Helping children develop their intelligence

March 1, 2018

Prof. J P Das

Parents and educators are often eager to help their children develop intellectually, but how do we know if we are doing the right things to preserve and improve children’s intelligence? We can start by looking at the social and environmental conditions that support intellectual development.

How poverty and malnutrition may diminish intellectual ability

A very common view is that the poor are poor because they are less capable. In fact, research suggests that it is poverty that makes them less capable.^[1] Poverty affects the growth of a child’s brain, especially the prefrontal cortex (the front of the brain), which controls much of our reasoning and thinking.

Many children from poor families suffer from chronic malnutrition, often leading to small head-circumference and stunted height compared to children who receive proper nutrition. Malnutrition also depresses mental functions, especially the ability to plan and make decisions, attention and concentration, and the two major ways of processing information. This means that without access to better nutrition, children living in poverty will be less able to think logically, to understand what they hear and read, and to remember sequences such as in speech and movement.

Children from middle or upper class homes often have more positive family environments, as well as more opportunities to enrich their experience. The intellectual gap between children from homes of lower socioeconomic status and those from middle class and upper class homes widens as children enter and proceed through the grades of primary and secondary school. However, this gap can be reduced and may even disappear if early intellectual stimulation is provided, along with better nutrition and sanitary conditions.

What kind of intellectual stimulation can help?

Major intellectual training includes language and social skills, perception, discrimination, memory, and simple planning. Programs like COGENT use positive rewards and guidance to help children learn to pay attention, discriminate between different spoken sounds, listen to instructions, and instruct themselves to regulate their own activities in completing a given task.

One important aspect of early intellectual training is developing a child’s ability to think and analyse a problem. All three programs we use at The Learning Clinic (COGENT, PREP, and MATH Modules) encourage a technique called self-talk. Self-talk encourages children to say how they did the task and why a different way of doing it would not work – this helps to children learn to regulate their own behaviour, so that they can learn by themselves.

So what can parents do to help children develop intellectually?

Provide a positive and language-rich home environment

A bad home environment can stifle a child’s intellectual development regardless of socio-economic status. A disturbing home environment is disorganized, noisy, and full of conflict, bad language, and physical and/or verbal abuse. A child in this environment feels insecure and becomes anxious and fearful.

A good home environment is free from these negative factors. Parents should never use physical punishment. Do not allow your child to witness physical punishment either. When a child is repeatedly punished, or watches a friend or sibling be physically punished, it causes permanent damage to the child’s brain. In a good home environment, children should feel safe and secure.

As far as possible, try to use one language at home. Let the child have mastery over one language until age 7. Learning to read and write three different languages by Grade 3 (age 9) is not advised. To build a home environment that promotes literacy (the ability to read, write, and speak), avoid repeatedly using simple commands and demands (e.g. sit, stop, don’t, get out, shut up!). Instead, use many different words and elaborate speech.

When speaking to a child, speak to rather than around them. Interact and get involved with what the child is saying or doing. By age 5, children from poor families are already two years behind those from middle or upper class families in terms of language development. This is not due to wealth or riches, but rather the enriched pattern of language interaction provided in a harmonious family.

Give children time to play and explore

Children need to get at least 30 minutes of vigorous exercise per day, at least 5 times per week. Some schools try to make kids “smarter” by simply trying to stuff more textbook lessons into their brains. However, this strategy is not supported by science, and only makes students feel stressed and bored. Some parents engage a tuition master even for children in kindergarten and Grade 1. If you really believe your child needs therapy or remedial tutoring, have an expert assess the child. Otherwise, save the tuition for when the child is older.

Recreation in early childhood is essential for effective learning. Children should never have to get to a tutor shortly after school, or cut recreation time to study textbooks. Instead, allow the child to be engaged infree, rough and tumble play at least up to age 7. Allow them also some free time just to do nothing: this is the time for mind-wandering, for dreams and imaginations to be created, for ‘emotions to be recollected in tranquility’. The child will reap the rewards academically as they grow older.

Give children opportunities for enhancing their knowledge about the world. One way to do this is through meaningful conversation, like in the example below.

Tips for Teachers:

Be aware of your students’ backgrounds and home lives. A child who comes from a stressful home environment tends to be distressed. That translates to disruptive behavior at school, and may make it difficult to develop friendships and mix socially. This child’s academic achievements may suffer. Work on looking at the child with empathy, then help them to socialize in any way you can. One strategy is to model socially appropriate behaviour and praise the student when you see them practicing it.
If the school has a high number of children from low socioeconomic backgrounds, expose them to middle-class or upper class children’s talk and behavior. Teachers and parents can find opportunities for this by sending children to joint events in sports, rallies and raffles. If you have mixed socioeconomic groups within the school, put students from different backgrounds together in groups. Children learn in collaboration with others.
Give the child hope! Hope is expecting positive things will happen. Make sure your students know that you believe they can succeed, and that you expect them to do so. Hope increases mood and persistence, which in turn lead to better results in school.
Do not scold children, especially those from poor families. They can be easily excited and angry.
Strong emotions make one particular part of the brain active: the amygdala. Once the amygdala is activated, it takes at least 30-90 minutes to calm down and let the controlling part of the brain (the prefrontal area) regulate behavior again. Stay calm when expressing disappointment or delivering consequences, then discuss the feelings or situation that led to the negative behaviour and how they can recognize and avoid similar situations in the future.
Do not divide kids in your school or people in the world into successes and failures. This divides them into the learners and non-learners. Remember a young child cannot be described as a ‘success’ or ‘failure.’ The child is too young to fail, and has many, many years ahead of him to develop intellectual capital. This comes back to giving hope – if children believe they can be successful, it is more likely that they will be.
Many children from poor families and those with intellectual disabilities suffer from double disadvantages, essentially living with double handicaps. One is their mental handicap; the other is how badly people treat them.