I want to share with you a fascinating study in the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell:
They tracked thousands of the highest IQ children in the United States throughout their entire lives. These were picked through extensive testing. At first, things were going well: these kids were winning awards left and right.
But when they hit late adulthood, the results were shocking. Many of these “gifted” children were failures in terms of society’s standards. Some were garbage collectors.
How did this happen?
Malcolm Gladwell asserts that a huge part had to do with the upbringing, role models, access to resources, and parenting that these children had.
IQ and genetics alone do not guarantee success.
Many parents want their children to do well in life. As a parent, you often can have quite an influence.
You can now have an edge over everyone else through the power of science and deep research.
For 99% of human history before this era, most parents just tried what they thought was best, maybe consulted with a few friends, and shot in the dark to figure out what’s best for their child.
Nowadays, there’s tons of scientific studies that have taken decades of study for you to learn from. Most people still don’t read. They’re too lazy or don’t have the time. You really can have an edge in terms of success for your child.
Check out this cool insight I learned from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. He goes into great statistical analysis (further elaborated in the book) on why children with a few months of extra time can have a huge advantage in sports or school.
Does this hold true for every occupation or field of work? Probably not. But it is one thing that you can look into.
Contents
How do I make my child a genius?
I think this is the wrong question to ask. In the book Outliers, they found that all you need is a threshold of intelligence to do well. They tracked thousands of the highest IQ children of the country for decades and found that once you hit a certain level of IQ, you were no more likely to win awards, Nobel Prizes, or have other accomplishments than other people.
Basketball is a great analogy. If you are 6 foot tall, an extra 5 inches doesn’t matter as much as other things like skill. If you’re 3 foot tall, height matters.
The craziest thing they found was that most of these super promising kids with ridiculously high IQ’s went on to have mediocre success in life.
There are more important things to life than straight intelligence: persistence, emotional intelligence, social skills, perseverance, work ethic, finding mentors, and so on. These can all be developed and I talk about them constantly in my content.
See my story on Laszlo Polgar later on to see how other elements of success matter sometimes more than IQ.
Well, then what can you do to make your child successful in life?
There’s two fabulous books on this.
One is recommended by Bill Gates. It’s called Mindset: The Pyschology of Success.
It goes into deep psychological detail on the results of examining people who have a growth versus fixed mindset. Those who had a fixed mindset fell behind because they gave up or thought nothing could be changed.
The lesson?
- Make sure your child has a growth mindset. Do this by:
- Teach them that their skills can be developed
- Make them believe that they can better themselves
- Teach them that “you either have it or you don’t.” We have these false beliefs about social skills, speaking, teaching, and making more money that hold us back. Don’t let this hold your child back.
- Encourage and celebrate failure
Having studied thousands of successful businesspeople, I have found that many of the best entrepreneurs embrace failure. They know that it will not kill them and that the consequences are overly exaggerated.
While there are some failures you should avoid (death or a complete loss of a company’s reputation due to unethical and illegal practices), I have found that they fail much more than average people on a daily basis, which allows them to succeed. When you have more chances, you increase your chances of success.
The billionaire Sara Blakely’s dad, for example, asked her how she failed in a different way at dinner every day and cheered for her. It wired her perspective on failure differently than most people.
There has been a ton of studies, experiments, and books on parenting. Many of which have been rigorously tested. A website called Usefulscience.org has a parenting section that cites useful information you can use in your parenting based off scientific studies, which they link to.
Although some of the insights I’ve found on the site are a bit random and not as useful, some are quite helpful. Here are 2 of my favorites:
I think one overlooked issue is that society and how we live has changed so much in the last 100 years. Many boys are energetic by nature because we were groomed to be physically active for war or farming for most of the day.
Now, we’re supposed to sit for 8+ hours a day in the classroom and those who are a bit fidgety are told they are bad behaving children. I was definitely one of these kids. A 15 minute exercise routine should be encouraged daily for kids.
Reading just one book can give you an edge over the average parent.
Realize The Impact of Your Parenting
A parent’s influence or lack of it can have a huge impact on the success and possibilities of a child.
Many children bring childhood traumatic events to adulthood. If they were beaten as a child, they manifest that in adulthood. If they were told that they were useless, that is brought into adulthood.
One key thing you should do is making sure that your child feels valued and praised when they do the right thing. Many children who were neglected manifest this in very unhealthy ways in adulthood by overcompensating by seeking tons of wealth or constantly seeking external physical validation from others. This can lead to a very shallow, hollow, and insecure situation.
Just like some of the best managers in the world, when someone does something great, praise profusely, in detail, and by name.
Remove Limiting Beliefs
Warren Buffett has said that he would not be the billionaire he is if he was born black or female. The culture, economics, and beliefs of the time held people who were minorities or female behind. There is a huge movement now pushed by female billionaires and entrepreneurs like Sheryl Sandberg and Jessica Alba called #LeanIn to empower females.
Help encourage your children that they can accomplish things they set out to and make sure their gender doesn’t hold them back on some level in their mind. Many females, even to this day, are held back because of these hidden beliefs.
Many children are stuck with certain beliefs that hold them back in life because their parents believed it and instilled it in their kids. Great books on this are Mindset: The Psychology of Success and Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.
Some common examples include: telling your child they only have the potential to be a farmer, telling them they could never be a TV star or celebrity because they don’t have connections, or making fun of your child for even believing it possible.
Some of us cannot change how our parents taught us. It’s never perfect. However, you must come to terms with what was done to you in the past and cannot change. For your children, you can make that difference.
These are REAL stories and I see them all the time. Steve Harvey was told by his teacher that he could never get on TV without a network and was made fun of. He persisted and succeeded despite that goal.
One critical thing you can do on top of not imposing limiting beliefs on your child is to give them a sense of belief, persistence, and ability to only take advice from people they trust. Steve was encouraged by his mother that he could and that belief blossomed. There are successful people who were mocked by everyone, but kept going until success. Find some way of instilling that in your child.
Money Can’t Make Up For Everything
In the book Life Is What You Make It, there is a story about a man who worked at two child care centers while at Stanford University. One center had children of a very low-income neighborhood while the other had children of a very high income neighborhood.
The shocking thing was that children from both centers suffered from the same issues manifested in different ways. They had the same symptoms, such as not listening to authority and disobedience. How?
It was because of neglect. The parents neglected their children simply for different reasons. The high-income parents were never home because they were out there making more and more money. The low-income parents neglected their child out of poverty, drugs, crime, and other issues.
Both suffered a similar issue of neglect. Realize that money alone cannot solve everything. You cannot buy back time with money. You cannot buy love, respect, approval, or any other soft responses by throwing money or expensive gifts at anyone, whether it is your spouse or your child.
Let them do something they are passionate about
A very well known case study is that of Laszlo Polgar. He wanted to prove that hard work and a good work environment mattered more than just genetics. He used chess as an example and successfully raised 3 daughters that all reached the high levels of professional chess skill, including Grandmaster, the highest title other than world champion.
Having said that, I would highly recommend not forcing a passion or interest.
I have seen kids from almost every ethnicity be overly influenced by what their parents want from them. Sometimes, this can go way too far.
Being Asian American, I’ve seen this in a lot of asians. It’s very common for our ethnicity in the western world to be pushed to be a doctor or lawyer. It’s not new either. It’s been happening for 50+ years.
If you push your child to do something they don’t like too hard, they may never attain true happiness or fulfillment. If they hate all things medicine, then even becoming a successful doctor is a failed path. Every year, there are stories of doctors, investment bankers, and lawyers who finally get their degree and end up quitting to pursue something more interesting to them.
Another issue with forcing your child down too rigid a path is that they are blocked off from reaching or even testing their full potential in other areas or skills. Your Indian child, for example, could be a really great accountant, but maybe give him or her a chance to explore her skills and interest in electric guitar.
I have seen a lot of Asian Americans end up with good, but very rigid, job positions in expected fields like law, accounting, or medicine because of this. Don’t stifle your kid!
Here’s a great video by Evan Carmichael showcasing numerous successful people doing what they love.
Have lots of books in your house
There have been a lot of studies over the years that show a correlation with the size of libraries in a family’s home and how well they perform in school. However, the causation has been debated. Is it the parents encouraging the reading or just the presence of books?
Regardless, it does seem that having easy access to books and encouraging reading in your children produces positive correlation in school grades and test scores.
It may be caused by an environment of scholary culture that wasn’t there before. And it seems to have the greatest impact on low-income families where books are not a common thing.
The lesson:
Have a lot of books in your home. A study showed that children with books at home get the equivalent of 3 years more schooling than those without books.
Conclusion
In conclusion,
- Make sure your child has a growth mindset.
- Teach them that their skills can be developed and aren’t fixed
- Make them believe that they can better themselves
- Teach them that “you either have it or you don’t.” We have these false beliefs about social skills, speaking, teaching, and making more money that hold us back. Don’t let this hold your child back.
- Encourage and celebrate failure
- Have easy access to books in your house
- Realize you can’t control everything. You cannot and should not manipulate or try to fully control another human. Let them find their own path and passion. Passion is really important for success.
These are the books I highly recommend reading. They are affiliate links, which means I will get a commission if you purchase through the links at no extra cost to you.
Mindset: The Psychology of Success
Getting There by Gillian Segal (specifically the chapter on Sara Blakely)
What’s the #1 thing you will do to learn more? What’s the 1 thing you will do differently starting today?
