Helping a child to utilize his own special strengths and skills may mean looking beyond what the policy makers and society typically consider “smart.” Or as developmental psychologist Howard Gardner has put it, you shouldn’t be trying to determine how smart a child is; rather, you should be trying to determine how a child is smart.

Gardner wrote an influential book called Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. In it, he contends that intelligence isn’t a singular entity that can be measured only with paper and pencil. Rather, he says, we each possess many different kinds of intelligence. To date, he has recognized nine intelligences, all of which he’s identified through a rigorous scientific process. For our purposes, though, the important point is that Gardner describes an intelligence as the “ability to find and solve problems and create products of value in one’s own culture.”

Although our society most values the linguistic (“word-smart”) and logical-mathematical (“number-smart”/reasoning) intelligences - the two intelligences measured by IQ and other standardized tests - teachers could see that many of their students had other gifts, other ways of “learning and knowing;” and they enthusiastically embraced Gardner’s theory.

In addition to the linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligences, Gardner has identified the visual/spatial (an understanding of how things orient in space), naturalist (determines sensitivity to one’s environment), existentialist (belonging to people who question why they exist), interpersonal (the ability to relate well to others), intrapersonal (knowing oneself well), musical (a fascination with sound and the patterns created by sound), and bodily/kinesthetic (the ability to solve problems or create with the body or body parts).

It’s important to remember that each of us possesses all of these intelligences to varying degrees and in different combinations. A surgeon, for example, has highly developed logical/mathematical and bodily/kinesthetic intelligences; the former incorporates the scientific aspect and the latter the meticulous use of the hands.

Where do your child’s strengths lie? Does your son love to putter in the garden with you? He may be strong in the naturalist intelligence. Does your daughter create art everywhere, using everything from building blocks to mashed potatoes? Her greatest strength may lie in the visual/spatial intelligence. Is your child constantly dancing, indicating a developing bodily/kinesthetic intelligence, with some musical intelligence thrown into the mix?

When you’re tuned in to your child’s passions, skills, or intelligences - whatever we may call them - you can support their development and offer your child encouragement. Biology will certainly have played a role in her interests and strengths, but the mainstream culture and the home culture are also influences. And since the mainstream culture - society and the school system - focuses on only two intelligences, you can help provide some balance in her life.

At the preschool and elementary school ages, follow your child’s lead, but don’t get too invested in any one particular pastime. You don’t want to decide the rest of his life based on what you see in the earliest years. Children - and their interests and skills - evolve. And when he eventually discovers skills in many areas, as he’s likely to do, he’ll be able to make his own, well-informed choices about his passions.

Rae Pica is a children’s physical activity specialist and the author of A Running Start: How Play, Physical Activity, and Free Time Create a Successful Child (Marlowe & Co., 2006). She has shared her expertise with such clients as the Sesame Street Research Department, the Centers for Disease Control, Gymboree Play & Music, and the President’s Council on Physical Fitness & Sports. You can visit Rae at www.movingandlearning.com, or listen to her interview experts in early childhood education, motor development, the neurosciences, and more at www.bodymindandchild.com.