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In the next chapters, I’ll guide you as you build your plan to help your child’s Intelligence River grow strong. Because your plan will be applied across as much as two decades of your child’s development, it will make serious organizational demands on you. In this chapter, we set up a structure so you can manage logistics and track progress — in a way that fits your personal style. I’ve assumed you’re a brand-new parent, or moving towards parenthood. If you’re already underway on your personal voyage of discovery with your child, everything here still works for you. You’ll only need to think about the developmental level of your child as you detail your personal plan, and use those ideas that are still appropriate. You have a big potential advantage: If your child is already far enough along, you can involve her in her personal 4-D Plan, so that she is a true member of her team from the start! Ladies and Gentlemen, The Four Ds!No, they’re not a retro ‘50s pop group. These four words are the key to influencing your child’s ever-growing intelligence:
Decide encourages you to think well and carefully about your values, your wishes and your goals for your child, and who “owns” responsibility for growth at different ages. Discover is a process that allows you to start with a good understanding of your child’s current characteristics, intelligences, and development and to continually update your understanding. Develop helps with the nitty-gritty specifics of influencing your child’s Intelligence River. Debug reminds you that life is a continual readjustment and that every plan needs to respond to change and challenge. I’ve built the rest of this book around these four words. In truth, there’s really a fifth D — “Do it again” -- because these four processes aren’t one-time jobs: As we raise our children, we cycle through these steps myriad times. Sometimes we do it consciously, deliberately focusing on our plans, hopes, and strategies on behalf of our children. More often, we do it automatically, as we make the small daily decisions which cumulate into “the finished product” — a convenient fiction that suggests there’s a point when a human being is no longer a work in progress. “A Plan”? Why Not “The Plan”?Well, because that really wouldn’t make any sense. If every child is unique, why would we want to have a one-size-fits-all program? Instead, we recognize that each and every child has a unique blend of intelligences, skills, motivations, interests, and opportunities. Each Intelligence River is unique — a blend of tributaries and currents like no other which has ever existed, or ever will. So of course we design a unique plan for each child. Don’t worry — the task isn’t as daunting as it sounds! We humans have a lot in common with each other. And specialists in human development have a good fund of knowledge about how humans work — or, rather, about what works for humans. That general knowledge lets you make individual plans which balance what we know about humans in general with what we know about one very particular human — your child. A step at a time, working together, we’ll get there! Your plan isn’t magic. It won’t work by itself. You give it life. The four Ds are your guide. But the main work will require all of your own intelligence, motivation, and perseverance. You can’t just plug in these steps and expect your child to light up. Fortunately, you don’t do the work alone, as we’ll see next. |
