How To Raise A Happy Genius aims to provide information, advice and ideas for parents (or guardians, grandparents, uncles, aunts or, indeed, anyone interested in helping a child get the best out of their lives) on how to educate children in a way that not only encourages and enables them to fulfill their potential in life, but that will help them develop into well-rounded, happy and productive adults who can succeed in any field they chose to enter. Its philosophy is simple: by using short bursts of well-planned, but fun activities at crucial times in their development, any child can be taught the essential core life skills that will enable them to develop into the happy genius they deserve to become, without burdening them, or their parents, with undue levels of additional traditional education.
How it started:
The initial idea for How To Raise A Happy Genius originated from a conversation between two members of our team, Colin and Andrea, about the future she wanted for her children. Foremost of all, she said, she wanted them to be happy. This struck a chord with Colin, and he realised that most educational approaches pay little or no attention to the children they are teaching and instead concentrate on trying to produce adults that are well-trained in one narrow field using a one-size-fits-all approach. This results in children being pushed in a direction chosen by the adults in their lives rather than the one their child might want to go, even from a surprisingly young age, and with little thought being given to an individual child’s needs or requirements. This, Colin realised, was a recipe for disaster. Yes, it might lead to some children doing very well in school, or in a specific profession, but rarely would it result in adults who were happy with their lot in life. In addition, it can cause many children to lose interest in education of any kind, and leading to a failure to achieve their full potential.
This was something Colin had observed many times amongst his peers, but only through that conversation did these observations crystallise into a well-formed idea. This idea was to provide parents with a framework which they could use to not only raise their kids to meet their full potential, but also ensure that they are happy, both now and when they become adults. The more he thought about it, the more he realised that happy, well-rounded adults could best be created by teaching children not just sets of facts or training them how to undertake a single profession, but by teaching them a set of core life skills that can be used to help them to succeed in any field they choose to enter.
He then turned his attention to identifying these core life skills and working out how best to teach them to children at an appropriate time in their development. Being a scientist at heart, he knew that the best way to do this was by going through the scientific literature and aggregating all the available information, with the intention of boiling it down into a simple philosophy for how best to raise a happy genius that any parent (or guardian, grandparent, uncle, aunt or, indeed, anyone interested helping a child get the best out of their lives) could use on a daily basis (or whenever they get the opportunity!) To find out more about this philosophy, click here.
What is a Happy Genius?
Here at How To Raise A Happy Genius, we do not define a genius by a specific level of IQ (which is, after all, a fairly dubious measure of actual abilities in anything other than being able to do IQ tests!) Instead, we define a genius as anyone who has reached their full potential in whatever they decide to do in life, whether that is in academia, the arts, business, music, entertainment, sports, design or any of the myriad of other possibilities that are out there. Thus, a happy genius is someone who has not only fulfilled their potential in life, but who is also happy with how their life has turned out (or who has the right skills to do something about it if, at any point, they find that they are not).
What can you find at How To Raise A Happy Genius?
Now that you know the story behind How To Raise A Happy Genius and what we mean by a happy genius, what can you actually find on this site? Here, you will find postings that will fit into two basic types. The first provide ideas for games you can play, experiments you can help your children carry out, useful products you can purchase, book reviews, app recommendations and so on which you can use to help develop your child’s core life skills in short bursts.
The second type of post will provide more information about specific core life skills, life lessons you can use to teach these core life skills, advice about developing your parental skills so that you are best positioned to help your child reach their full potential, recommendations about book for parents to read, summaries of the latest scientific evidence on human psychology and educational strategies, and on what do do if you encounter problems with your child’s development. These are provided to help you, as a parent, develop your own skills and understanding on how best to raise a happy genius.
All posts can either be accessed through our blog, or by clicking on the menus for each of the individual categories that a post has been assigned to. The idea behind these posts is not that you should follow the advice as laid out to the exact letter in each and every one of them, but rather that you take on board the general How To Raise A Happy Genius philosophy and adapt the information provided to your own specific circumstances. As long as your child successfully develops enough core life skills in the seven skill sets identified in the philosophy, it doesn’t really matter how they do it. As a result, feel free to ignore certain posts if you feel that they aren’t right for your situation, or adapt the information in them as you see fit. After all, they are simply a starting point to help set you and your child moving in the right direction to help them become a happy genius.
Finally, while the information on this site is primarily aimed at parents with children between birth and 12 years old, from time to time there will be posts that are aimed at the parents of older children, and you’d be surprised about how much of the basic teaching strategies and core skills outlined here can be adapted for working with older children – you just need to work out how best to do it!