For years, I hear people saying “He is smart because he is Asian”. But That is not true. There is no causal relationship between “being an Asian” and “being smart”. Perhaps the title is misleading because what I am trying to say here is that your kids are as smart as any Asian kids.
Race is simply a cultural concept for classifying people based on their appearance and ancestry. What is really making the difference here is the cultural influences. Bob got a better score on a math test than Tom is not because Bob is smarter, it’s probably because Bob’s parents pushed Bob a little bit and they made Bob work hard. Majority of the Asian parents really stress upon their child’s education.
What is the key to making your child “smart”? Well, there is no short cut in the world of study, the only way is to practice. The Famous 10,000-hour theory states that it will take 10000 hours to be a world-class expert. Your kids does not need to be a world-class expert but they will still need to take practices before they get good at anything. The problem is, your kids probably hate practices. I know because I hated it when I was a kid, and I believe you hated it too. Remember the math workbook we use to have? I use to think of it as a monster. Every morning I wake up I was thinking “God, there are new works to be done”. Practices are painful, but what happens when we disguise it in some form of games? If your kids are bad with math and you tell them to do 30 math problems they will probably get upset, but what happens when you ask your kid to play one game of monopoly with you? In one game of monopoly, there are more than 30 math problems. Kids will need to calculate their income and spending every step they took, but they will never get bored at this. Another way is to let your kids have friendly competitions. You can tell your kids, whoever completes the math problems first will get a candy. With these candy coat, practices are no longer monsters, it becomes a game or a way to earn candies. If your kids love to study and practice, Hitting that 10000 hours will not be so hard, they might not end up being a world-class expert, but for sure they will succeed in school and in their academic life.
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