The Real Value of Money

French diligence in the Pyrenees mountains, 1898 — Money can be used as tool to help fulfill your calling (Photo credit: Marcel Douwe Dekker)

Guest Post by Levi Heiple.

Money is a means of fulfilling your calling.

I grew up with a skewed view of money. My parents had a lot of consumer debt. I grew up in a Christian culture that implicitly (and sometimes even explicitly) viewed money as inherently evil–necessary to pay the bills, but evil nonetheless. This is not what my parents taught me, but it is what I picked up from the culture around me.

Little did I know, that the Bible actually teaches that wealth is a desirable tool of dominion. It buys you time to work on your calling. It allows you to build infrastructures to advance God’s kingdom.

I wish I had had this view of money before I went to college.

If I could go back to the summer after my high school graduation, this is what I would do differently:

First, I would identify the five most important things I wanted to achieve in my life. These have nothing to do with money. It has to do with the legacy I wanted to leave behind and what I wanted to pass on to the next generation. This is my calling.

Next, I would spend the rest of the summer thinking about what kind of jobs would give me the most amount of capital for my calling in the least amount of time. It could be money to fund the projects. It could be a network of relationships. It could be skills and knowledge I need to fulfill my calling.

Finally, I would ask myself if getting a college degree would accelerate or hinder my progress towards that goal. In other words, I would take the time cost (anywhere from 4-12 years) and the money cost ($50,000+?) and I would ask myself, “if I took the same amount of time and money, could I make a better long-term investment?”

Perhaps going to college would be the best investment for your child. It would be the best place for him to get the network, knowledge, and skills he needs for his lifelong pursuit. Or maybe it will give him more credibility in his field than he would have otherwise obtained by doing other activities.

On the other hand, you could discover that there is a better way to invest those first several years of adulthood.

About Levi Heiple

Levi Heiple is a writer/entrepreneur who specializes in electronic training and support systems. He connected with Jonathan Harris after being asked tutor his son, Caleb. You can sign up for Levi’s free weekly tip on “reading for innovation” at BookBlitzMethod.com. You can find his professional website at LeviHeiple.com. You can find his web design service at WebPromoPackage.com.

Battleship Game to Memorize Chemical Table of Elements

Jonathan

Thanks to Jennifer Humble for curating this information

To help your child learn specialized tables of information that will help him in his talent quest, he can use the game “Battleship.” Instead of using the letters and numbers on the side of the grid to target the squares you want to sink, you would instead call out a sub-set of properties. Whichever squares of information had those properties, those would be the properties that were fired upon.

For example if your child needed to learn the chemical table of elements, he could do it this way:

To find different styles of table of elements to print out for use in this game, go to ScienceGeek.net and download the sheet you need.

5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Going to College

Levi Heiple

Guest Post by Levi Heiple

I am finishing up my last few credits of a bachelor’s degree. It’s a bachelor’s of science in music theory. I will leave with $20,000 in student debt. The degree will not help me much in my professional pursuits. Don’t let your child make the same mistakes I did.

If I could go back in time and tell myself five things before going to college, here is what I would say:

#1: College is not job training, it’s a certification program.

A college degree will not get you a job. You have to create your own job opportunities. A degree is simply a certification that shows that you made a good investment with the first several years of your adult life and are therefore more likely to have a good work ethic.

#2: Your friends and family do not always know what’s best for you.

Your friends and family only know about the vocations that they have first-hand experience with–the jobs that are on the surface. There are thousands of jobs that they don’t even know about. Browse through the Occupation Outlook Handbook. Talk to professionals in an industry that interests you. See what kind of work is being done.

#3: Money is a means of fulfilling your calling.

Get a solid grasp of the purpose of money. Don’t think that it won’t be important. Money is not evil, it’s a tool that allows you to do what you think is most important in life. Don’t get a dead-end degree. You’ll regret it soon enough.

#4: Take a complete inventory of your abilities.

You likely have more than one talent. Which ones can be the most lucrative for you? How can you combine them to gain a competitive advantage?

#5: Learn about the lifestyle of your career of interest.

Just because you enjoy doing something, doesn’t mean that you’ll enjoy it as a vocation. Meet real-life professionals in the field. See if you can tag along for a day. Find out what the “real-world” is like. It might not be what you want.

Conclusion

Count the costs before you send your child to college. If you do not know exactly what the degree will help your child achieve, it might be best to reconsider. There might be better investments.

About Levi Heiple

Audio Books for Relaxed Evenings

Jonathan

Candles composition — Candles for you and your wife while the children listen in their beds to wonderful audio books (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Do you and your spouse want to have some private evenings of relaxation without having to leave home or hire a babysitter?

Audio books to the rescue!

Your children can listen to captivating unabridged voice-acted stories in their bedrooms while drawing quietly, playing Legos, or just lying dreamily on their beds. Here are some 50 hours of suggested audio to stock up with in your arsenal of date-night tricks. This should give you room to relax at home for about 25 date nights worth while your children get deliciously transported into other worlds:

Hank the Cowdog by John Erickson with 2.5 hours of audio

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Book 1) by Jeff Kinney with 2 hours of audio

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain with 9 hours of audio

Freddy the Detective by Walter Brooks with 5 hours of audio

The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver by Thornton Burgess with 2.5 hours of audio

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Book 1) by Frank Baum with 4 hours of audio

Lawn Boy by Gary Paulsen with 2.5 hours of audio

The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia) by CS Lewis with 5.5 hours of audio

Artemis Fowl (Book 1) by Eoin Colfer with 6 hours long of audio

Redwall (Book 1) by Brian Jacques with 10.5 hours of audio

Books for Boys Ages 9 to 12

Jonathan

Deutsch: Paris: Eiffelturm und Marsfeld — My list of fun fictional books in English for boys 9 to 12 who might be living in Paris and missing a bit of our crazy Americana! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recently an expatriate friend living near Paris, France, was wondering what kind of fun and interesting fictional books their twin 12 year old boys could read in English to keep them in touch with American culture.

In response, I put together a list of books here below that I thought boys from ages 9 to 12 might enjoy trying to read. Girls might like them too, but I chose this compilation especially for boys who want something to kick start them into reading. There are many other books I could recommend, but if you are looking to get them jump-started on something easily accessible and fun, these below I would recommend first. Note that all the links go to my Amazon affiliate program.

Books that have a special Americana bent to them:
Hank the Cowdog series (down-on-the-ranch humor)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid series (school kid humor that will open the doors to understanding modern American boy humor)

Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (classic American outdoor adventure; the outdoor part is the story might as well describe the outdoors of where we currently live in California)

The series of books “Freddy the Pig” by Walter Brooks (anthropomorphic animal stories, with some gentle humor, that does a good job explaining through elaborate plots the different aspects of how American life, culture, and politics work – they were a big hit with my twelve and under crowd)

The animal stories by Thornton Burgess (nature stories that my daughter Noelle absolutely loves; shock full of real facts about nature in the context of fictional animal stories)

The Wizard of Oz series of books (the boys liked this as the books are far more interesting and gritty than the movies)

“Lawn Boy” and “Lawn Boy Returns” by Gary Paulson (humor about a boy running a successful business – this one really gets the American obsession about being successful in business life from a kid’s point of view; it had Gideon (age 10) laughing all the way through the books)

I’m listing a few Non-Americana books here below, but I include them because they are very popular in the United States and easy to read with good story lines:

ALL the books in Chronicles of Narnia series (I think that even though this was written by CS Lewis, a British writer, it is probably more popular in the United States than in Great Britain. An absolute MUST read.)

For 11 and 12 year olds, I recommend ALL the Artemis Fowl series of books by Eoin Colfer (it is the kind of science-fiction humor that made me smile and laugh as an adult; big people get the humor too and it is not inappropriate humor; a lot of advanced vocabulary, but accessible because the writing is so good, that in context, you understand it)

Thanks to Daniel, a reader of this 10ktotalent blog site, I am adding to this list the Redwall series of books by Brian Jacques. Several other friends over the years have highly recommended these adventure books of a mouse-warrior in a medieval setting.

How to Quickly Find the Top Books in Your Field

Levi Heiple

English: Photograph of author Roy F. Chandler ... — Does your child have his prioritized list of specialty books picked out? Use the Book Blitz Method (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In this article I will show you how you can quickly build a reading list based on trusted sources and instantly find out which books are the most influential in your field.

So you had a few books recommended to you by someone you trust. You read them. You greatly enjoyed them and learned a lot. You want to learn more about that particular niche. But how do you go about finding the top books?

Read on to learn a quick and easy way to remember all the books you want to read, find related books, and prioritize your reading based on which books are most prominent in your defined niche.

Step 1 – Get a Recommendation from a Trusted Source

Starting with a trusted source is the key to making this system work. You have to know where to start so that you’re not just reading “best-sellers.”

Read all the books suggested by your trusted source.

Step 2 – Find Related Books

Go to Amazon.com and find one of the books you just read. Click on the book’s page.

Look for the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section. This will serve as a list of follow up books.

Step 3 – Add the Books to Your Reading List

Log on to GoodReads.com. If you don’t already have an account, create one.

Search for one of the related books from the above step. To save time, just type in the author’s last name and a keyword from the title. Press Enter.

Click on the “Want to Read” button next to the title.

Repeat this process for every title from the Amazon.com page.

Step 4 – Find the Most Prominent Books

Your reading list will grow large very quickly when you follow the trail of related books. One way to prioritize is to find the books on your list that are most widely read. This will often indicate which books are most authoritative in the field.

Click on “My Books.”

Then click “to-read” from the side panel.

Click on “shelf settings.” Check “num ratings.” Sort by descending. Click “save current settings.”

Click on the “num ratings” column to sort by that field.

Your books are now prioritized by prominence.

Step 5 – Pick Your Books

Scroll through your sorted book list and pick out the ones that meet your criteria. For example, you could pick out all the books related to theology.

You can use the rankings to help prioritize your reading schedule. Since the list sorts automatically, you can add as many books as you want and still know which ones are the most widely read.

Conclusion

You can apply this method to any niche. Have your child ask for some book recommendations from an expert in his talent area. He can obtain this information from a online forum, a personal contact, or even by directly writing to an established expert. Most experts are more than willing to help a young novice get on the right educational track. Once your child has those first few books, he can begin a lifelong pursuit of learning and development through reading.

About Levi Heiple

Easy Storyboard Format for Writing Stories

Jonathan

English: Technical Script with storyboard Espa... — For a child who is visually oriented, try having her sketch her storyboard first, and then write it out in words. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here is a storyboard format that has really worked well with our twelve (12) year old daughter.

We have settled down over time to this short list of questions that has really worked for her. Other types of writing prompts simply did not work. She loves to draw, loves animal stories, and is far more visually oriented than her brothers. But this list of questions she uses has really gotten her to daily and consistently write her own short stories.

So if you have a child who is not the verbal chatty type, but with more arts-oriented skills, you might find this format very refreshing. Please feel free to share and print this list with others:

What type of animal is your character?

What is your character’s name? Explain and draw a picture of him.

What does the character want to have happen? Explain and draw a picture.

What’s a difficult thing that happened before the character got what he or she wanted? Explain and draw a picture.

How did the character overcome the problem? Explain and draw a picture.

How does the story end differently, but in a better way than what the character wanted to first happen? Explain and draw a picture.

Example of 10,000 Hours in Practice

Jonathan

Julia Child’s autobiography “My Life in France” is a perfect example of the 10,000 hours principle. You can read in detail her personal adventure and quest at becoming the “Grand Dame” of American cooking. Although I’m not in sympathy with her personal political views she ascribes to in her book, she did do a great job serving our culture in an area that was very inadequate in the United States. Read especially the part about how she practiced making so many batches of mayonnaise, she had to dump them down the toilet! Read also how her expensive education did not prepare her for her life’s calling – she too had to put in her tedious 10,000 hours!

Because she had amazing talent, she was hard to put in a box with a specific career label, such as describing her as a “chef.” This is how you want your son or daughter to view talent development – as a journey to become so good and unique that a career label no longer fits your child.
You can read her biography by purchasing it from my Amazon affiliate link here:

French Pronunciation Exercise

Jonathan

FrenchBibleAudio — Perfect Free Pronunciation Guide from a Native French Speaker Reading the Text of a French Bible – Always Available and NEVER Tires

Looking for a way to get a real French voice to teach your child how to pronounce French correctly for hours on end, without ever tiring, without ever betraying an American accent? How about if that was available to you as free for your child’s learning of a foreign language? And you could do it without having to drive your child to a tutor after-hours? Well, it is available here:

http://www.wordproject.org/bibles/fr/index.htm

The audio can be treated as the perfect free pronunciation guide from a native French speaker reading the text of a French bible.

If you go to the WordProject.org you will find many bibles in many different languages WITH a native reader reading the text in the foreign language of your choice. You can also follow the written text as the person reads. And of course you can repeat it as often as you like or download it to your smartphone to listen to it in the car during commute hours and errands. In the past, to find a teacher who both had a correct accent and is willing to do it for hours on end with your child would have broken your pocketbook. Now when repetition and precision is everything, the audio bible comes to the rescue.

Here are the other Bible audios they currently offer online:

Three Types of People: The Entrepreneur

Levi Heiple

English: The Swedish entrepreneur, scientist a... — Is your child’s trait, the entrepreneur’s trait? (The Swedish entrepreneur Jan Gyllenbok – Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is your child’s dominant trait the Entrepreneur’s trait? Adjust your child’s talent growth to his strength.

Guest Post by Levi Heiple (continued from Three Types of People-Which One is Your Child?):

Is your child’s dominant trait, the entrepreneur’s trait?

The entrepreneur lives for the future. The entrepreneur (whether he admits it or not) sees most people as problems that get in the way of a better future. He will be continually baffled why 96% of the population will drag their feet and accept the status quo when there is an overabundance of opportunity.

The entrepreneur is the rarest type. This may be partly due to the reality that most entrepreneurial types will be educated at an early age to repress the entrepreneurial impulse. People don’t like entrepreneurs (or at least successful ones). Entrepreneurs are vilified in literature. People don’t mind the struggling entrepreneur, but the successful one is a cause for envy.

In spite of the bad rap that (successful) entrepreneurs receive, they do perform a critical function in society. Namely, they create jobs for everyone else. If you have an entrepreneurial child, you will want to raise him accordingly. Here are some key signs to look for to see if your child might be an entrepreneur type.

He can never seem to focus.
He is always coming up with some new schemes.
He tries to take shortcuts in his work–especially school work.
He doesn’t like to follow directions or he tries to re-engineer the whole process when given an assignment.
He tends to ask a lot of irritating questions and/or challenge authority.
He doesn’t like to work on group projects.
He is highly motivated to learn on his own whatever he happens to be interested in.

The above qualities are obviously not qualities that are typically valued in school. However, they are in fact the very qualities that make an entrepreneur successful if they are disciplined in the right way. Lack of focus becomes “big picture thinking.” Scheming becomes “business planning.” Taking shortcuts becomes “outsourcing.” Challenging authority becomes “innovative thinking.” Not working working on a team becomes “creating jobs for other people.”

About Levi Heiple

Learn More

For more tips on teaching young entrepreneurs:

Book Blitz Method Tip of the Week

For more information on the types, click on Jonathan’s affiliate book link:

Write Lyrics For Your History Lesson

Jonathan

Notebook collection — Work through your standard history course by creating a custom notebook collection of song lyrics your music child makes about that time period (Photo credit: Dvortygirl)

For a child who has a musical skill as part of a core long-term talent that is developing, you can still turn your normal history curriculum into a curriculum that supports your child’s talent growth. One way to do that is that is to have your child write new song lyrics to fit an existing modern song at the end of each and every history lesson that your son or daughter finishes.

The objective is twofold. The first objective is that by constant and consistent production of lyrics, your child will force himself to daily keep producing as fast as possible new lyrics in order to keep up with the lessons. The history content of the lesson is the fodder and message that your child is able to use immediately so he can focus exclusively on lyric composition.

The second objective is that by wrestling with creating new lyrics every day, your child will easily assimilate the meaning he believes the history lesson is trying to convey. This wrestling with the content will peg the purely historical information onto his growing song writing abilities and lock it into his mind permanently. He will remember history better than if had just studied and answered the standard curriculum questions directly.

Here is a link on how your child can get started writing lyrics today with intro, verse, bridge, and chorus words:

http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Song

Three Types of People: The Manager

Levi Heiple

Captain Stephen Coad — Are you adapting your child’s talent development so it is compatible with his manager’s bent? (Photo credit: Helen Vercoe)

Guest Post by Levi Heiple (continued from Three Types of People-Which One is Your Child?):

Is your child’s dominant trait, the manager’s trait?

Managers are past-oriented. They see people as problems that make big messes that need to be cleaned up.

Managers are typically very good students. The reason for this is not necessarily because they are interested in the material, but because they derive a great satisfaction out of being responsible and doing things correctly.

Managers are needed everywhere. They keep things in order. Like successful entrepreneurs, good managers are also envied. No one likes the star student. Nevertheless, when a position of great responsibility needs to be filled, it is the exceptional student–not the mediocre student–that gets the job (or at least should get the job).

Here are some signs to look for to determine if your child is a manager type.

He almost always does exceptionally well in his school work
He needs very little “parental incentive” to complete his assignments
He is very well-organized (e.g. tidy desk, clean room, well-labeled papers)
He is very concerned about whatever grading system is being used, and how he can get the best grade.

Managers thrive on responsibility more than mastering any particular skill. The best thing a teacher can do for a manager-type student is to give him real-world responsibility. School provides a simulation of responsibility, but real-world responsibility will give him much more satisfaction and help him get a head start on his career. For example, instead of just giving him math problems, try giving letting him manage an aspect of the household’s budget.

About Levi Heiple

Learn More

For more tips on teaching young entrepreneurs:

Book Blitz Method Tip of the Week

For more information on the types, click on Jonathan’s affiliate book link:

Three Types of People: The Technician

Levi Heiple

Industrial Designers Society of America Annual... — Is your child’s dominant trait, the technician’s trait? (Photo credit: Kris Krug)

Guest Post by Levi Heiple (continued from Three Types of People-Which One is Your Child?):

Is your child’s dominant trait, the technician’s trait?

The technician lives in the present. He sees people as fretters and fussers that never actually get anything done. The technician loves his work (assuming he has found his talent) and likes to keep his life simple (so he can focus on his work).

The vast majority of people are technicians. They will likely be average students, perhaps excelling at one or two subjects. Some may even be poor students because they are only interested in working on what they are good at. A technician’s success and happiness in life will depend largely upon finding his talent (usually one, perhaps two or three), and developing that talent to the point of mastery.

Because there are so many areas that one can have a talent and achieve mastery in, it is difficult to describe the technician in general terms. The simplest way to determine if your child is a technician is to first determine that he is NOT either an entrepreneur or a manager. Then figure out what he enjoys doing the most. Give him the resources he needs to master that skill. Show him how what he is learning in his general education will help him to become better at his particular craft. Then show him how to live a simple life.

About Levi Heiple

Learn More

For more of Levi’s tips on teaching young entrepreneurs:

Book Blitz Method Tip of the Week

For more information on the types, click on Jonathan’s affiliate book link:

Three Types of People–Which One Is Your Child?

Levi Heiple

Start-up office's hall — In his adult life, your child will likely be acting mainly as just ONE of the three types of people that Gerber explains are needed to make work life function. (Photo credit: Aleksandar Ratkovic and Altiona.com)

Guest Post by Levi Heiple:

In 1986, Michael E. Gerber wrote a groundbreaking business book called The E-Myth. This was later revised and published as the more famous E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to do About It. The book is regarded for its insights on how to plan, manage, and grow a small start-up business and turn it into a franchise business. “Work on your business, not in your business” was the key motto.

However, one insight that is just as powerful, yet often overlooked, is Gerber’s insight into human personality.

Gerber writes that inside each of us is really three different persons:

The entrepreneur – dreams and plans for the future and sees opportunities
The manager – craves order and pragmatically solves problems
The technician – enjoys work in the present and loves to get things done

The idea of three persons in one should sound familiar to anyone acquainted with biblical theology. The Scripture teaches that God is trinitarian: the Father who plans and wills all things (the entrepreneur), Christ whom was given all things and brings all things under subjection according to the Father’s will (the manager), and the Holy Spirit who carries out the will of God in the present (the technician). Since humans are made in the image of God, it should make perfect sense to biblical thinkers that we find a trinitarian aspect within our own personhood.

Though we each have a three-in-one aspect to our personalities, we will find that people tend to have a dominant “person” that directs their behavior. Identifying which aspect is dominant in your child can be a critical component in structuring his education process.

About Levi Heiple

Learn More

For more of Levi’s tips on teaching young entrepreneurs:

Book Blitz Method Tip of the Week

For more information on the types, click on Jonathan’s affiliate book link:

Fairy Tale Treats For You

Jonathan

Dear Friends of 10ktoTalent,

I have a treat I want to share with you. Here below is a list of 15 of my favorite fairy tales that have beautiful illustrations. They have made me and my younger children smile over the years. I have read and enjoyed hundreds of fairy tales, but these are the top ones that also include gorgeous visuals or whimsical graphics. It is sure to please girls and boys from ages to 4 to 12 years of age.

The first column is the name of the fairy tale, the second column is the author or illustrator, and the third is the ISBN number. Make sure you use the ISBN if you can because they are so many retellings of the stories that without the numbers you might not find the ones I recommend. You can plug the ISBN number into Amazon and many other online books search tools to get the exact version I am referring to.

If you are going on vacation or wanted to treat a friend with a box of sure-fire fairy tale classics, this is the surprise box of books I would send them. Click on my affiliate link to Amazon and use the list below if you want to skip through the inferior ones on the market (forget the ones for example that are re-told by celebrities). Go straight to the good ones.

The Little Red Hen	Jerry Pinkney	0803729359
Rumpelstiltskin	Paul Zelinsky	0525442650
Rapunzel	Paul Zelinsky	0142301930
Puss in Boots (Sunburst Book)	Fred Marcellino	0312659458
The Five Chinese Brothers (Paperstar)	Claire Huchet Bishop	0698113578
Cinderella	K.Y. Kraft	1587170043
The Twelve Dancing Princesses	Marianna Mayer	0688080510
The Gingerbread Boy	Paul Galdone	0547599404
The Three Billy Goats Gruff	Paul Galdone	0395288126
The Three Bears	Paul Galdone	089919401X
Snow White	Paul Heins	0316354511
Hansel and Gretel	Rika Lesser	0698114078
Jack and the Beanstalk	Steven Kellogg	0688152813
Little Red Riding Hood	Trina Schart Hyman	0823406539
The Sleeping Beauty	Trina Schart Hyman	0316387088

Your Child Will Do Better Than You

Jonathan

Father with child — Don’t make your child retrace the same educational path you took if you want him to outperform you in his adult life (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Do you believe that your child will indeed DO BETTER than you in his or her adult life?

If so, then would you also agree that in order to do significantly better than you, your child MUST NOT retrace your same educational path?

Think for a moment the implications of the hope you carry: if your child has the same reading list, and has the same math classes, the same history courses, etc. then it stands to follow that your child will not be able to rise above your own current accomplishments if he starts his adult life with the stock knowledge and experience you had. Your child’s knowledge and experience would not be different enough to change his life that much more than yours. So this means you need to take a hard cold look at somehow making your child’s experience significantly different enough to yours for your hope to become a reality.

Pop Quiz:

Is your child’s educational content different enough to be better than the content you learned as a child?

Are your child’s learning methods and techniques better than the ones you used as a child?

Is your child apportioning his time between different subjects in a much more judicious way than the way you did it as a child?

Is the strategy for choosing one set of classes over another set different enough from the one your parents used in determining what you should study?

Parable of the Pottery Makers by Ted Orland

Jonathan

The Parable of the Pottery Makers is found in the book “Art and Fear” co-authored by David Bayles and Ted Orland

Recently one of my sons was going through a discouraging patch of inspiration in regards to the building up of his talent. In addition to my fatherly soft-and-tough pep talk about persevering and not giving up, I also repeated back a parable I had heard which also made complete sense to him – and brought a smile back to his face. That story was the Parable of the Pottery Makers as it originally was told in the book “Art and Fear” and relayed in the book “The First 20 Hours.”

This particular son, who is the most perfectionist of all my children, will tend to research and analyze the details of a new skill to the point that he becomes paralyzed by feelings of inadequacy and as a result never gets started actually practicing what he has learned. This is is why I recommend that in the beginning, as a parent, you shield your child from too much outside scrutiny so that he isn’t frozen into inaction. Encourage your child to get his hands dirty as soon as possible and to stumble (safely) through as quickly as possible in order to break beyond the first baby-step problems that a newbie has to go through.
Click my Amazon affiliate link below to get your copy of “Art and Fear”:

Art & Fear

Turn Socrates into Talent Time

Jonathan

You can turn every standard hour of history learning into an opportunity to push his talent forward.

How do you turn a standard history lesson on Socrates into an opportunity to build talent?

I will share with you how my 15 year old son is using history curriculum to push his talent forward. At the end of each hour of study for his Western Civ class, he allots 10 to 15 minutes to producing a single visual graphic that conveys one specific message of that lesson. This daily exercise forces him to focus on speed and efficiency in the use of his Adobe photo editing tools and forces him to wrestle abstract concepts into modern images that are attractive and yet still clearly convey a message that others can understand. Those two skills are being daily trained because the history gives him the necessary fodder to train himself to convey value and meaning, instead of just playing with visual effects that have no purpose. The side benefit to being talent driven first is that history is much easier to assimilate (a.k.a. “pegged” to his talent) because he has to interpret its message in a relevant manner each and every time.

Struggle Rewires the Brain for Talent

Jonathan

EEG with 32 elektrodes — Your child’s brain rewires itself to be faster and better the more he decides to struggle and work through a specific skill. It is the struggle itself that creates the improvement for his talent.(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Teach your child to believe that it is in fact the struggle and the wrestling that is growing his brain to match the talent he wants to have. Teach him to disbelieve the popular, but completely FALSE notion that as soon as something is not easy, it therefore must mean he should not pursue that talent.

Unfortunately, as parents if we buy into that popular false notion then we will automatically assume that what is first easy thing to do (hey, look honey, we can sign up Billy into soccer camp!) and irrelevant (wow, I can have Susie learn to play the Ukelele because old Mrs. Winston is providing cheap lessons on Thursdays) is what their long term talent will be.

This is the truth about the stages of learning and talent:
1) learning the basics of a talent is a struggle
2) your brain changes in response to your effort and practice and rewards you by gradually and literally rewiring your brain for those particular tasks
4) eventually what was difficult becomes so effortless that it frees you to no have to think about the lower skill levels of your talent
5) friends and relatives then think your child was born with that gift without giving you or your child credit for all the hard work and planning you put in

Break Down the Vision into Objectives for Today

Jonathan

Vision translated into objectives today — Our child waits on us to think about his future for him until such time as he is fully able to take charge. This means acting on opportunities for him today.

Break down the talent vision for your child, your parental vision, as big and blurry a cloud as it may be today, down into smaller objectives that are nearer to earth and that can be concretely reached at an earlier age.

If you sense that your child’s long term talent after the age 0f 18 will have an engineering bent related to it, then you will want to start coming up with intermediate objectives that you can reach by the age of 16 (perhaps finishing Calculus). And in order to reach those objectives by age 16, you will want to set even still smaller goals now for him to reach by age 14 (perhaps participating in local math clubs). When you have reached the age 14 objectives, perhaps new and even better opportunities will emerge by that time that will allow you and your child to come up with more specific long-term talent goals than just vague engineering. Perhaps by age 14, a fascination for how telescopes and microscopes work will have grown to such a point where you both agree that he would do well to now focus more narrowly on the science of optics instead of engineering science in general.