Raising Brilliant Children

In Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children (New York: APA Lifetools, 2016), co-authors Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff introduce the concept of the 6 C's of effective child development:

Collaboration is everything from getting along with others to controlling your impulses so you can get along and not kick someone else off the swing.  It's building a community and experiencing diversity and culture.  Everything we do, in the classroom or at home, has to be built on that foundation.

Communication comes next, because you can't communicate if you have no one to communicate with.  This includes speaking, writing, reading, and that all-but-lost art of listening.

Content is built on communication.  You can't learn anything if you haven't learned how to understand language, or to read.

Critical thinking relies on content, because you can't navigate masses of information if you have nothing to navigate to.

Creative innovation requires knowing something.  You can't just be a monkey throwing paint on a canvas.  It's the 10,000-hour rule:  You need to know something well enough to make something new.

Confidence.  You have to have the confidence to take safe risks.  There isn't an entrepreneur or a scientific pioneer who hasn't had failures.  And if we don't rear children who are comfortable taking risks, we won't have successes.

Contributed by Zvia Dover

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