June 2013

Jump In Already!

Do you jump in like an exploding bomb or do you prefer to gingerly work your way in to the cool, refreshing water of the swimming pool? Really, it doesn’t matter what your style of entry is. But enter your child, you must, into a life of refreshing change that builds talent early in his life. You can go all-in by giving everything over to talent building first and then figure out later how you can accommodate the more traditional school obligations. Or you can start by changing just the first hour of your child’s school day so that it incorporates some talent building and then gradually work your way up to changing the rest of the hours over to some more talent building.

Grow Your Child’s Talent Like You Hike a Forest Trail

Jonathan

Growing your child’s talent to 10,000 hours of world-class talent is akin to hiking forest trails. At many bifurcation points along the trail you will have to make decisions as to whether to continue to the left or to the right. Some side-paths will only be visible and available to your child because of his unique position in time, place, and in his network of relationships with others. Some clearly marked trails will be overcrowded with lots of other traditional students: noisy and impossible to get around to the front of the crowds blocking your child’s way. In the same way, you should encourage your child to keep moving forward, but to jump onto different side-paths as he sees opportunities that will take him around obstacles and onto unique and less crowded learning paths.

Cycle Up on Your Talent in 13 Weeks

Jonathan

Books — A method for mastering the book knowledge of any subject in 13 weeks, via Levi at NeoLibre.org (Photo credit: henry…)

I love practical tips on how to master an aspect of one’s talent, that is if it can be implemented by your child today instead of years later in college. That’s why I like librarything.com as a way to find books today related to your child’s talent interest and my son Caleb (13) is currently using it to collect his own specialized library. But this tip from Levi at www.NeoLibre.org takes the book approach for building up talent one step further. Check out his cyclic approach to finding and reading the most relevant books in your field in a systematic fashion, all-the-while gaining speed and traction. It’s a cyclic reading method for mastering the written knowledge of any topic in 13 weeks – all it needs now is a catchy name for the method.

Stop Without Deleting your iPhone Apps

Jonathan

Stop those iPhone apps from using computer power, without having to delete them. www.thewiredhomeschool.com

Do you know how to shut down your iPhone apps without deleting them? I’m embarrassed to say, I did not until My Man Tech Friday revealed the tip to me on his podcast. Check out how to do it on John blog post: http://www.thewiredhomeschool.com/2013/06/best-tips-to-speed-up-your-iphone-ipad-or-ipod/ I don’t mind having all sorts of play apps with ponies and cute animals for the younger children, in part because they make great rewards that don’t cost me a dime in chore money. But the apps do tend to proliferate and overcrowd the iPhone. Those I don’t delete, I can now just shut down their use of computing power until they are actually being used.

Follow TheWiredHomeschool.com for Useful Computer Tips

Jonathan

Your child must learn how to engage and dominate his field of talent with modern tools in order to speed up his talent growth – and that also means engaging with all the various tools connected to the Internet. Yes, just as your child could use the car for nefarious activities, he could use the Internet for evil. But if you are training your child’s character, you, as the parent, can and do teach your child how to use the car properly to greatly increase his opportunities for good, all-the-while driving defensively. In the same way, you can teach your child to use the Internet to greatly improve his life and his talent. This is where I recommend you follow John, from www.thewiredhomeschool.com for down-to-earth practical advice on how to manage the computer devices in your home – and to keep you looking more hipster than your kids.

Blog with Emotion to Open Doors

Jonathan

Door — How do you get the expert to open his door to your child? Hint: the answer is in blogging (Photo credit: Klearchos Kapoutsis)

At some level of his growth, your child will want to interact more with experts in his field of talent. The problem he can run into is that experts don’t have time to open the door to gawkers and will only tolerate those who are just as seriously committed as they are. How does your child show is he part of the committed ones? He shows it by documenting his performance, over time, through a blog that others can easily check. He also does it by writing in that blog with emotion and inquisitive engagement, and not just facts – that is how he will open up those doors.

Reverting to Average

Jonathan

English: Young soccer team (Union Geretsberg).... — Swallow away your child’s time into overcrowded skillsets until his real talent potential disappears. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Reverting to average is a real danger that can happen to children that show beginning signs of real talent growth. What is the cause of this reversion to average? It is caused by putting a child into programs, educational or otherwise, that are already crowded with thousands of other participants, where the programs are designed to produce in them copycat skill sets. This can be done putting your pre-teen budding engineer into an after-school soccer team year after year or by putting your art-serious daughter through the same history classes as all the other top-heavy verbal children. End result after 2 to 3 years will be children who are just average in whatever they do. They will have lost that critical formation time over to human activities that will have no room for them in their future adult lives. Root cause: parental peer-pressure driving us to want so much to look like our neighbors that we can’t see our children being swallowed up into mediocrity.

Too Early for Talent? Interview

Jonathan

English: Playing the game RISK Español: Jugand... — I don’t wait for my young son to stumble into talent on his own, I work with him to aggressively seize some opportunities while dropping others. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is it too early for the talent discovery process with a child who is not yet 12? Check out this interview I did with Wardee Harmon from GNOWFGLINS regarding my 9 year old son Gideon and his beginning talent. Notice how young Gideon is not on his own, wandering the hallways of a library or dumped off at group sports in order to stumble into something that he can call his own. No, his talent development depends on me, his parent, and depends on a number of opportunities that we decide to cultivate or not to cultivate. I am not my son’s passive guardian, but an active planner with him.

The Lion Must Be Fed

Jonathan

What happens when your child finds a talent that he can be passionate about? What happens when you as a parent use your years of experience as an advantage to guide a passion toward being relevant to other people or the marketplace? What you have is a lion that will keep growing in all its splendor and at times, in all its passionate fierceness. On the one hand, many teenagers are couch potatoes with a seemingly bottomless pit of self-loathing and indecision. But then, in some children, a lion is finally awakened and the time of nursing and nurturing is over. Enter Dad, the natural lion tamer in the family.