So your mom says you were born smart. Now what?

How easy would you want life for your kids? What is the whole point of making it easy for them when life, no matter what kind, is really tough and there is no way around it?

One of the most uncomfortable and difficult situations for me to be in is with a group of mothers who talk about their school-aged children when their children are not around. Most often, they would talk about how smart their kids are – scoring high on IQ tests, getting really high scores in many kinds of tests (and most school tests are based on IQ tests), being admitted to prestigious schools, and of course, getting the coveted titles like the “laude” titles. I have hardly ever heard any mom say “my son has never been on the honor’s list but he has never stopped trying” or “my daughter is in a special class because her teacher thinks she has a learning disability but she is determined to prove the contrary.” But I also understand that perhaps the latter sentiments are most likely expressed among more intimate groups of friends. But why? Why are stories of perseverance and hard work less likely to figure in conversations like these? Why are we more given to bragging about “smarts” than “grit” or “perseverance”?

I get most uncomfortable because one, I have never thought of intelligence per se as an accomplishment; two, I like longer, deeper stories about people; and three, because of studies about intelligence and “grit” and what makes for success and creativity in life – not just in school or even your first job.

Foremost is no matter how much of a blockbuster all those self-help books on the secret to success are, there is no secret! If it were a secret, why is it in a book and if you can help yourself, why do you need to buy a book written by someone that claims to contain the secret? People just really like books that claim that because they contain lists. We like lists because lists give some kind of outline to our otherwise chaotic and frenzied negotiations with our own lives. But lists do not make up a formula. There is no formula for success because we are not machines and life (surprise!) changes all the time and you are never in complete control. Success is a moving target so should your moves be. Formulas also make you ignore the other things that could probably contribute to the success that is unique in your own life.  

But if I, a non-mother, were brave enough to plunge into the conversations I witness among mothers who brag about their kids’ smarts, I would share what science (many by scientists who are also mothers) has found so far. There are so many but I will collapse them into three for now. Good thing is that science is not a secret.

Science says parts of your intelligence are based on your biology – your genes. This means that you are born with these parts. So the lesson there is that you actually cannot take credit for them, nor could your parents’ or even your grandparents and so on and so forth because those have been “installed” in you by some genetic lottery without you necessarily deserving it. It is the same thing as being born or what you were born into – you did not have a hand in it. The very tricky thing though about these gene-determined parts of intelligence” is that we just know they are there but we don’t know the size, shape, form and most of all, the potential of our intelligence until we embark on a quest to discover it, including the many ways we will fail to home in on it and take it in the direction we will be happy with.

Science says intelligence can be measured but it also says it can never be completely measured. There are several reasons for this. One, IQ tests are only one way of measuring intelligence. IQ tests also are for smarts that you need in the current world we live in. This is why if IQ tests existed for people 500 years ago and the topnotchers then took IQ tests now, they will gloriously fail these IQ tests now. Another is our IQ changes (mostly upward)  as you go through life. You can observe it for yourself. If it does not, something must have gone extraordinarily wrong in your life.  You don’t need science to tell you this.

Science says that success is a many splendored-thing. Intelligence could be part of it but it is never enough. Studies on “grit” say it is shaped by both genes and the environment. This is what the studies by “grit” scientist Angela Duckworth has found. She acknowledges intelligence is part of success in life but that perseverance with a direction also plays a major role and the great news is that we can influence “grit”. Just look at this recent study where babies 13-15 months old where made to watch adults struggle to open a container or a key chain from a metal lock. They found that for the babies who witnessed adults struggle and succeed at opening or unlocking and making eye contact with them, the babies persevered in another task given to them compared to the ones who witnessed adults who did not persevere. This could mean that all kinds of adults around children could shape the way children will persevere in tasks before them.

It is so easy to praise your own children. My own mother though was a bit peculiar. I guess I was one of those who got some of those biological genes for ‘smarts” from the genetic lottery but not really in jackpot proportions. But even with what I had and how they expressed in school, my mom did not dispense praise lavishly.  It was easier for her to apologize to others for the things I failed in, which was understandable because they were a lot more. But that kind of attitude that my mother had about “smarts” grounded me so that high grades, medals were not something I was obsessed with even if they came quite easily for me.

My father’s attitude was funny too. When he could not attend my elementary graduation and my mother wanted him to know it, my mother made me wait for my Dad to come home late that evening still wearing my many medals. When he finally arrived, he hugged me as usual and then when he noticed my medals, just asked “why do you look like General Patton?”. That made us both laugh so hard and made me expand, right there, my view of medals and that they really looked kinda silly literally and metaphorically. I remembered that lesson for a long time all the way to grad school where I focused on how much I really loved learning things, sometimes also because of and not just in spite how difficult it can be, and accomplishing things as a natural result.

So instead of pitting the intelligence you were born with against the grit you have to exhibit as you aim for success, look at them both as the essential materials of the character your own self-portrait must radiate.  All of us were born with something but what makes it so interesting, meaningful and worth the space and short precious time we have, is what you do with it for the rest of your life. Mark Twain said it best when he said that the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why. The latter calls for intelligence, grit, and a whole lot more than those in the secret lists that self-help books or your parents will ever tell you. The secret is there is no secret. – Rappler.com