<p>I don’t believe in luck when it comes to raising children, apples do not fall far the tree. Every mean kid I have met, all I have to do is to just meet the parents.</p>
<p>Parents that are not taking credit on this board for your children, you are probably setting good examples without even knowing it.</p>
<p>Never take the easy/lazy/convenient way out with children. And I know that all parents know what I mean because every day is full of opportunities to do just that. All I can say is that even though I didn’t measure up to my own standards (laziness is definitely a flaw), just having that as an aspirational goal probably helped.</p>
<p>The reason this is important (in hindsight) is that the message kids get from this is that they, and their interests, are worth the time and trouble.</p>
<p>Oh, and I wanted to add that we didn’t “raise such smart children”— they’re bright enough, but mostly they’re just talented, reasonably happy, good people.</p>
<p>Attend every one of your kids’ events that your schedule allows. Don’t immediately step in to intervene with your kids’ teachers. Encourage/make them totalk to the teacher themselves first, then only if the situation isn’t resolved speak with the teacher. </p>
<p>Also, make them understand that resolved doesn’t always mean they’re going to get their way, but rather the teacher gives them a reasonable explanation.</p>
<p>Teach them that a commitment is a commitment. If the don’t want to play a sport, or be in scouts or whatever next year that’s fine but they’ll finish what they started and committed to this year.</p>
<p>I am a student on here, so I guess I’m sort of one of the “most dedicated” individuals you are talking about. I’m actually just curious and my guidance counselor knows nil so self-directed research is the way to go, woo! :]
The best tip I can give ANY parent is this: IQ does not matter in academia. Test scores do not matter. This is not what the school system is meant to do, really. Be creative with your child in learning styles and perspective when learning new materials. Work with the school system, be autonomous, do you know what I mean? </p>
<p>Don’t obsess about scores - it isn’t worth it. Teach children about different facets of themselves and watch them blossom WITHIN the school system. Don’t encourage working FOR it. Simply work within it, get where you need to be going, and be happy with it all in the end. :] x</p>
<p>another thought: Allow them to make and learn from mistakes when the consequences are still small. E.g., being late for school ==> detention. Don’t write the bogus excuse note (it is dishonest, for one thing) and let them learn now, because if they have to learn the lesson later, being chronically late for work==> losing the job.</p>
<p>And when you write them the note it makes it pretty tough to punish them down the road for lying.</p>
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<p>Breastfeeding was the key. Everything else (potty training, kindergarten success, perfect SATs, etc.) just followed naturally :D</p>
<p>You raise a smart kid by staying out of their lives and letting them experience it.</p>
<p>BunsenBurner beat me to it.</p>
<ol>
<li>Breastfeeding till the kids were ready to wean</li>
<li>A house full of books</li>
<li>An 8’x8’ sandbox and a hose</li>
<li>We played board games with our kids</li>
<li>When our kids were interested in a subject we helped them explore it. I know way more about trains and World War 2 than I ever thought I would.</li>
</ol>
<p>How many kids have you raised Dr. Horse?</p>
<p>"To clarify - I had no problem with “parentese” - the sing-song and exaggerated way of speaking to babies. I probably did that myelf. But I always insisted that the speech consist of proper grammar and pronunciation. In other words, no baby talk.</p>
<p>I had a cousin who was 7 or 8 years younger than her siblings and grew up with her brothers and sisters speaking a lot of baby talk to her. She ended up speaking in baby talk herself until she was well into elementary school."</p>
<p>Oh, okay, that makes sense. I had noticed that the initial post that we referred to used a perfectly grammatical sentence, but I overlooked the use of the wrong consonant sounds at the beginning of the word. I have personally seen how that can manifest, though not intentionally or by any fault of the mother in this example. My sister is speech impaired, and she can’t pronounce the hard “y” at the beginning of words, among other phonemes. Neither of her daughters pronounce “yellow” correctly because the person they hear saying the word most of the time pronounces it “lellow” due to her inability to say it correctly. </p>
<p>Though, in addition to this response, I realized something else that my parents have always done that I think has fostered at least some awareness of the world and a curiosity to learn more. I don’t know how many times my mother and father have started conversations with, “Did you see what happened today on the news?” Usually, this results in the immediate flicking of the channel to the news, a quick perusal of the news paper, or, once we were older, a search of the local newspaper’s website to learn more about what had happened.</p>
<p>I just thought it was the luck of the genetic “roll of the dice”. </p>
<p>We really didn’t have a lot of time to over-parent but we did spend time reading and playing with the kids a lot. We also spoke to them using an extensive vocabulary and expected that they’d do well in school.</p>
<p>The thing that my son always mentions is how I’d give him mathematical word problems at dinner (especially at restaurants) and how that made math fun for him. My D will often comment on how we’d use time in the car to talk about current events or geography and how that piqued her curiosity and interest re: the world.</p>
<p>I’m just so happy that they both value learning and excell at it.</p>
<p>My two kids are 19 and 21. I’ll reserve judgment for now.</p>
<p>As far as “baby talk” goes, my W uses it all the time with our two cats and they are incredibly stupid.</p>
<p>Stay-at-home mom who is dedicated to the child’s development helped a lot. We decided to make the sacrifice when our son was borned that my wife will not go back to work. We looked at our friends with 2-car garages and new trade-in cars but contend with our decision. I mean no offense - they couldn’t make close supervision while at work, and not able to cultivate after-school extracurriculas while we could. Sure one-income means I drove the same car for over 13 years. But what does that mean in the long view of things if you have a highly accomplished child to be proud of.</p>
<p>Working mom that’s able to balance work/life, a good role model for the daughters, a woman’s place is not necessary at home.</p>
<p>Dr. Horse, I broke up with a boyfriend who had your attitude and told me I was overly involved, and needed to let them go 'experience life more, ’ back when my kids were 7 and 12. By staying highly involved, and attempting to foster the intellectual curiosity and skills to interact with the world intelligently, as they’ve grown older they’ve had many interesting experiences and accomplishments. He now realizes my interactions and the activities I encouraged were worth a good deal. He can’t believe how well they’ve turned out, so far, and admits I was right. They’re 20 and 24, so still, as we all are, a work in progress. </p>
<p>I think there’s a good deal of exemplary role modeling in the CC parent community.</p>
<p>prenatal Bradley Class, chocolate every day while pregnant, breastfeeding two years</p>
<p>Biggest expense should be books, even with library, 2nd hand, etc. If they see parents reading daily, they want to read. There must be books underfoot and at all levels. CC parents seem to love books from Chinaberry, a rare thing we agree on.</p>
<p>Enjoy your time with them. Go places, even simple places are new to them. Love and listen.</p>
<p>“That’s a beautiful German Shepherd”. It sure is. Raise kids with German Shepherds, the smartest dogs.</p>
<p>My oldest (and brightest) child has always loved books. As a toddler, he’d pore over his board books for the longest time. He’d want me to read the same book to him 8-9 times in a row. He stayed up until 4 am on Christmas to finish the Artemis Fowl book he got that morning. He reads like crazy and uses all the words he reads.</p>
<p>The other kids aren’t such readers. But they do have high vocabularies…we always used “grown up” (ie. real) words with them.</p>
<p>My oldest also loved books and reading more than my other two…she would memorize things a lot too. I can remember parents with children bragging about what their kids were learning in their day care / pre-school environment…mine was learning the same at home with me.
I can also say that shows on PBS , such as Sesame St really made them inquisitive ( am I supposed to admit that ? )
my youngest who is 11 learned a lot from a show that was on Disney Channel called " Stanley ’ she really amazed us with the little factoids she would gather…like being 5 and discussing symbiosis</p>