How To Boost Your Child’s IQ
Behavioral scientists are the first to tell you that your IQ is not static. You can boost it by eating right, getting exercise, and stimulating brain activity. This summer, help boost your child’s IQ by working with them on fun and meaningful activities.
Children who read well tend to write well, and writing well, leads to reading well. This powerful combination of reading and writing gives children a boost in their mental capacity. Writing requires reflection, imagination, and problem solving skills. Have your child keep a summer journal, or even a creative writing notebook. When a child evaluates their day-to-day experiences they increase both their intelligence and emotional quotience. When writing they are learning problem solving skills without even knowing it! Scrap booking is a colorful alternative to the typical journal and also helps with fine motor skills.
Sports and outdoor activities not only help your children stay healthy but they also know boost brainpower. Outdoor play not only helps to raise their aerobic levels (which stimulates the brain), employs critical thinking skills. Moreover, the creativity that’s involved in make-believe games (like pretending the tree house is an Elvin fort) can challenge their brains to think in complex problem solving skills. Outdoor play (unlike indoor) actually reduces stress levels in children. This summer send the kids outdoors. Take them on hikes or camping, build a tree house together, sign them up for swim lessons or even send them off to camp. Kids need to be outdoors and most kids today are sadly lacking in the types of vitamins provided by sunshine.
Whether they like it or not, they need to play outside.
Reading is fundamental. Children who read during their summer break perform better in school when they return in the fall. It doesn’t matter what they read they need to read. So be it a comic book or “Percy Jackson’s Lightning Thief”, get them reading. Studies show that when your child reads for fun, he or she, will do better in school than those kids who are forced to read. Take your child to the library and let them pick out any book they choose. Even if it isn’t something you would like…it doesn’t matter. All reading is good for them. Make reading fun by setting up a hammock in the back yard or allowing them to take the book to their outdoor forts.
10 Simple Ways to Increase IQ
For many years, the common belief was that a person’s IQ was a fixed trait, largely determined by someone’s genetics. While genetics is important, many scientists are finding that there are techniques that can raise the IQ. Here are ten ways that will help do just that.
- Breathing deeper will increase the oxygen to your brain, and this will help increase brain function. For best results, breathe in through the nose to get more oxygen in.
- Rest and take breaks. Take breaks after twenty or thirty minutes. Just a short break will give you time to absorb what you learn.
- Improve your diet. Stay away from simple carbohydrates and simple sugars. Carbs and sugars make concentration and mental tasks more difficult. Increasing antioxidants can help protect cells, and this includes brain cells.
- Exercise. There are some studies that have concluded that increasing the heart rate and even breaking a sweat can elevate moods, fight memory loss, and sharpen intellect.
- Use downtime wisely. What do you do while sitting in a traffic jam or waiting in a line? Use this time productively and exercise the brain. Listen to audio programs in the car or do puzzles while waiting in lines.
- Journal. There are researchers who have studied the habits of 300 people who were considered geniuses. They found that they all had a common habit of journaling their thoughts and experiences. Thomas Edison, in fact, recorded his thoughts in hundreds of journals throughout his life.
- Learn and read. Open up to learning. When we learn, we open new neural paths.
Smarter people are those who many different neural paths with many connections.
Reading more will help you learn more. - Enjoy puzzles and games. Computer games can really help sharpen your mind. These games force your brain to work quickly and strategically. Puzzles tend to help sharpen the mind and teach how to create solutions.
- Eat breakfast. Eating breakfast has been proven to improve concentration and mental performance. The main energy source for the brain is glucose. Breakfast is the first chance your brain has to refuel after eight hours of rest.
- Embrace the morning. It has been proven that the brain is sharpest in the morning. Be aware and do as much as you can before midday. Research shows that taking tests before midday increases success rates by about five percent.
There you have it. These are ten ways that can help improve your IQ and they are simple enough that anyone can do it.
