Looking for ways to increase your children's chances of success in life?  Look no more. 

 

The following is an archived pedcast, first published in April 2019. Feature image by Ludi of Pixabay

Introduction

What can you do or not do to improve your children's IQ and chances at life success? Recent college admission scandal demonstrated how desperate parents really are for their children to experience that second attribute, success; faking resumes, paying large amounts of money to  decision makers at colleges, paying to have SATS taken for their children. These parents must have known that this was all cheating and was wrong but they did it anyway. Why?  To make their children look smarter on their resume and move them closer to "success", that's why!  Turns out there are non-cheating ways to boost your children's IQ and their ultimate chances at life success... and I am about to tell you how to achieve this the "natural way".

Musical Intro

First a quick spin down science drive to review what we know about successful people and IQ

First, psychologists have determined that there is a strong correlation between measured IQ and income; the higher the measured IQ, the higher a person's income is likely to be on average. According to the Harvard Business Review, a child having a high IQ predicts their adult success in income production when combined with good social skills and strong drive and determination.   Said another way, high ability combined with people skills and a strong work ethic is the formula for a child to have income success in the adult working world.

But what factors go into a child's IQ? Are children with high IQ's just lucky that they got high IQ genes from their parents or is there more to it than that? Psychologists and scientist have been pondering that questions for a very long time. It turns out that having high IQ genes is a great advantage but not the whole story. Environmental influences, the way a child is raised, has a strong influence on a child's intelligence. How much influence you a... actually a lot; less than genes but a strong influence none the less.  What a child becomes, their success in life so to speak, seems to be the sum of his or her genes and the child's environmental experiences. Classic nature versus nurture. How your child will ultimately fare in life depends on a complex mixture of literally thousands of factors each that can have either a positive or negative effect. For instance we know that good maternal prenatal nutrition, having an infancy that is secure and nurtured, establishing a very close trusting relationship with one's mother, being breastfed early in life, and having an environment rich with interactive language are all factors that increase intelligence in a child. On the other hand, having exposure to prenatal toxins like alcohol, having one's mother consume a poor diet, being born into a family with e(conomic and/or social stress, or being raised in a household lacking in rich language are all factors that impair a chid's intelligence. Complicated right?  Since parents really only have control over the environmental factors that affect their children's intelligence, let's concentrate our attention and energies there.

Can You Make Your Children Smarter?

So the question that we are asking is, can you make your children smarter? To answer this question we need to consider both things that parents can do and not do that influence their children's lot in life.

 

 

 First, things parents can do to increase their children's IQ? While this is by no means an all inclusive list, it is a good starting point for parents to begin.

--Consuming fish that are rich in omega 3 fat sources regularly . Other foods that give children omega 3s include nuts,...