Assessing your child's intelligence 'type'

Firstly, apologies for the long delay. The last month has just flown by. And now, as promised, a quick guide to assessing your child's intelligence 'type'. Remember, please, that nobody fits neatly into a box and your child may be strong in different areas...

Visual / Spatial Intelligence: Does your child respond better to pictures than to text? Does she seem able to 'read' pictures? Is she good with maps? Does she enjoy playing with 3-dimensional building materials like Lego and blocks? Does she seem happiest when drawing, painting or building? Then she probably has strong 'picture-smarts'.

Linguistic Intelligence: Is your child a chatter? Does he love to tell jokes and riddles? Does he play with rhyming sounds? Does he enjoy learning new words and use this vocabulary whenever he can? Does he enjoy listening to story tapes, radio and people talking? Then he is verbally smart.

Musical Intelligence: Does your child sing, hum and tap on every available surface? Does she enjoy experimenting with musical instruments? You might have the next Yo-Yo Ma in your house.

Kinesthetic Intelligence: Is your child sporty and constantly active? Does he enjoy running, climbing, catching, batting and other activities that engage his body? He may also like building models, sewing, drawing and other activities that require fine motor skills. This is body smart.

Logical / Mathematical Intelligence: Does your child love puzzles, especially ones that involve working with numbers? Does she enjoy working things out, measuring and calculating? Does she play chess or other strategy games? Is she constantly raiding your kitchen for materials to do science experiments? Then it's likely she is math smart.

Interpersonal Intelligence: Does your child have lots of friends? Does he seem to meet new people all the time? Is he the one who smooths over sibling fights, makes sure everyone is having a good time and helps you with the new baby? This child is people smart.

Intrapersonal Intelligence: Does your child keep a journal or a dreambook? Does she enjoy talking about her feelings and show a surprising level of self-understanding? Kids with intrapersonal intelligence are able to spend a great deal of time alone because they're happy in their own company, but they also make great friends because they tend to be sensitive and open to others.

Some teachers and theorists add other forms of intelligence to this list and they are perfectly sensible, but this is the core list originally developed by Howard Gardner. This is a brief introduction. You can learn more about each intelligence in Laurel Schmidt's great book 'Seven Times Smarter' or at this website.