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October News
Unlock Your Child's Potential!
This article is excerpted from "6 Secrets to Unlocking Your Child's Talent" By Danielle Wood, Education.com
Could your child be the next American Idol? The next American president? Perhaps.
Daniel Coyle, author of the bestselling book, The Talent Code, says you can up a child’s chances immensely by understanding one key thing: greatness isn’t born, it’s grown.
How kids practice, how they deal with failure, how they get praised, and how they are criticized, all play a part in the likelihood of achieving greatness. “Of course, not everyone grows up to be a Michelangelo or a Michael Jordan,” Coyle says, but understanding that genius is not an accident, but the result of a distinctive and powerful pattern, helps parents unlock the neurophysiology of learning.
The practices would feature similar methods, like slowing things down to unbelievably slow speeds, or compressing the practice into a tiny space and speeding it up,” Coyle says.
He found that what was most striking about the talent hotbeds was “how amazingly similar” they all were. Want to create your own hotbed at home? Here are Coyle’s six strategies for unlocking kids’ talents:
Watch for tiny, powerful moments of ignition. It’s not easy to practice deeply - it requires passion, motivation, persistence, and the emotional fuel we call love. New research is showing us that when it comes to motivation, we are all born with the neurological equivalent of hair triggers. When a child’s identity becomes intertwined with a goal, the trigger fires, and a tsunami of unconscious motivational energy is released. “It’s not genes that made these kids succeed, it’s the fuel contained inside a tiny idea: I want to be like them,” Coyle says.
Understand that all practice is not created equal - not by a long shot. The talent hotbeds have long known a crucial fact that science is just discovering: skill-acquisition skyrockets when we operate on the edge of our abilities, making errors and correcting them - a state called “deep practice.” The takeaway: mistakes aren’t verdicts; they’re information we use to build fast, fluent skill circuits. Kids who are able to see errors as fuel for learning, rather than setbacks, are the ones that eventually become geniuses.
Recognize that slow practice is productive practice. This technique is common to virtually every talent hotbed, from tennis to cello to math. The reason it works: when you go slow, you can sense and fix more errors - coach yourself to build a better skill circuit. As one coach puts it, “It’s not how fast you do it. It’s how slow you can do it correctly.”
Praise effort, not natural ability. When we praise a child’s intelligence, we’re telling her that status is the name of the game, and she reacts by taking fewer risks. When we praise effort, however, kids become more inclined to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them - the essence of deep practice and learning.
Encourage mimicry. Copying is a neurological shortcut to skill. Vividly imagining yourself perfecting a skill is a great first step to actually doing it, whether you’re writing or dancing.
Stand back. The kind of deep practice that grows skill circuits can only come from within the kid, not from the parent, no matter how well-meaning.
When you start thinking about talent as a process - when you see the power of certain forms of practice, when you look for inner passion, when you tune into the teaching signals you can send - life changes, Coyle says. Like most big changes, it shows itself in small ways. “For our family, it’s when our son has a tough new song on the piano, and my wife encourages him to try just the first bar, or just the first five notes over and over, doing it in baby steps until it starts to click. ” Coyle says. (A concept that works better with skiing than it will with learning to drive a car).
Mostly, though, teaching kids that talent is built, not born, allows them to look at failure in a completely new way. Failure is not a verdict, it’s a path forward. And mistakes are not something to be embarrassed about, they’re steps on the path to success. Without them, greatness is not possible.
Dawn Elmer
Academy Director
Daniel Coyle, author of the bestselling book, The Talent Code, says you can up a child’s chances immensely by understanding one key thing: greatness isn’t born, it’s grown.
How kids practice, how they deal with failure, how they get praised, and how they are criticized, all play a part in the likelihood of achieving greatness. “Of course, not everyone grows up to be a Michelangelo or a Michael Jordan,” Coyle says, but understanding that genius is not an accident, but the result of a distinctive and powerful pattern, helps parents unlock the neurophysiology of learning.
The practices would feature similar methods, like slowing things down to unbelievably slow speeds, or compressing the practice into a tiny space and speeding it up,” Coyle says.
He found that what was most striking about the talent hotbeds was “how amazingly similar” they all were. Want to create your own hotbed at home? Here are Coyle’s six strategies for unlocking kids’ talents:
Watch for tiny, powerful moments of ignition. It’s not easy to practice deeply - it requires passion, motivation, persistence, and the emotional fuel we call love. New research is showing us that when it comes to motivation, we are all born with the neurological equivalent of hair triggers. When a child’s identity becomes intertwined with a goal, the trigger fires, and a tsunami of unconscious motivational energy is released. “It’s not genes that made these kids succeed, it’s the fuel contained inside a tiny idea: I want to be like them,” Coyle says.
Understand that all practice is not created equal - not by a long shot. The talent hotbeds have long known a crucial fact that science is just discovering: skill-acquisition skyrockets when we operate on the edge of our abilities, making errors and correcting them - a state called “deep practice.” The takeaway: mistakes aren’t verdicts; they’re information we use to build fast, fluent skill circuits. Kids who are able to see errors as fuel for learning, rather than setbacks, are the ones that eventually become geniuses.
Recognize that slow practice is productive practice. This technique is common to virtually every talent hotbed, from tennis to cello to math. The reason it works: when you go slow, you can sense and fix more errors - coach yourself to build a better skill circuit. As one coach puts it, “It’s not how fast you do it. It’s how slow you can do it correctly.”
Praise effort, not natural ability. When we praise a child’s intelligence, we’re telling her that status is the name of the game, and she reacts by taking fewer risks. When we praise effort, however, kids become more inclined to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them - the essence of deep practice and learning.
Encourage mimicry. Copying is a neurological shortcut to skill. Vividly imagining yourself perfecting a skill is a great first step to actually doing it, whether you’re writing or dancing.
Stand back. The kind of deep practice that grows skill circuits can only come from within the kid, not from the parent, no matter how well-meaning.
When you start thinking about talent as a process - when you see the power of certain forms of practice, when you look for inner passion, when you tune into the teaching signals you can send - life changes, Coyle says. Like most big changes, it shows itself in small ways. “For our family, it’s when our son has a tough new song on the piano, and my wife encourages him to try just the first bar, or just the first five notes over and over, doing it in baby steps until it starts to click. ” Coyle says. (A concept that works better with skiing than it will with learning to drive a car).
Mostly, though, teaching kids that talent is built, not born, allows them to look at failure in a completely new way. Failure is not a verdict, it’s a path forward. And mistakes are not something to be embarrassed about, they’re steps on the path to success. Without them, greatness is not possible.
Dawn Elmer
Academy Director
Costume Contest! Wear your costume to your lesson from October 25th-October 31st and you will be entered to win a $50 movie card! Make sure your costume is not too scary. We don't want to scare the teachers!
Melody Contest!
New Referral Program
You can win 4 passes to ski Silver Mountain AND the Silver Mountain Water Park!
The new referral contest is on! You could win 4 lift tickets for Silver Mountain and 4 passes to the Silver Mountain waterpark by referring a friend to the Academy. That's not all! Each time you refer a friend to the Academy, you will both get to pick out a $25 gift card to one of your favorite stores. Plus you will be entered to win our referral contest! Please tell your friends and family how much you love your lessons because we would love to have more wonderful students like you! We will draw the winner for this prize in December!
Music Therapy
Music Therapy is available at PFMA with our licensed music therapist, Joyce Hanson. Do you have a child that needs music therapy? Music therapy can help people with autism to improve skills in areas such as communication, social skills, sensory issues, behavior, cognition, perceptual/motor skills, and self-reliance or self-determination.
Music therapy is a clinical intervention that can support the emotional, psychological, cognitive, social, and communicative needs of people. Music therapy is a clinical intervention by a trained professional that can support the emotional, psychological, cognitive, social, and communicative needs of people.
Many of our families get help from the state to fund these music therapy sessions.
If you are interested in what music therapy can do for your child, please call us at
208-818-8289 and we will set up a free consultation with Joyce.
Music Therapy is available at PFMA with our licensed music therapist, Joyce Hanson. Do you have a child that needs music therapy? Music therapy can help people with autism to improve skills in areas such as communication, social skills, sensory issues, behavior, cognition, perceptual/motor skills, and self-reliance or self-determination.
Music therapy is a clinical intervention that can support the emotional, psychological, cognitive, social, and communicative needs of people. Music therapy is a clinical intervention by a trained professional that can support the emotional, psychological, cognitive, social, and communicative needs of people.
Many of our families get help from the state to fund these music therapy sessions.
If you are interested in what music therapy can do for your child, please call us at
208-818-8289 and we will set up a free consultation with Joyce.
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