Each child is unique in his genetics and conceived entity in his distinctive environment, which immediately affects his unique interaction and behavior
However, our brain and body are designed to be flexible and plastic and to face challenges and adaptation.
Recent studies conclude that brain development is not a passive process or a genetic blueprint for inflexible environment, but an active process that depends on cellular molecular process and probabilistic organizational levels genetic and no genetic, because of the bidirectional relationship among genes, brain and behavior.
Babies are special beings, and what makes them special is that they are not intelligent at birth, but they are designed to change their minds when facing new data and information.
Intelligence is not fixed but waiting to be developed. Athletic progress is not preordered but waiting to be trained. Musical ability is dormant in all of us, waiting to be awakened. The creative potential is built into our brain architecture and all these functions of influence and processes, far from being completely controllable. The job of a father is to get involved in this work and process, which should begin before the baby’s birth.
We know that genes play a role and its expression is determined each time by the quality of life of our children. We know that we must help our children to decide their own destiny. Then our job as parents is to find the best one possible and unique that gets the best of the individual.
It is important to know that the most relevant influences on children’s character are not their parents by their playmates. On the average, parents and peers are to be complementary in their roles: parents are more important in relation to their education, discipline, responsibilities, order, charity education and ways of interacting with authority figures. On the other hand, peers are important in cooperative learning, to find popularity and styles of interaction among peers of the same age.
Parents are not everything for children and they do not have complete control over them, therefore sometimes when things get bad, parents do not help much, but the mentoring of parents matter much, since they seriously impact on the goals, strategies and personal philosophy of children.
Here we will see four key points for excellence:
a) Beliefs – thought:
– Extraordinary repetition, parental persistence and continuous strengthening, so a child may strengthen his/her technical expertise.
– Suzuki method (Mother tongue method).
– Constant parents’ involvement in children’s activities like, practicing (for example; playing a musical instrument), constant memory and a lot of patience.
– Remember: talent is not inherent and this must be educated and trained. With special training and a lot of persistence, anyone can achieve great goals and success.
– Instead of thinking about given talents and gifts, parents should think deeply about the extraordinary potential of their children.
b) Support creativity. Do not kill or break creativity:
– Parents have to find what children like. They also should assign goals and high expectations, without becoming anxious to see that a child fails to achieve high goals. Parents must have patience.
– An early exposure to resources is an excellent thing and gives high expectation, goals, demonstrate persistence and resilience when they have to face challenges.
– Parents should not use affection as an achievement award; but on the contrary use penalties when a child fails or makes mistakes. Parents need to show trust and faith towards child skills that helps to seek self-satisfaction.
c) Persistence and tranquility:
– Einstein said: “It is not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”
– In the end, persistence is the difference between mediocrity and success.
– The key is intermittent reinforcement.
– A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not be persistent, because that person will stand still when a prize disappears (Kaizen Principle).
– There should be an emphasis on avoiding instant gratification, because it generates bad habits.
– The ability to delay gratification opens new possibilities to look for improvement.
– Those with early skills of self-discipline and delay in seeking gratification have achieved high academic success.
– It is possible that gratification modes can be altered and saved by parents and teachers; thus delaying gratification must be a skill and like all skills must be learned and improved.
– If children learn self-regulatory strategies to reduce frustration in situations, they impose self-delay of gratification. This will help to be tied to those desired goals.
– Act as you would have your child behave now and in the future. Do not eat, buy or grab all you want.
– Do not respond immediately to all that your children want. Let them learn how to deal with frustration with what they want.
– Any philosophy, religion and practical exercises that reinforce these principles will help both parents and children.
d) Willingness to accept failures and make mistakes (Da Vinci):
– In the world of success and achievement, weaknesses are opportunities. Before failure, we must be open, flexible and understand that these widen doors.
– The only true fault is quitting.
– Some biologists and scholars of human performance tell us that the human being develops as a response to problems and failures.
– Parents should not make things easy to children; on the contrary, they must submit, monitor and modulate challenges.
– Great success stories appear when parents and children learn to fight against wind and tide; achieve and gain satisfaction struggling against the tide.
– Have a philosophy of persistence.
We have to have persistence: recognize that we can make mistakes and do not always have the correct answer; that we can always find better solutions. We can be more effective and teach our children to move towards the right direction.
The power of competitiveness
Talents always have to develop in a context. They never develop alone, no man is an island.
Humankind is a social enterprise and is always competitive. One always learns from another, shares and constantly compares and competes with others or counterparts; and all this is done in relation to affections, goals and resources.
Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian and Corregio were openly adversaries who criticized and quarreled among themselves. They got angry, copied and admired each other. They were rivals set in the times they lived.
When celebrating a great achievement, the competitive process should also be celebrated.
Internal motivation of each person is highly malleable and socially tied to reality. Our cultural field directly affects how people challenge themselves to get to their goals. The trick is to create a culture that fosters healthy achievements that would accommodate different levels of personalities and motivations.
Summary
The idea is to have a deliberate practice, work hard, and trying to be satisfactory, to achieve short-term goals, preferably learning to enjoy the process, rather than just focus on long gaps between the current abilities and great ones.
A teacher should never assume that a student, who initially fails to understand an explanation, would never have the capacity for progress.
As there are many types of intelligence, schools and universities must learn to adapt to this reality, since different people have different ways of learning.
We must show high expectations, but also compassion, creativity and patience.
New sciences study everything we have been talking about, Neuroscience, Epigenetic, Nanotechnology and Singularity. This proves, we have responsibility for our genes integrity. Our lifestyle may alter our inherited genes.
Enriching experiences may develop brain functions, make it flexible and plastic. This suggests that developing learning behavior and plasticity can be transmitted to children; but it is necessary to put children in constant mental calisthenics.
New sciences tell us that small things in life can have effects of great magnitude.
Everything we know about neuroscience, epigenetic, uniqueness perfectly fits the dynamic system model of human abilities. Genes do not dictate who we are or become, on the contrary they act in a dynamic process.
External forces modulate genes expressions. Heredity can come in different forms. We inherit stable genes but what surrounds us may alter them. We inherit language, ideas, attitudes, but these may change. All things around us shape us, and all that can be restructured – redesigned – by us.
The Creativity and genius within all of us is to build this ability to improve our world and ourselves.
Ramon Marcel Arellano Baez 