What are your child's special gifts?

You can usually find articles about learning styles that limit the discussion to the three major recognized styles: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Criticisms have been leveled at IQ tests and other measures of either intelligence or achievement because they favor the visual learner.

But there is another theory about intelligence first proposed by Howard Gardner in his 1983 book, Frames Of Mind: The Theory Of Multiple Intelligences. He proposed that there are several different kinds of intelligence, and eventually developed a list of eight recognized intelligences:

1. Linguistic
2. Logical-Mathematical
3. Spatial
4. Musical
5. Bodily-Kinesthetic
6. Interpersonal
7. Intrapersonal
8. Naturalist

FamilyEducation.com has an interesting questionnaire that you can complete that will give you a thumbnail sketch of your child's special gifts, based on Gardner's theory.

It could help you decide whether or not to concentrate on a particular subject or discipline - for instance, you might decide not to foist the Scripps-Howard spelling bee on your child who has no particular strengths in the linguistic area, or stop trying to make your child into the next Beethoven when they cannot carry a tune in a bucket.