Protect Your Child From Rickets Of The Mind!

Kenya’s 13 year old Richard Turere made the news for inventing – at the age of 11 – a lighting array device to scare Lions from attacking cattle he tended on behalf of his family. The device mimicked the light from a torch held by a human.

Turere’s example is one of two mentioned in Dayo Olopade’s New York Times article titled “Baby and Child Care, the African Way” (African Hands-Off Parenting Breeds Resilience In Kids). The other is about Malawi’s William Kamkwamba, who – at the more tender age of 9 – used “junkyard scrap” to build the windmill powering his family’s farm – earning a feature on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show!

Access to useful knowledge, information and ideas can help a child learn how things are done in countries s/he may never visit. This will make him/her less prone to saying something is impossible simply because it’s never been done in his/her society. At the same time, s/he will be more willing to try developing his/her own solutions.

Do You Nourish Your Child’s Mind?

“Some people read so little they have rickets of the mind. Miss a meal if you have to, but don’t miss a book” – Jim Rohn

Jim Rohn passed on a few years ago. But his words continue to inspire and educate many.

To me, “rickets of the mind” refers to a condition equivalent to the conventional rickets that develops in a person due to his/her intellectual malnourishment.

Without a willingness to go after new knowledge in as many forms as it is available, a young person or child would over time develop a kind of rickets of the mind.

I suggest 3 ways you can go about giving your child intellectual nourishment:

A. Actively Engage Them in Conversation

“The mind must be exercised if it is to grow and strengthen. The more you use your mind, the
more it will improve your ability to think” – Jay Anderson

When was the last time YOU sat down to have a conversation with (NOT lecture or scold) your kids?

How often do you really pay attention to the questions they ask and give carefully thought out answers that help them achieve real understanding?

Do you encourage them to try and THINK up their own answers or solutions?

Sometimes it does NOT help to TELL them “the” answer(s).. You may find it helps to give them room to learn by discovery. That breeds independent thinking and creativity. This was the inadvertent outcome for the two child inventors mentioned above – when adverse circumstances forced their parents to hand them early responsibility/freedom.

B. Build A Real-World Relevant “Library” – And Get Them To Read

Do you buy and read books? What happens to them when you’re done? A bookshelf stocked with useful books can stir your child’s curiosity and interest in reading: especially when s/he sees you pick and read from there every now and then.

Some of the books by Wole Soyinka (e.g. Aké, his childhood memoir) reveal that he received intellectual nourishment from a variety of sources. A challenging school system, and a home rich in learning resources provided by a headmaster father saw to that.

So do Chinua Achebe’s books. Anyone who reads these authors’ works and/or listens to them speak will see that they often hold well balanced views on any issues they choose to comment upon. Even when it’s on a sensitive subject like Nigeria’s civil war – as is evident in excerpts I’ve read from Achebe’s new book (There Was a Country).

“Reading can be a powerful catalyst for thinking; it has the potential for stimulating wisdom.”
– Michael Angier.

Soyinka has written about spending hours locked away in his father’s study, devouring huge volumes of books on virtually any subject. The more he read, the more he wanted. He thus developed an ability to view issues from different perspectives. A valuable skill!

Little wonder that later in life, he chose to take the risk of flying into Biafra as civil war hostilities threatened (5 decades ago), to explore the possibility of brokering peace. He saw beyond tribal lines, because of the quality of his thinking. He also knew the risks. Yet he did it anyway – eventually getting locked up by the Nigerian authorities. (He had activist role models in his parents, as well as his uncle and aunt i.e. Fela Kuti’s parents.)

We need more adults with critical thinking skills like the above mentioned men in society! And YOU can raise a child who will manifest such qualities…

C. Challenge Them to Think Deeply and Question Everything

Interestingly, Soyinka’s books reveal that he survived his ordeal in prison by doing what he’d done since childhood: reading, thinking and writing – with purpose!

“Reading without thinking gives a disorderly mind, and thinking without reading makes one
unbalanced” – Confucius

Make out time to sit with your kids and discuss the books they read. Not just academic books. Suggest others on literature, history, current affairs, science and technology. Let them know it’s okay to explore subjects outside those they are already familiar with. Quite often, kids not given this guidance miss out on opportunities to discover learning outside the fields they are exposed to in school. That’s not a good thing.

But most importantly, teach them to question what they read. They should understand that authors often present their own views and opinions. Encourage them to do their own thinking and come up with new or even better ways to see the same issues. And see if you can get them to give short talks and write short pieces on their own views.

Important note: I must stress at this point, that by reading, I do NOT refer to studying of religious literature for religious purposes. Society already provides ample opportunity for that to happen through various gatherings organized on a regular basis. I’m concerned instead with a child developing the ability to competently extract useful learning (by reading books) that s/he can put to productive use for himself or society.

Conclusion

Intellectual nourishment is one gift we can give our kids that will boost their ability to achieve relevance to the benefit of society, and recognition for themselves. This works in business or life in general.

It can also give them the capacity to bounce back/recover – as many times as may be necessary – from any setbacks they suffer, to achieve their valued goals.

Here’s a thought to drive this point home: Decades ago, when he was much younger, Wole Soyinka took a series of actions that at a point made academic peers and even relatives refer to him in less than flattering terms. He even lost friends. But it was mostly because they could not see the big picture he saw!

Today, the same Wole Soyinka is a nobel laureate – and he’s written books about the above experiences and more.

With the right kind of intellectual nourishment, you can be sure your child will also end up making YOU proud.

Another great mind had this to say:

“The brain can be developed just the same as the muscles can be developed, if one will only take the pains to train the mind to think…The brain that isn’t used rusts. The brain that is used responds. The brain is exactly like any other part of the body: it can be strengthened by proper exercise, by proper use. Put your arm in a sling and keep it there for a considerable length of time, and when you take it out, you find that you can’t use it. In the same way, the brain that isn’t used suffers atrophy.” – Thomas Edison
(Source: Hill N., Think and Grow Rich, New York, Hawthorn Books, Inc, 1966.)