Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

by John Medina

Parents who practice bandaging each other after a fight, deliberately and explicitly, allow their children to model both how to fight fair and how to make up.

James Baldwin’s quote: “Children have never been good at listening to their parents, but they have never failed to imitate them.”

More than 80 percent of couples experience a huge drop in marital quality during the transition to parenthood. • Hostility between parents can harm a newborn’s developing brain and nervous system. • The four most common sources of marital turbulence are: sleep loss, social isolation, unequal distribution of household workload, and depression. Awareness of these allows couples to create a buffer against them.

• Regularly practice the empathy reflex. As your first response to any emotional situation, describe the emotional changes you think you see, and then make a guess as to their origins.

There are four nutrients you will want in your behavioral formula, adjusting them as your baby gets older: breast-feeding, talking to your baby, guided play, and praising effort rather than accomplishment.

The more parents talk to their children, even in the earliest moments of life, the better their kids’ linguistic abilities become and the faster that improvement is achieved.