, the family can be a place you receive fulfillment and support for being a member.  Parents develop their social identities from being a part of a family, similar to identifying with groups in religion, politics, sports and nationalities.  To be an effective advocate for their children’s talents and disabilities, parents need to understand how strongly they identify with their children’s accomplishments and how it effects their advocacy.

People integrate their personal identities with their social identities.  Their self-esteem can also be linked to the accomplishments of a larger group such as their family.  This is part of a natural drive we have to bond as humans.  It is an important reason why many parents have strong personal connections to their children’s accomplishments and experiences.

Problems can occur when parents do not know when their personal identities end and their children’s identities begin.  They cannot separate their children’s successes and failures from their own.  This is similar to sports fans who feel bad for days after their team loses a playoff game.  While the fans did not play directly in the game, their social identity with the team is so strong that they take the loss personally.

When supporting your children, you need to be aware of how you identify with the outcomes of their performance and personal qualities.  The more you personally identify with outcomes, the more you will want to  control situations for them.  Ultimately, you need to determine what is appropriate parental involvement with your children based on their needs, not your own.  This will help you become the most effective advocate possible for your children.

To learn more about advocating for your children, you can buy a special workbook for parents about how to nurture your children's talents in age-appropriate ways at A Talented Mind Store.

Advocating For Your Child: Start with understanding your child’s mind

To be an effective advocate for their children’s talents or disabilities, parents need to understand how their children’s minds work.  The human mind is very complex and is a wonder of nature.  Scientists who study the brain are making new discoveries every day that help us understand how the mind influences behavior.  As a parent, you see your children’s behavior and naturally draw conclusions and label it.  If a child is good in science, you say she is smart or gifted.  If a child forgets to do his chores, you say he is a procrastinator.  You are not alone in labeling your children; other adults such as teachers, coaches, and friends label them every day. 

Labeling a child can seem appropriate at the time because you are trying to put into words what you see.  However, you really do not know what is actually happening in your children’s minds that contribute to the behavior.  So you do your best to generalize and label them based on your limited knowledge.

To be an effective advocate for your children, it is often helpful to learn more about how their minds work within what brain scientists call the mind’s four-act play. 

Imagine that you arrive late to a Broadway play and only see the final, fourth act.  In order to understand the conclusion of the play, you have to guess what happened in the previous three acts.  While most people attend all four acts and can explain how each one built on the next, most parents do the opposite when understanding their children’s talents or challenges.  They only see and try to interpret the final act: behavior.  However, the previous three acts that occur in the mind impact behavior you see.  So, when you want to understand your children, you need to understand how the previous three acts resulted in the behavior.  Let’s take a look at each of the four acts.

In Act One, your children use their senses to bring information into their minds from the world around them and determine what information they need to remember.   Each child is different in how well they can store information into memory that comes through different senses.  Some children store visual information well, while others better remember what they hear.  The quantity and quality of information stored in memory influences how well they can perform the second act.

Act Two begins when a decision or action needs to occur.  Children use more advanced thinking abilities in act two to process information to solve problems.  They need to generate ideas, classify, plan, organize shapes and movement.  They use their mind’s large mental engines to make sense of the world and determine what to do.  Children have different proficiencies in using these advanced thinking abilities.

After processing information in Act Two, their minds move to Act Three to filter that information through their personalities.  It’s filtered through their values, emotions and personal experiences.  So, two children can come up with the same logical solution to a problem in Act Two but will behave differently in Act Four because they have different values and beliefs about the situation or subject. 

Each act builds on and influences the next until behavior occurs in Act Four.  To be supportive of children’s talent development or disability, parents need to know how their children’s minds work in each act.  By doing so, you will move from generalizing about your children’s talents and problems to understanding how their mental processes help and hinder performance.  This knowledge will be essential for you to become a strong advocate for your children’s talents or disabilities.  You can also help teachers, coaches, and instructors better understand your children so they can appropriately provide the instruction and support needed.

An effective assessment to discover a mind’s four-act play is The Highlands Ability Battery that identifies people’s natural abilities through timed exercises.  To learn more, visit A Talented Mind at www.atalentedmind.com.  You can also buy a special workbook for parents about how to nurture your children's talents in age-appropriate ways at A Talented Mind Store.

Parent Advocacy: How to manage experts who instruct your children

Before the twentieth century, experts in the community where primarily crafts people and farmers.  They grew or made things that people used each day to survive.  As education became more available and industries moved from the industrial to information age, experts now predominately provide information and analysis. 

Today there is an expert around every corner who wants to diagnose, train, teach, coach and guide your children.  Being an expert has become big business, especially when it comes to giving advice to parents and children.  Children today receive more help from experts in more areas of their lives than anytime in history.

As parents strive to help their children grow and prosper, they may need expert help in education, health, sports, and careers.  However, there is one phenomena about experts that has not changed in thousands of years.  Some experts want to keep their work very technical and hard for others to understand because it keeps them in control and keeps others dependent on them.  This can help the expert potentially receive more admiration and money.

You will know these experts when you walk away from a meeting about your child and still don’t understand the heart of the matter.  You will know them when you are in a diagnostic session that is filled with jargon only the expert understands. This disconnect is two sided.  First, the expert is not doing everything possible to educate and empower the parents.  Second, parents are too quick to abdicate responsibility to the expert and lack the assertiveness needed to ask key questions.  To help you effectively manage experts, the following are four tips you can follow. 

First, when you hire an expert, you are choosing both the person and the expertise.  You and your children need to feel comfortable at a personal level.  Assuming the expert is competent, his or her ability to relate to you and your children will have the greatest effect on your success.

Second, you should ask to see an example of the end result of the experts’ work.   You can ask to see sample reports, talk with other parents and children, or watch the expert in action.  Look for how easy reports are to understand, and how well the expert fosters passion in children to learn.  Effective experts are likely to be good communicators and empower children and parents.

Third, remember that you are the expert about your children.  You should assure that the expert you hire understands your opinions if needed.  You can help the expert also see your child as a whole person not as a singular talent or disability.

Fourth, if you have an expert assess a child, he or she should be as impartial as possible.  Most experts who provide assessments have services to address specific problems and do not deliberately use an assessment to only sell follow-on services or products.  However, there are some experts who do misuse assessments to convince parents that their child needs the expert’s services and will shape the assessment to sell rather than diagnose.

By following these tips, you can get the most out of experts who can provide great value to your children’s growth, learning and talents.  

To learn more about being an effective advocate for your children, you can buy a special workbook that explains how parents can nurture their children's talents in age-appropriate ways at A Talented Mind Store.

Parents As Child Advocates: How to become a strong advocate for your children

One afternoon your daughter comes home from her third grade class and gives you a note from her teacher requesting a conference.  You immediately feel blood rush to your head as you ask your daughter if she did anything wrong.  When you talk to the teacher over the phone, you get a friendly reception and the assurance that the conference is about something positive.

While sitting in a tiny school room chair the next day, you learn from the teacher that your daughter shows advanced ability in math and you discuss how her talent can be developed.  Back at home, your mind starts planning next steps but you quickly run into a roadblock.  Your daughter tells you that she does not want other kids to know she is good at math because they might not like her if she appears too smart. You scratch your head wondering what just happened and how you should react.

This is the complex world of parents being advocates for their children’s unique talents or disabilities.  Similar stories come from families with children who have learning disabilities or behavior problems.  Parent advocacy can be more challenging when a child has an inefficiency in learning or behavior that requires other adults to be more sensitive, understanding and adaptive as instructors.

Parents must assure that other adults and institutions provide the support their children need to be successful.  As advocates, parents need to play the middle ground between two extremes: one being an inactive bystander and the other being overly controlling.  This middle ground requires judgment calls about what is appropriate to assure that your children get the support they need from others.

Parents begin learning how to be advocates for their children by relying on their instincts and day-to-day experiences.  Some parents become highly effective advocates over time, while others cannot adapt.  Over the years, parents have learned many techniques to be effective advocates for their children.  They have shared their stories around kitchen tables and at bus stops.  This week's blog postings explain some of the lessons learned about being an effective advocate for your children’s growth, learning, and talents.

To learn more about being an effective advocate for your children, you can buy a special workbook that explains how parents can nurture their children's talents in age-appropriate ways at A Talented Mind Store.