How to Make Your Smart Baby Smarter

To make your smart baby smarter, you must make your baby happy. A happy baby learns faster, and makes more friends when growing up. The importance of human relationships cannot be overstated; it plays a pivotal role in the future happiness of your baby. Knowing how to make friends and to keep friends is a lifelong skill that involves knowing when to interact and when to withdraw—that is, the capability to decipher nonverbal communication with others. To illustrate, while playing with your baby, if he turns away from you and starts sucking his thumb and staring into space, stop the play and wait for your baby’s next response. If he turns to you again with an inviting smile, then resume the play.

As a parent, you have the wisdom to decode the nonverbal communication of your baby. Babies can’t talk, but by six months, most babies can experience anger, disgust, fear, happiness, surprise, and other emotions. Pay attention to the emotional landscape of your baby to understand his behavior, thereby instrumental in helping your baby develop his own nonverbal communication skills. Always verbalize your baby’s emotions: “You’re happy”; “You feel surprised, don’t you?”; “I know you’re angry.” Verbalizing his emotions helps conveying your empathy, and thus calming the nerves of your baby. In addition, instill in your baby the attitude of gratitude.

Reading the minds of others to understand how they feel, and thereby instrumental in controlling one’s own emotions, is critical to establishing good relationships with others, which is the source of happiness later in life.

But, in addition to making your baby happy, you must be prepared to have no expectation because your baby’s growth and development may be totally unpredictable. The milestones are just for your general reference; nothing is set in stone. Don’t expect the expected, but always expect the unexpected.

Any disappointment or frustration will be reflected in the nonverbal communication that may be perceived by your baby. The bottom line: do what you can with what you have, and leave the rest to the Creator. If your baby is smart, you can make him super smart. On the other hand, if your baby is not as smart as you wish he were, you can still make him smarter that what he is now.

No matter what, you cannot do everything. After all, your baby has a life of his own; you cannot live his life for him. What he is going to encounter and experience further down the road in his life journey is beyond your control. As his parent, you can provide him with a compass and a roadmap. Along the journey, he is bound to run into detours, shortcuts, or may even get lost. Hopefully, with the right mindset and the wisdom you have instilled into his brain, he will get back on track and find his way to the destination that he has set for himself. Every life journey is a learning experience for that unique individual to learn and grow

29 Smart Steps to Teach Your Smart Kid to Read

This 117-page is based on how I taught my daughter to read some 30 years ago. 

Like all proud parents, I was and still am proud of the fact that I could teach her how to read when she just turned three (most children learn at the age of five). The TV and all electronic devices may not be as effective as YOU, the parent, to teach your child through everyday intellectual interactions, games, and activities. 

This book provides 29 steps that could begin as early as your baby is one-month-old. My daughter became a proficient reader when she was five (reading books with little or no illustrations). By seven, she would not let me teach her anything -- she could find everything from books. It paid off and it's worth all the initial efforts in teaching her to become an early reader. Now she's an attorney in the United States.  I wrote this book because she has recently become a mother herself, and that's why I wrote this book to share my experience some three decades ago.

Also, read my book" Make Your Smart Baby Super Smart.

Stephen Lau