Year: 2013

Benefits to Identifying Sub-Skills of Your Talent

Jonathan
Work
Train your child to clearly identify the specific sub-skills of his talent  so he does not go down educational rabbit trails  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There is a benefit to training your child to objectively look upon the skills of his talent as separate components that can be individually identified and developed. If for example your child has an interest in bladesmithing, one of the skills that is useful to commercial speed is the ability to weld layers of raw steel for prep work. The mistake would be to sign up your child into your local and traditional 2-year long welding program where ALL the welding skills are taught. That makes it easy to explain to other parents where your child is spending his time, but your child would lose valuable time on his talent plan. Instead, because you have identified the specific sub-skills for the talent, you can pay an expert welder to teach your child on just those few narrow welding techniques in a matter of days.

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Birthday Wishlist Betrays Desire for Talent

Jonathan

Are there signs of interest in your child for a talent of his own to emerge? If you have a personal system in place, ready to channel that youthful energy, you will not have to hope that an appropriate skill-set appears spontaneously. Gideon is now nine years old. See if you can spot some emerging interest in the birthday wishlist of my soon-to-be ten-year old:

wishlist
Gideon’s Wishlist for his 10th Birthday

 

 

 

From Pearl to Diamond Daughters

Jonathan

 

sh15 luxury
Pearls, diamonds, they are all wonderful. But if you could take your daughter to diamond level, would you do it? (Photo credit: Upupa4me)

Many do well by raising their daughters to be pearls of great attraction. A few parents will exceed even that by deciding that they will then take their daughters to the diamond level before they graduate from home. I asked my wife what she thought would be ***practical examples*** of what a diamond level girl could do as compared to a pearl level daughter. Here below are some quick examples of what she came up with. Do you notice how the difference would be due to having a development plan for a homemaking talent in place instead of passively acquiring curriculum knowledge?

 

A daughter who is a “Pearl” is soft, beautiful, and known for her tender luster; she must be careful that the wrong environment does not take advantage of her and crush her.

 

…but a Diamond is a strong, bright, hard; can handle changes well, but is still beautiful to look at; you can easily delegate to her and she doesn’t wilt in a time of crisis.

 

Pearl: can put together a nutritious meal together, on time

 

…but a Diamond could do this: can entertain guests with ease on an hour’s notice using resources on hand

 

Pearl: can initiate thoughtful handwritten thank-you notes

 

…but a Diamond could do this: maintain church and family relationships through encouraging and informative newsletters and blogs

 

Pearl: can make preserves, jams, and jellies for her family from produce picked in her garden

 

…but a Diamond could do this: coordinate, manage and teach food preservation skills for local food exchange club

 

Pearl: can sell handmade jewelry at local craft shows

 

…but a Diamond could do this: carefully research a country-wide market demand for special wool socks and then run an e-bay store targeted to a specific customer group; selling socks whose knitting was outsourced to other homemakers.

 

 

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Adding Up the Talent Hours

Jonathan
adding machine (d)
Keep the vision: your child’s talent hours will add up (d) (Photo credit: Aaron Kyle)

If your child accumulated 300 days a year focused on developing some aspect of his talent for four hours a day, he would easily cross the 10,000 hours of training mark from age 12 to age 22. Consider that a traditional university degree will contribute only 2,400 hours (last two years of college) toward a specific talent, assuming of course he is able to study in a field that supports his talent goals directly. Consider also that the practice level needed to perform in an average middle class paying job probably only requires about 2,000 hours of focused learning vs. your child’s accumulated excellence of 10,000 hours.

Age 12 – 1,200 talent hrs

Age 13 – 1,200 talent hrs

Age 14 – 1,200 talent hrs

Age 15 – 1,200 talent hrs

Age 16 – 1,200 talent hrs

Age 17 – 1,200 talent hrs

Age 18 – 1,200 talent hrs

Age 19 – 1,200 talent hrs

Age 20 – 1,200 talent hrs

Age 21 – 1,200 talent hrs (college year 3)

Age 22 – 1,200 talent hrs (college year 4)

Total: 12,000 talent hours

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Read Like an Action Hero

Jonathan
Cover scan of a Great Comics comic book
Cover scan of a Great Comics comic book (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is your son reading lots of books about his talent, but reading them with only the goal of being able to say he’s read them? This is mistake. If this is so, most of what he reads will be forgotten and unusable in the abundance of details he is acquiring over time. Instead, he must treat books in the spirit of an action hero who has a mission to accomplish (see the Book Blitz Method by Levi Heiple). Your talent driven child must learn to scan his books with an eye to interpreting key information into immediately applicable rules of action within his specific talent focus. The rest of the otherwise good information, he must learn to judiciously gloss over.

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Danger: Hard Work Not the Same as Value

Jonathan
choir-130
Talent caveat: everyone enjoys listening to a choir at least once in a while, but very few will want to pay for what they have already heard many times. Lesson: your talent must be more than just repeat to bring real added value to others (Photo credit: Family Photo Archives)

Teach your hard working and diligent child how not to confuse quantity of hard work to be the same as the amount of value he is bringing to others through his talent. It is the recipients of his talent who will determine how much of a difference it makes to their lives and not the amount of sheer effort that he has to put into it. This explains why often in the arts, it is original content that is rewarded more highly, even if the performers are less technically proficient than more hard working, school-trained artists. It is also true in other fields like business or mystery-book writing. Talent focused children and their parents must not forget that because people have already seen or heard the same type of Country-Western song so many times, fans would rather now pay for a much more different take on that genre, than to simply add another very accomplished repeat to their collection.

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Wrap a Very Different Skill Around Core Art Skill

Jonathan
Stop starving artists
Stop starving artists: wrap another very different skill around your daughter’s core art skill (Photo credit: mayhem)

Great example of the 10,000 hour principle where this mother calculates her daughter has already accumulated thousands of those hours and become a really good illustrator. By the evidence, her 16 year old daughter has mastered an old, standby-core skill, and has additionally wrapped it in a modern digital medium. Here’s my 10ktotalent tip: if she hasn’t already, I would then recommend that her daughter leverage one of her family’s goals, one of her environmental assets, and then gradually find a market focus, by adding another very different skill from a completely different field. Ideally she wants to keep wrapping other sub-skills around her art in such a way that others will be willing to pay her for her talent and hesitate to call her just an illustrator, because the term would be too limiting. Her immediate danger is that she will be recruited too soon by an art school who will try to socialize her into something that is not useful to others (turning her art only into a private hobby) or training her to be good at a specific art production that is already over-crowded with other already great artists (becoming the proverbial starving artist).

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Reasons for Hobbies that Do Not Matter

Jonathan
Couch Potato
Without a talent focus, the only answer is group sports and cute hobbies – but it then creates problems later in early adulthood (Photo credit: Furryscaly)

Here are the common reasons parents sign-up their child for cute hobbies and group sports that are NOT talent related:

  • child is restless and needs something to keep him from boredom
  • don’t have anything in common to do or talk about in the evenings so it’s easier to drop child off at soccer or basketball
  • worried about child not being physically active enough after sitting in a classroom all day
  • worried child won’t make friends unless he’s involved in the same activity as everyone else

Those are some good reasons to address, but you don’t need to address them by sacrificing your child’s ability to have enough time to develop a real talent. With a serious talent focus, he can gain all of the above (motivation, friends, reasons for moving his body, and an interesting personality that even you will want to be around), AND, in addition, gain a meaningful productive life in early adulthood. The exception might be if your child’s talent does not involve anything physical, in which case, you may still need to get him out the door.

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Visualize Part of Your Child’s Future Talent

Jonathan

fairytalepics

For my daughter who is heading down more of an art-related path, I inspired myself by typing the following keywords in the Google search engine for images:

watercolor children’s illustrations fairy tale -anime

What you will see are hundreds of thumbnails of illustrations that have a watercolor art style and in the process of telling a story. Though she is not at that level of ability, those images are currently very reflective of how she communicates through art. Add and remove keywords until the search results start reflecting part of an ideal productive potential for your child; in my case I removed “anime” by typing a minus sign next to it.  Note that my daughter will still need to add modern skills to her core art skill to be of market value to others.

 

 

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No Longer Be Boring

Jonathan
Zanzibar Postage Stamp
Why choose a canned geography curriculum when you could use your grandfather’s stamp collection to study geography? Play up your family’s uniqueness and your child will no longer be boring (Photo credit: write99)

If you live in a little community by the river, why do you drive into the city to take a basketball camp instead of enjoying a water-rat lifestyle? If the elderly grandfather who lives with you has an amazing international collection of postage stamps that he has collected over a lifetime, why are you insisting on discarding it in favor of buying a curriculum package for geography that has no emotional connection to your family? I would rather get to know your child who hikes and builds forts regularly along the edges of the river and the child who tells me about the changing world through his grandfather’s stamps, than spend any five minutes talking to a child who has followed the canned educational life. So stop trying to downplay your family’s uniqueness and instead play them up into your child’s life and into the construction of an interesting talent.

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The Courage to Make Decisions

Jonathan
Runner on Blue Trail
The growing ability to make his own way, to be decisive, is an enormous side-benefit to the child who is talent focused (Photo credit: Montgomery County Planning Commission)

There is at first only a subtle difference in evidence between the talent-driven child and the traditional curriculum-driven child with regards to that strength of character known as decisiveness. Parents tend to overlook that difference at first as simply a quirk in personalities and only see that both are otherwise hard-working.  But then that trait of decisiveness starts compounding daily and yearly into such amazing strength that it clearly sorts the children between decision-makers and those that wait for work instructions. That character of decisiveness will manifest itself as:

  • the ability to make priorities
  • the ability to be swift to commit to a different course of action when needed
  • the ability to recognize the emotional and physical dangers in a specific field of human talent
  • the ability to act in a comprehensive way that earns respect from others
  • the ability to communicate with others in the language of ownership and responsibility
  • the courage to make decisions in the face of incomplete knowledge.
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Don’t Apologize

Jonathan
English: Panhandler in Oceanside, California.
Don’t let your child be a panhandler for compliments. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Train your child not to apologize for what is not his responsibility because it wears down on the goodwill of your child’s admirers. An example is “I’m sorry I don’t have a stronger voice like this other famous singer, but I will still sing for you this song I’m practicing.” False apologies  make your child come across as someone who is fishing for compliments and sympathy when such feedback is not yet owed to him. If in the course of documenting through video an aspect of your child’s performance, there is a slightly embarrassing part that your child did or said (such as having forgotten to take care of a distracting tuck of the shirt), but feel the rest of the content is still worthy, then it’s okay to apologize. Your child apologizing for not having rich enough parents to buy even bigger or better tools for his talent is not okay, because it is not his responsibility or his fault.

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Name Ten Things to Learn to Do

Jonathan
Moeraki Boulders
What are those ten things he can learn do this coming year that will allow your child to connect with experts? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What are ten things your child could learn to do in the following year that would demonstrate to an expert that your child is serious about his talent? If you can name those ten things, you will be able to identify the next actions your child need to take to make them happen. Instead of randomly engaging in one or another task, your child will be able to pave the way to connecting with more advanced individuals in his field. To help you find out what those ten things would be in your field of talent, start asking the experts directly. And a very good place to find willing experts to respond to such questions would be in dedicated self-help Internet forums.

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Does Your Child Have a Tag Line for his Talent?

Jonathan
Halo halo
Halo halo dessert for American palates: is your child’s talent interest getting specific enough for action (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As your child progresses in developing a talent, you can discover more actions he can take by creating a tag line for his talent, just like a business does for the service it provides. A tag line is a summary phrase that is catchy enough to be easily remembered by others and unique enough to describe some specific value being brought to others. So for example, a son with a growing baking and cooking talent, may grow a tag line that reads “baking Asian cuisine for California-fresh palates”. This tag line would help others resonate with him in his aspirations and would create a natural list of next actions that your child should undertake in order to become much better. Who would you think is more likely to be acting on his talent on a daily basis: a child who states that his interest is baking in general or a child that says he is trying to become better today at baking Asian dishes to please American tastes?

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Passwords Your Child Can Remember

Jonathan
English: CryptoCard security token, displaying...
So many websites, so many passwords. Do you have a system for remembering your child’s passwords? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How to create passwords that both you and your child can remember:

  • First, create a memorable phrase that has at least seven words:

“apple pie for breakfast and dinner”

  • Second, string the first letters of each word in that phrase together and add a digit of your choosing to the end of it:

“apfbad2”

You know have the root of your password that your child will be using for each login.

  • Third, when you are ready to create a new account and password, simply remember your root password and add onto the end of it the first letter of the website’s name. So for example, if you were create a gmail account on the website for google.com, your password would then become:

“apfbad2g”

 

 

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Jump In Already!

Jonathan
Jump
Jump-in or walk-in already! It might be cold at first, but soon a talent-filled life will refresh your child’s soul. (Photo credit: urbanpringle)

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.

 

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

Jonathan
English: Hikers walking along the in the Larim...
Growing your child’s talent means getting him smart about taking advantage of his unique opportunities (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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.

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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.

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