How Is Your Child “Smart?” :

Wish you knew more about diet, fitness and, well, life in general? Class is now in session at eDietsU… for FREE! Click here to take advantage of all the videos, lessons, quizzes and expert sessions. And check back each week for more!

Helping a child to utilize his own special strengths and skills may mean looking beyond what the policy makers and society typically consider “smart.” Or as developmental psychologist Howard Gardner has put it, you shouldn’t be trying to determine how smart a child is. Rather, you should be trying to determine how a child is smart.

Gardner wrote an influential book called Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. In it, he contends that intelligence isn’t a singular entity that can be measured only with paper and pencil. Rather, he says, we each possess many different kinds of intelligence, in various combinations and to varying degrees. To date, he has recognized nine different intelligences, all of which he’s identified through a rigorous scientific process. For our purposes, though, the important point is that Gardner describes intelligence as the “ability to find and solve problems and create products of value in one’s own culture.”Although Gardner intended his work for the field of developmental psychology alone, an interesting phenomenon happened: educators pounced on the idea. Why? Because for generations they’ve witnessed multiple intelligences in the children with whom they’ve worked. Although our society most values the linguistic (“word-smart”) and logical-mathematical (“number-smart”/reasoning) intelligences -- the two intelligences measured by IQ and other standardized tests -- teachers could see that many of their students had other gifts, other ways of “learning and knowing.”

In addition to the linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligences, Gardner has identified the visual/spatial (an understanding of how things orient in space), naturalist (determines sensitivity to one’s environment), existentialist (belonging to people who question why they exist), interpersonal (the ability to relate well to others), intrapersonal (knowing oneself well), musical (a fascination with sound and the patterns created by sound), and bodily/kinesthetic (the ability to solve problems or create with the body or body parts).

It’s important to remember that each of us possesses all of these intelligences but, as mentioned, to varying degrees and in different combinations. A surgeon, for example, has highly developed logical/mathematical and bodily/kinesthetic intelligences; the former incorporates the scientific aspect and the latter the meticulous use of the hands.

Continue reading »