find it early – Page 3

The Courage to Make Decisions

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.

Name Ten Things to Learn to Do

Jonathan

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.

Passwords Your Child Can Remember

Jonathan

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”

Jump In Already!

Jonathan

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.

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.

Age 12 – The Educational Game Gets Serious

Jonathan

100-hours-3d — Download my e-course:
“How to Discover and Develop Your Child’s First 100 Hours of Talent”

Around the age of twelve (12) is when you will often see boys get really antsy about the purpose and meaning of the schoolwork they are doing. At that age their ability to think and plan seems to increase significantly and that is when as a parent you are pushed to also make new educational plans. Keep coasting by picking standard curriculum from a general educational menu and you will meet resistance and sullenness. Start picking specific courses and learning modules that encourage a talent focus and watch your child’s mind roar forward with intellectual energy. No talent yet? Try the 7-day-workshop for discovering and developing your child’s first 100 hours of talent.

Will 10,000 Hours Make Your Child an Expert?

Jonathan

Will 10,000 hours or 1o years of practice make your child an expert?

No, it will not make him an expert if he practices 10,000 hours of the same skill. You intuitively know this is why 10,000 hours or 10 years of working as a fast order cook would turn him into a worldwide famous master chef.

Yes, it will make him an expert if 10,000 hours of practice is broken down into separate skills that are continually added and chosen to push forward a particular talent. This is why extremely talented people often get started young (for a big time head start) with lots of caring guidance from parents and personal coaches (for careful choice of skills).

Five Common Fears Parents Have About Talent Development for their Child

Jonathan

The Twa Corbies (or The Two Ravens) — Is there a primary fear that’s holding you back as a parent in developing talent in your child’s life? ( The Two Ravens Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Five common fears parents have about talent development for their child:

Fear: My child will have an education and degree, but not talent and no income
Fear: My child can’t find a talent on which to focus
Fear: My child can’t derive financial benefit in his adult life from his talent
Fear: I can’t find enough time or resources to develop a true talent for my child
Fear: My child might get caught up with other talented people, but who also live an unsavory lifestyle

Head Down, Pencil Up

Jonathan

“Head down, pencil up” will get you into trouble as a parent planning for the future of your child if you don’t periodically look up to reassess how the market and culture is changing. Dan Miller, author of “48 Days to the Work You Love“, in one of his recent podcasts, describes a situation where a high level executive was suddenly let go after 26 years of employment in the same field. What was sad, is that even though the changes in the market place were obvious, he had not taken the time to lift his head up from the day to day of his work to see how changes would affect his career. He had made no plans of his own to deal with the change and now he is really out of time. Don’t do the same to your child – lift up your head today and start implementing those curriculum changes ASAP.

Common Mistake When Searching for Motivation in Child

Jonathan

A common mistake for parents is to search for talent by looking for an already full-blown motivation in a child’s life. That is a mistake because they will not find one, immediately give up, and falsely conclude their child was born under an “unlucky” star. Instead, the right approach to creating motivation is by introducing him to a simple skill that requires little effort and gives quick satisfaction. At that level, he will easily engage himself with encouragement by his parents. Then keep building his skill levels up until an intrinsic desire of his own starts growing stronger and stronger…and then a full-blown motivation will rage so strongly that all your friend and neighbors will see that your boy is “on fire!”

Same Experience Repeated Over and Over is Not Talent

Jonathan

English: Kimberley and Babette Nederlands: Kim... — 10,000 hours of talent development is not the same thing as applying the first few hours of instruction thousands of hours over and over (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The same small experience repeated over and over is what keeps an entry level job at the status of an entry level job. After a full year of work standing on her feet at a typical teenage job at McDonalds, there are probably only eight hours of added skill to the child’s life. The same principle applies when guiding your child into accumulating her 10,000 hours of talent development in household management: a daughter who is enthusiastically cooking, teaching, and helping her mom with home organization is not enough to build world-class talent. To be recognized as a future mother and wife who has taken the world of household management by storm, she would have to daily push the boundaries of her abilities with new tools and new ideas of management…until her performance appears magical to others, like that of the fictional Mary Poppins.

What Were You Actually Doing?

Jonathan

Unwrapping a Gift — What is your child actually doing with the small beginning talent he was given? Is he multiplying it yet?

A talent parable.

A father noticed his son’s natural doodling abilities and his appreciation of comic art, so, based on a homeschool blog site recommendation, he purchased a set of 25 silky water color pencils and a heavy pack of some of the best textured art paper on the market. He gave it to his son Matthew along with a beginner’s tutorial book as a gift for him to expand his talent.

After being gone for a couple of weeks on a business trip, the father caught up with the accomplishments of his children and it came time for Matthew to report on all the wonderful things he had been learning to do. That’s when Matthew brought to the kitchen table and put in front of his father, the entire pastel set and paper stack still in their pristine shrink-wrap state.

“Dad, see: I kept everything nice and clean. I even locked it away so that little Billy didn’t play with the good stuff. I know you don’t like it when I don’t do my best and I’m not a very good drawer yet. And you get mad if I break expensive tools like these pencils, so I made sure they stayed beautiful and unbroken just like you got them from the store.”

“Matthew,” said the father, “what were you actually doing in your room every day during your art hour for the entire time I was gone?”

“Oh, I was reading my comic books.”

Parents, what do you think should be the right and fair response of the father in this story? For a similar situation, read what the master said to his servant in Matthew chapter 25 in the parable of the talents.

Small Interest to Big Talent

Jonathan

Don’t wander around looking for the sign of your child’s BIG TALENT. Instead, like the fathers of Mozart and Tiger Woods, start your child young, under your protective and nurturing wings, and follow this pattern of 10,000 hours of talent development; get the free e-guide “How to Discover and Develop Your Child’s First 100 Hours of Talent” to jump-start the first small interest phase:

Small Interest

Small Skill

Small Productive Output

Small Feeling-of-Satisfaction

Which leads to…

Bigger Interest

Bigger Skill

Bigger Productive Output

Bigger Feeling-of-Satisfaction

Which leads to…

Very Big Interest

Very Big Skill

Very Big Productive Output

Very Big Feeling-of-Satisfaction

which equals to…VERY BIG TALENT!

Work to Increase Early Skills to 10000 Hours of Talent

Jonathan

Early Child Skills will Dissipate if Not Nurtured — Born with or Nurtured into Early Skills in Childhood? Either way, it only matters if those skills are actively developed.

Is a child born with certain natural abilities at birth or is a child unconsciously nurtured by his parents to favor particular traits over others? From a 10,000 hours to talent perspective, the chicken-or-egg debate over this question is a moot point. Whatever small advantages a child is given or born with at birth, it will avail to nothing if those advantages are not actively nurtured. It is clear that early skills that are not developed and worked at, do in fact dissipate over time, at least to the point of not being of any advantage over someone else who later in life applies himself and learns the same skill from scratch. Yes, rejoice over any early skill your child has, but also work at it hard to increase its rewards.

Do Not Passively Consume

Jonathan

At the airport — Children developing talents depend on their parents to clear the way

Planning to make room for talent development in your child’s life is not the same as creating good study habits, creating good work ethics, or learning a trade while homeschooling. Talent development in your child’s life is building up a set of skills and insights in a field of human endeavor that is so profound that it will cause your child as an adult to one day be a world leader in that area. This means that your child cannot passively consume what is given to him in a curriculum or nonchalantly take whatever summer job presents itself. He needs your authority as a parent to make it happen. He needs your willingness to prepare the way to find, use, and manipulate the resources and advantages in his environment to a coordinated purpose.

Talent Is Not Average Performance

Jonathan

Surfer Honor — Talent – so amazing they will want to remember the date on which you reset the standards.

Talent is not average performance. Talent is performance that is so great that it forces a field of human endeavor to reset its expectations and standards as to what can be done. This is why developing talent requires 10,000 hours of training and studying. This is why it is important to start young. This is why you should start your child’s first 100 hours ASAP.

Apply Talent Immediately

Jonathan

Find Ways to Apply Talent – this will train your child to look for how it can be of value to others

Finding a way to apply a child’s talent early on in his immediate environment will be of huge advantage. The first advantage is that it will encourage your child to see his talent impacting others. This will create positive feedback for him to continue with his efforts. The second advantage is that attempting to act out his talent in his environment will require him to modify his talent in such a way that it is welcomed and recognized by others to have practical value to them. Yes, some things of excellence, such as character, must be pursued regardless of outward approval. But when it comes to pursuing an earthly skill set, your child should pursue it in such a way that his talent will provide for him rather than drain him financially in his adult life.