Excerpt
from the book ROCKET MOM: 7 Strategies to Blast You into Brilliance
Creativity
is the very thrust of life. To deny your creative urges is to deny your Creator. You were created with a combination of gifts
uniquely packaged in your very being and given as your birthright. Of the six billion people currently living in the world
and the more than ninety billion people who have ever lived, there has never been anyone quite like you. Your DNA, your fingerprints,
your mannerisms, your creative gifts, your talents, your dreams...are unprecedented! Are you rejoicing in your uniqueness?
Are you using your gifts to the utmost? This wonderful idea that God had when He made you needs to find completion in this
world. No one else can bring your ideas to life the way that you can, or can bring your artistic take on life the way that
you do.
What are you doing to bring out the creative genius inside your kids? Are you actively looking for their unique
gifts? And are you encouraging them to use their gifts so that their creativity explodes into our world, allowing others to
benefit? Are you painting a picture of the world that is colored with figures throughout history who have left their mark
because of creative thinking and bold action taken because of belief in their ideas?
Unleash the Power of Creativity
Chances are, you have grown up with the notion that intelligence
and creativity are measured with the traditional IQ test. When Alfred Binet came up with this test, he was actually trying
to categorize schoolchildren's potential for learning. But he insisted that his test was never to be taken as a measure of
inborn ability; rather, it was intended only to identify students in need of special educational attention. Binet was motivated
by both a government mandate as well as by the emerging discipline of psychology. Considered a breakthrough at the time of
its inception, this test was an attempt to objectively measure comprehension, reasoning, and judgment. Modern day research,
however, paints quite a different story of the validity of the measurement of IQ.
For one, the idea that intelligence
is a fixed and measurable number, given at birth, and never to evolve over time, is an archaic concept. We now know that despite
the fact that all individuals are endowed with talent of some type at birth, IQ scores can be raised significantly through
appropriate training. Researchers Buzan, Machado, Wenger and others have shown that IQ is not, indeed, static, nor is it an
immutable birthright. (1) Researcher Bernard Devlin, in the journal Nature, concluded that genes account for no more than
48 percent of IQ and that a staggering 52 percent is a direct function of prenatal care, environment and education!
Secondly,
the commonly held notion that intelligence is measured in two areas, namely verbal and non-verbal reasoning, as measured on
the standard IQ test (as well as in SATs) is now debunked as well. Psychologist Howard Gardner introduced his theory of multiple
intelligences in 1983 in his classic Frames of Mind. His premise is that each of us possess at least seven measurable intelligences,
namely:
Logical-mathematical
Verbal-linguistic
Spatial-mechanical
Musical
Bodily-kinesthetic
Interpersonal-social
Intrapersonal (self-knowledge)
His theory is now widely acceptable in the medical and educational communities. (2)
In light of the theory of multiple intelligences, contemplate the following research by renowned neuroscientist Dr.
Candace Pert: intelligence is located not only in the brain but in cells that are distributed throughout the body.The traditional
separation of mental processes, including emotions, from the body is no longer valid. (3)
When you combine the insight
gained from multiple intelligences and the fact that intelligence is not just contained in your head, with the knowledge that
intelligence can be developed over time, we have an inspiring vantage point for developing ourselves and our children for
their full potential!
In short, our brain is bigger than we think! It is more flexible and multidimensional than any
supercomputer. You can learn seven facts per second, every second, for the rest of your life and still have plenty of room
left over to learn even more.
Pyotr Anokhin of Moscow University stated in 1968, to the disbelief of the entire scientific
community, that the minimum number of potential thought patterns the average brain can make is the number 1 followed by 10.5
million kilometers of typewritten zeros! (4) He compared the brain to a multidimensional musical instrument that could play
an infinite number of musical pieces simultaneously. He concluded that each of us is gifted with a birthright of virtually
unlimited potential.
To me it seems as if when God conceived the world, that was poetry; he
formed it, and that was sculpture; he colored it, and that was painting; he peopled it with living beings, and that was the
grand, divine, eternal drama. Emma Stebbins
OK. So Now What?
How can I discover my childs unique gifts? Once discovered, what specifically can I do
to nurture them?
For starters, expose him to lots of different activities and then stand back and see what clicks.
Let him dabble in something that interests him and see if there appears to be any natural talent there. Expose him to lots
of different things and many different ideas about how to do things. The more good ideas that are presented to him, the more
likely it is that something will click.
And don't be too quick to pass judgment. Some children are late bloomers and
may not seem to have anything particularly spectacular to offer at first. Be patient. Remember that society's definition of
success or intelligence doesn't necessarily fit all kids. Creative intelligence and intellectual intelligence are complementary,
but some kids have more of one than the other. Debbi Fields, founder of Mrs. Field's Cookies, floundered in school but went
on to create a wildly successful business. Thomas Edison attended only three weeks of school. Albert Einstein had difficulty
finding his way home and was a late talker and reader. Being too quick to pass judgment on these people as children could
have set them up for a lifetime of misery. They were able not only to get through life but to flourish because they relied
on their high creativity quotient.
As Harvard professor Daniel Goleman writes: IQ offers little to explain the different
destinies of people. He explores the concept of emotional intelligence and zeroes in on factors that allow people to be more
fully human, claiming that emotionally intelligent people have lives that are rich, but appropriate, that they are comfortable
with themselves, others, and the social universe they live in. (5)
