Highly recommended: You're smarter than you think: A kid's guide to multiple intelligences

I highly recommend reading this book with your child.
You're Smarter Than You Think: A Kid's Guide to Multiple Intelligences
published by Freespirit publishing

I'm sure many of you have heard your child talk about themselves negatively. I'm stupid, this type of thing. As you've spent years lavishing praise and encouragement upon your child it's completely demoralising to hear such statements from them.

Here's a book that will actively challenge them to think differently about themselves. Armstrong describes in clear and accessible language multiple intelligences: listing them as Word Smart, Music Smart, Logic Smart, Picture Smart, Body Smart, People Smart, Self Smart and Nature Smart.

We've been reading the book together to great success and a warm response from the child, whose embracing the concept heartily. It's very interactive. Each intelligence begins with a list of questions and the child enjoys answering them and as they answer they explain things about themselves aloud. Gradually as Armstrong unravels all the different intelligences the child begins to identify his/or her strengths. He then goes on to explain what the various intelligences can do for the child and suggests ways to be come Word smart, or picture smart.

What's distinctive and different about this book is it's written specifically to be read to a child, but equally it's not patronising and doesn't underestimate them.

It's an essential for the bookshelf to be reached for time and time again to reiterate to the child when despair strikes. Equally it's a book that teaches us to appreciate and celebrate difference in others, so as you read you can think of other children who may have different intelligences and you can bring home the idea that all children have special, sometimes hidden, talents. I think it's useful to counter this ten out of ten means I am smart culture.

Recommended Reading: Not Even Wrong by Paul Collins

I believe in reading widely on the topic of different learning styles and one of the advantages of this approach is occasionally you alight of a treat on a book like Paul Collins: Not Even Wrong: A father's journey into the long history of autism. (published by Bloomsbury USA in 2005). While I am not personally dealing with autism, there are always parallels in these kinds of journeys, (also it's a very wide spectrum, I would guess most artists fall somewhere along it) so I read voraciously on the topic regardless. Not Even Wrong takes the form of a hybrid of memoir and history. Collins depicts his own experience as his young son Morgan is diagnosed autistic, while he concurrently researches this book, which at times feels pleasingly like a travelogue because he crosses back and forth to England and Europe to complete his research. It's to Collins credit that his writing style is so engaging, he possesses this handy knack of putting these precise, additional details that absolutely put the reader where-ever he's describing. So whether it's the school, doctor's office, the house of eminent autism expert Dr Simon Baron-Cohen or the graveyard, where he's trying to locate the grave of a historic feral child The Wild Boy, it's all very immediate.

This is the kind of book that reminded me of how important it is to remain flexible with whatever life hurls your way. It's a very uplifting book and many parents will take courage from his experience. There are also important historical perspectives and experiences of autistics in the book reminding us that autism has a long history, perhaps one that has yet to documented extensively. A brave and intelligent book -- highly recommended.