Let Your Genius Emerge

Season 1 Episode 1 Transcript

Description

Most of us quietly assume we’re smarter than average, but the numbers don’t work that way and that blind spot matters when we’re raising kids. I’m Julia Bright, and I’m kicking off Let Your Genius Emerge with a simple promise: we’ll treat children’s potential as something we can actively nurture, not something we wait to “show up” on its own. If you care about child development, early learning, and practical parenting strategies, you’ll feel right at home here.

We start by grounding the conversation in what IQ is and what it isn’t. I walk through the bell curve, the different score ranges, and what researchers say IQ can predict about learning speed and learning style. Then I draw a firm line around what it does not predict, including happiness, honesty, mental health, or whether someone is kind and likable. That distinction is huge for parents because it keeps intelligence from turning into a label, and it keeps effort, curiosity, and good teaching at the centre.

From there, we shift into what parents can actually do, especially in the earliest years. I share real examples of families and teachers who use focused one-on-one time, playful practice, breaks at the right moments, and steady repetition to help kids master skills. We also explore prenatal milestones, including how babies develop light sensitivity and how hearing and voice recognition form before birth, which reframes “early childhood education” as something that begins earlier than most people think.

Finally, I introduce the Polgar family and the early chapters of how Susan, Sophia, and Judit Polgar were raised through homeschooling, deliberate practice, and a home environment built to spark deep interest. If you’ve ever wondered whether talent is born or built, this story will challenge you in the best way. Subscribe, share this with a parent or teacher, and leave a review so more families can find the show.

Why Most People Think They’re Smart

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Although 68% of the population is within the average IQ score range on the bell curve of intelligence, studies show that 65% of people self-report that they are above average in intelligence. How about that?

Welcome And The Podcast Mission

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Welcome to the first episode of the Let Your Genius Emerge podcast. I'm Julia Bright, your host. You may have accidentally come across this podcast, or you may have listened to the trailers and became interested. Either way, I'm delighted to have you here. I'm an ESL teacher and have been interested in increasing children's chances of fulfilling their potential. This podcast came from the desire to recognize how much capability our children are born with, and supplying the right tools, techniques, and built skills so more and more parents could coach their children confidently, so they could realize this inner gift. Now, Laszlo Polgar and I, among others, believe that every healthy child possesses a gift, or maybe more, some disposition for academic or applied knowledge and skills. It is our job to observe and find it, nurture so every child will have a special skill, a niche, something that replaces the word job with it's my passion, this is what I was born for. Last week we launched the Humanly Genius podcast, which will focus on the children and what will be the best for them from their own point of view. We already talked about a few prodigies and debated how much talent they were born with and how much their talent was nurtured by their parents so they could become exceptional. We mentioned Akim Kamara, the violinist prodigy, Mozart, and the Polgar sisters. The Let Your Genius Emerge podcast will give you examples of scientists and professionals' opinions on children's potential and will show you examples of parents who were successful in raising exceptional children. We will see what they believed, how they approached the idea and how they taught their children. Playful, conscious guidance from birth will give babies and children a boost in their journey to discover the world. They will be able to learn when they are the most receptive and when they can absorb like a sponge. I started the Humanly Genius project six years ago. It has many components, all aspects of raising and teaching children the unconventional way. Many before me thought about it and even raised children to be geniuses. I wanted to know how they did it, what methods they used, and also I wanted every parent to learn from them and try to raise their own children differently, so they could discover their own talents and make that a lifelong passion. Instead of being a regular student in a regular school learning the same as anybody else in the class, where some will be left behind, some will be held back, but there are always a few who are taught just right. But our children are not goldilocks, and they need to be taught using the best methods tailored for each of them. I often wondered how a child with a C or a D could advance with gaps in their knowledge and when they would get completely lost and never again catch up. We will talk about the educational system, how schools operate. Please do not think I reject the public schools. I started as an elementary school teacher, and I loved it. Those parents who purposely put effort and energy to learn about child development and psychology, who dedicate themselves to focus on their own child and get to know their strengths, could succeed in raising happy and capable children. The stress is on the one-on-one focused sessions, presenting playful scenarios, giving children a break when they need it, and at the same time practicing much, much more than in a regular setting. This dedicated person can be one or both parents, a grandparent or an aunt or uncle with time on their hands.

Real Families Raising Exceptional Kids

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I personally know a professional couple here in Canada who are raising three children at home. They planned out their strategies and goals and they sit down every couple of days to discuss the children's progress. One parent is with them for three days while the other one is working. Then they switch. One day of the week, the family tries to spend time together. Thirty years ago, my music teacher friend started to teach how to play the trumpet to his two children. For 15 years they practiced at least one hour a day. Their lips and their lungs needed to be strengthened, plus they had to practice their skills with the instrument. After 15 years, the sons went on to study in a music conservatorium, and now they play in orchestras all over Europe. His wife is a German language teacher who was quite successful teaching children in the school environment, but she didn't dedicate herself to teaching her own children day in and out. My friend really regretted this because knowing German well is a must in Europe. Another example I personally know of and admire is one of my gifted colleagues and dear friend dedicated decades to find her children's gifts and give them everything she possibly could to find and use every resource to better them. She had one wish for her children, for them to find a field they can thoroughly enjoy and can dedicate their whole lives to it. As she was a music teacher, both her son and daughter can play a couple of instruments, and since then they have been playing them to unwind and recharge. Her son, however, found his love for math very early on, but he also knew that his prospects are limited with this subject. So later on he decided to go and study physics. He won the National Physics Competition in Hungary in grade 11 and 12 and went on to the internationals. He was invited to study then research in the US. And he ended up working in the labs of CERN, the world's largest particle physics lab. My friend's daughter is a cancer researcher working in Chicago. And I could go on listing some of my brilliant students who achieved greatness in their area of expertise, thanks to their parents or a passionate teacher. I'm not telling these stories to impress you. I want to impress upon you that even around me as a regular teacher, there were numerous examples of successful parents raising exceptional children. They were all applying some common basic principles in their child rearing. We might want to know their IQ and how they compared to the average. Secondly, the people on my list probably never needed to take a standardized IQ test because they have already proven themselves. Just like Einstein, Stephen Hawking, or other scientists, the IQ levels of anyone who lived before the middle of the 20th century or never cared to take a standardized test. So the IQ of these figures are entirely speculative and unscientific. So whoever makes them up, they are just know-it-alls. I'm just saying.

What IQ Can And Cannot Predict

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So what about that 65% of people self-reported to be above average intelligence? The IQ normal distribution forms a bowel curve with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 50% score above 100 and 50% score below. Average IQ is 85 to 114. So that means that 68% of the people fall into this average range. IQ less than 85 is the lower end of the distribution, with 16% of people. IQ between 115 and 129 is the higher normal range, 14% of people are in this range. IQ scores between 130 and 145 counts for the top 2%. IQ scores over 145 includes only the top 0.1%. To better understand this range, only 8 million people out of 8 billion who lives right now has over 145 IQ. So IQ can predict general learning abilities, how people with different IQ learn. People below 80 and 85 generally learn slower, requiring more concrete step-by-step instructions. People with IQ over 115 generally learn more abstractly and seek out information on their own. So they learn well in a college format. In the middle IQ, or normal range between 85 and 114, they can learn complex material, but they may take longer with more individual instructions. Written materials and experience are important, and for mastery they learn hands-on. Exceptions from generalities, of course, exist. IQ levels can also predict education level, job and income performance, health, and even mortality. They don't predict happiness, mental illnesses, honesty, or being nice and likable. And there is a huge difference between general ability and one specific ability for savant, like in the Rain Man. Now that's enough of IQ levels for now. I will talk about mental abilities, intelligence, and IQ in detail in future episodes. And I also post it on the website humanlygenious.com. Did you listen to the first episode of the Humanly Genius podcast? There I propose different approaches to raising brilliant children.

Baby Senses Before Birth

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I love to see babies and little ones with bright shiny eyes playfully experimenting. From the time their senses develop in the womb, theeticists start experiencing everything for the first time. Now I want to elaborate on this a bit. Their little heart starts beating about 21-22 days after fertilization, but their senses will develop later. Between week 16 and 22 of the pregnancy, their eyes are still fused shut, but light-sensitive cells start to form, so the baby will sense light changes from dark to light through the abdominal wall. At week 27, their eyelids open, so they can blink or move in response to a strong light source. At week 32, pupils can constrict and dilate, so now they can perceive some shapes or a warm reddish glow inside. Even when their eyes are open after week 32, their vision is fuzzy and blurry because there is little to see and focus on in the womb. According to the researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, light sensing cells in the retina help set up early biological rhythm. So what about hearing? Between week 23 and 24, the baby begins to hear muffled sounds from the outside world, including voices. Between weeks of 25 to 28, their hearing becomes sharper and they start responding to the outside noises, music and distinct voices with movements and heart rate. After week 29 in the third trimester, the baby can recognize and show preference for familiar sounds, like their mom's voice or repeating melodies. So talk to them, sing for them, so when they are born, they will already be familiar with your voice, either it's mom's or dad's. I get very sad when I see heavily pregnant women in loud concerts or bars. They don't realize that the baby would be disturbed by it. I'm going to write about the baby's milestones within and out of the womb in the Humanly Genius website, so you can follow up there.

Laszlo Polgar And The Genius Hypothesis

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I promised in the first episode of the Humanly Genius podcast that I would talk about the great real life experiment of the Polgar parents. The idea was developed by Laszlo Polgar, a Hungarian educational psychologist, who early on in his career focused on studying historical geniuses and read about 400 plus prodigies, geniuses, talents, virtuosos, polymaths, and masters of a field, and special talents from Socrates, Aristotle, and his student Alexander the Great to Mozart, Einstein, and I guess a few hundred more. Now it is called an experiment because he used the scientific method to develop his educational model. He observed the education at the time, he did different research, he came up with a hypothesis, found examples of proving or disproving his hypothesis, analyzed and drew his conclusions. What he noticed is that all the geniuses he studied started to learn their specialty at a very early age, even before four years of age. Then they were all raised in a very enriching environment. Their parents and their tutors were knowledgeable, consistent, and they were successful in sparking an interest in their students so they would be devoted to their studies. So Laslov Polgar concluded that every child born healthy can become exceptional. He went as far as saying every child can become a genius as long as they start very early in life, have devoted parents and tutors to find their field of interest. He believed that geniuses can be raised, and natural genetic talent is overrated. Again, he didn't deny it. He said it can be compensated by different strategies, more practice, and hard work. So early on in his studies, he had this side project to work out the methodology, the requirements of raising geniuses. He laid the foundation of his plan on child psychology, mental and physical development. Later, the question was how he would implement this plan and find small children to whom he would have access to every day for 16 years. It was illegal and even today it is restricted to educate children at home in Hungary. They were especially opposed to experiment on other parents' children, so he decided he wanted to have his own children raised in this unconventional way. So he posted a competent wife wanted advertisement in the papers. He wanted to find a person with whom he could start a family and implement his plan. Laslo wrote recruitment style letters to women across Eastern Europe, looking for a partner willing to test his radical child rearing theories instead of traditional romantic declarations. His letter to Clara, a Ukrainian foreign language teacher, later, his wife, detailed his pedagogical research and his master plan to mould future children into high achieving prodigies. He started to correspond with Clara Altberger, who already spoke six languages. They met in Budapest in 1965. Over dinner and a very long walk, they discussed his crazy visions, which she thought were eccentric and absolutely crazy. After a while he was so persuasive and she got so intrigued that she eventually agreed to marry him, and so they embarked on their legendary homeschooling adventure as they were preparing for having children. Now you might notice that I'm going to try to avoid using the word experiment at all cost. The Polgar parents and the Polgar sisters all agree that it was a special lifestyle and adventure, a wonderful journey. Susan said when she was asked if they missed out on things, that a regular child in the system would miss out opportunities, and as they become adults they will have more regrets than the polgars. They didn't miss out on childhood toys, games and stories because they had other ways of playing that they never even recognized as learning. Both parents knew exactly what they were doing. They taught all the basics and had their daughters take exams at the end of each school year to meet the state educational requirements.

How The Polgar Sisters Started Chess

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So back to the marriage of Clara and Laslo. Their three daughters were Susan, Sophia, and Judith Polgar. However, as they were born in Budapest, let me introduce them by their Hungarian names first. The first daughter, Polga Zuzonna, was born in Budapest on April 19, 1969. She was not even three years old when she already learned her first languages. Besides Hungarian, she went to a Russian daycare and started to learn Esperanto. Her mother was the language teacher, and her father was the math, science, and chess teacher. But no chess just yet. Her mother strategically put a chess set in the living room closet, so around the age of four, she accidentally found it and started to play with the figures. So she asked her mother about it. They put the chessboard on the table, and her mother told her it was a game. Juja wanted to play the game, but her mother said she didn't really know how to play it, so she had to ask her father. Then her father introduced the pieces in a playful way, one by one chasing one another as the rules required. Susan later said that she was a hyperactive child, so when they started to play around the chessboard, she soon got glued to the chair and didn't want to quit. The chess sessions got longer and longer as they got deeper into the details of the game. Both Susan and Laslo emphasized that it always stayed a game, never a chore or a burden. The age difference between Susan and Sophia is over five years. It is very important because it gave one-on-one time between father and Susan to find out what worked better than others. The second daughter, Polga Sophia, was born in Budapest on November 2nd, 1974. She had the advantage of having an older sister already speaking a few languages and learning around the baby. The parents didn't let the smaller children play chess until they were around four years old. And as such, it built suspense. The third sister, Polgar Rudid, was born in Budapest on July 23rd, 1976. So now there was only less than two years. Years of age difference between Sophia and Judith, and seven years difference between Susan and Judith. Let me put it into perspective. By the time Susan was four years old and still an only child, she was taken to chess clubs where middle-aged and older men were playing. No women and no girls in sight. The men thought that Laslo was going to play with them, and the child was going to watch. But Laslow told them he had no intention of playing, so he brought her daughter to beat the men. They didn't take this seriously, and some even rejected the idea to play with a four-year-old girl who could barely see the top of the table standing up. After a while, one agreed to play with her for fun, but he said he wouldn't make it easy for her. Good. Susan beat him in a few minutes. Then another wanted to try, and then another. She beat every one of them in the chess club. Not even a draw. When she was still four years old, she won the under eleven year old child championship. Repeat, she was four and won with a perfect ten ten score in her first ever tournament. So back to their education. They all learned a few languages. Susan now speaks eight. Sophia and Judith about five or six each. They started to learn them, almost every one of them, but at an early age. They did sports, one each in rotation by semester. They did swimming, played table tennis, and tennis, even competitively. They learned math from a very early age, and were introduced to chess at the age of four. It was the most annoying for Judith because by the time she was two, both of her older sisters could play, but in a separate room, away from Judith. She was told that she needed to be older and she needed to be familiar with the chess pieces before she could enter the room. So when she finally did, she was so wound up and excited that she couldn't stop herself. This is probably why she was the most committed, she practiced the most, and she was the most aggressive player of all. Now, sorry, I have to stop this story.

Next Episode Tease And Listener Requests

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In our next episode of Latiotinius Emerge, I will tell you about the Polgar's home environment. What was the Hungarian socialist states' attitude and how they stuck to their guns to finish what they started? Now, this week on the Julia Bright Podcast, I will talk about respect. I believe it is one of the most crucial words for a balanced family and society. All three of our podcast episodes build on one another, so you can subscribe and not miss anything. Did you like this episode? Comment, like us. You can listen to me on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite podcast. You can support the Humanly Genius project on Patreon as well. Also, check out my website, thehumanlygenus.com. Talk to you later. Bye for now.