John Gray - Children Are from Heaven - Positive Parenting Skills for Raising Cooperative, Confident, and Compassionate Children

Children with creative intelligence have a more developed sense of imagination. They can play games with a few blocks or faceless dolls. They often create imaginary friends.

They don’t need a lot to be stimulated. When too much is done for them, they don’t develop their imagination. They respond well to listening to stories, because they are required to use their imagination to create the scenes and characters.

Too much TV, where the images are visual, can weaken children’s ability to imagine. Just as every intelligence grows by being used, a creative intelligence grows when imagination is stimulated, enabling children to think differently.

They succeed in life where others fail because they can look at things in a new and different way.

Many successful entrepreneurs didn’t have a formal education or didn’t do well in school, but succeeded because they were creative. While growing up, they often received support for thinking differently. They were empowered to create their niche in life. They tend to be more original and succeed by doing their own thing. They are often left-handed. Parents need to give these children a lot of support for thinking differently and solving problems.

Children with artistic intelligence are naturally more interested in singing, drawing, design, writing, acting, drama, comedy, and other forms of artistic expression. They need to be stimulated by others who have already mastered their artistic talents. Though all children need role models, these children particularly need accomplished role models of artistic intelligence. These children are different, more sensitive, and often don’t get the emotional support they need.

Parents need to encourage these children to follow their dreams and develop their unique talents and artistic abilities. For artistic intelligence to flourish, children need role models and opportunities to practice and develop their intelligence with lots of encouragement and appreciation from their parents.

Children with common sense intelligence are often bored by intellectual lectures. They just want practical information. This intelligence is on the rise in the West. There is so much information available that people just want what is necessary. These children focus on what is useful to them and will often challenge what is taught in school as not being relevant to their lives.

To keep children interested, many schools are trying to update their programs to keep them timely and relevant.

Children with common sense intelligence need basic skills to use in their lives, relationships, and work. They are not motivated to memorize information unless it has a functional value.

Common sense intelligence allows a person to live a stable and grounded life. They are not easily swayed by lofty ideas that are no longer relevant to the world today. They are eager to apply what works for them. They need opportunities to put into practice what they know and learn by doing and evaluating the results. This intelligence develops by giving your child structured activities with lots of freedom and independence.

Children with strong intuition just know things. They don’t need to be taught or told. Information simply comes to them. It can be information in a subject of study or information another person has. They tend to be more spiritually inclined. All they have to do is to read a few sentences of a book and they intuitively get much of the content. Besides intuitively sensing the content, they get the benefit of knowing the content.

For example, if you were to read a book on social skills, in future situations that content would be background information to help you to respond appropriately to situations.

You would have a stronger feel of what to do. This is the benefit of having read that book. Children with intuitive intelligence can benefit from a teacher’s knowledge without having to study all the details.

Children with intuitive intelligence are often discounted.

Most parents or schools don’t have programs for developing this intelligence. For intuitive children, parents need to worry less about academic performance and appreciate their sixth sense for knowing things that are needed. This kind of intuitive intelligence is primarily stimulated by personal contact and not through TV programs, computers, or books.

Children with gifted intelligence tend to be particularly good at certain kinds of intelligence, but low in others. All children are born with great intelligence, but in different proportions. Gifted children get a lot of one, but little in others.

To lead a happy and fulfilled life, gifted children need special support and guidance to challenge their special gifts, otherwise they will become bored and unmotivated. In addition, gifted children need special support to develop the skills and intelligence areas in which they are weak.

People who are especially brilliant in one field often suffer in their lives, because their other kinds of intelligence were not nurtured. A brilliant scientist or billionaire entrepreneur may not be able to say “I love you” to his or her spouse. Many people are emotionally gifted, but have poor health. These loving people care for others, but don’t take care of their own body with regular exercise. Traditionally, great artists have struggled in life because they were missing the common sense required to manage money and other more mundane aspects of life. There are endless examples of great gifted people who suffered enormously in their lives.

Some people are gifted with enormous physical intelligence. They always look great. They are so used to getting love and support for looking great that they are afraid to reveal more of who they are inside and lose all that immediate attention and adoration. This is why “beautiful people” are sometimes very superficial. Their development is stunted because they don’t want to risk losing the love they get by showing up and looking the way they look.

The risk of failure may hold children back

from learning new skills.

This same principal is true for all the different kinds of intelligence. For example, people who are academically inclined are sometimes weaker in social skills. They enjoy being excellent in one field. They get a lot of love and attention for being the best at something. To try working and developing another weaker intelligence is too big a risk.

The thinking here is simple. If I am better at something, then I get love and support. If I am not better, then I will lose love and support. To counter this thinking, these children need encouragement to develop other areas of intelligence in which they are not gifted. In this process, they learn through experience that they don’t have to be better or the best to be loved. As a result, they are able to lead more balanced, fulfilled, and successful lives.

An old adage from Shakespeare says, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatest thrust upon ’em.” This simple truth, when combined with an awareness of the different kinds of intelligence, helps parents to understand and respect how their child learns differently.

Children may be gifted or “born great” with one or two kinds of intelligence. They may be gradual learners or “achieve greatness” with a few more kinds of intelligence.

With the other kinds of intelligence, they may be late bloomers and “have greatness thrust upon ’em.”

People exhibiting these three ways of learning can easily be summarized as: runners, walkers, and jumpers. To explore these three different learning rates in greater detail, let’s take learning to ride a bike as an example: