How to Make Your Kid Smart Without Spending a Minute Teaching Him to Be Smart
Subtly invoke your child to read
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What is the best way to make your kids smart without spending a minute teaching them how to be smart? — Invoke in them the reading habit.
That’s what my dad did.
I used to see him reading one or the other book every day and so I became curious about what was interesting in that dark matter written on those white papers.
At home, we have a library of over 300 books. Daddy buys a book or two each month. He’s been doing this for two decades. Now I do the same. That’s the family legacy I want to continue.
But how was I inspired to take this step? There’s human psychology at play.
Like every other kid, my childhood desire was to act like an adult.
My dad is a civil engineer, an accomplished person of the town. I wanted to be like my dad — a respected professional. And the easiest way at that age was to imitate him.
We had summer holidays. I had nothing to do. And I didn’t want to sit idle for the next two months. So, one day, I took the books off the shelf and started judging each by their cover. I liked thrillers those days. Also, I was fond of stories of bravery and war. And especially the history of our territory. So I picked up a book which was a whooping 1000-page epic that depicted the story of a 16th-century self-made brave king who disrupted the then-ruling Mughal Empire. It was the story of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.
I never thought I’d read that whole book, but as I started, there was no looking back.
It is rightly said that getting from zero to one is the most challenging part of any journey. Things become easy afterward. The book’s storyline was so captivating that it hooked me for hours. Finishing that book became my only short-term goal.
When I looked back and realized that I ate the whole book within a month, I was surprised by my reading speed!
Mission accomplished. I reached zero to one without force. And that’s how reading became a part of my life.
