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

by John Medina

The brain starts out as a single cell in the womb, quiet as a secret. Within a few weeks, it is pumping out nerve cells at the astonishing rate of 8,000 per second.

Research tells us that parents must have clear rules and swift consequences for rule violations.

One researcher has gone on record saying that peers—especially of the same sex—shape a child’s behavior much more than parents do.

HighScope Perry Preschool Study,

In 1962, researchers wanted to test the effects of an early-childhood training program they had designed. Kids in Ypsilanti, Michigan, were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first attended the preschool program (which eventually became a model for other preschool programs nationwide, including Head Start). The second group did not. The differences between the two groups powerfully illustrate the importance of a child’s early years. The kids in the program academically outperformed the controls in virtually every way you can measure performance, from IQ and language tests in the early years to standardized achievement assessments and literacy exams in the later years. To cite just one example (performance on the 1970 California Achievement Test), kids in the program scored far better than the controls: a whopping 49 percent vs. 15 percent. Among girls, though not boys, more graduated from high school (84 percent vs. 32 percent). As adults, those who had been in the program were less likely to commit crimes and more likely to hold steady jobs. They made more money, more often had a savings account, and were more likely to own a home. Economists calculated that the return on society’s investment in such a program was 7 to 10 percent, higher than what you’d historically get in the stock market. If each tax dollar was invested from age 4 through 65, it would return “in present-value terms $7 to $12 back to society,” one analysis said.

“You need both seed and soil,” she explained to me—nature and nurture—to get the desired results.

some evolutionary biologists believe this is why morning sickness still persists in human pregnancies. Morning sickness, which can last the entire day (and, for some women, the entire pregnancy), makes a woman stick to a bland, boring diet—if she eats much at all. This avoidance strategy would have kept our maternal ancestors away from the natural toxins in exotic or spoiled foods in the wild, unregulated menu of the Pleistocene diet. The accompanying fatigue would keep women from engaging in physical activity risky enough to harm the baby.

One of the reasons we know so little is that mom’s body appears to have a fail-safe mechanism. If something goes wrong during development, her body often senses trouble and deliberately induces a miscarriage.

Development

Two types of cells are important here. The first type, glial cells, make up 90 percent of the brain cells inside your child’s head. They give the brain its structure and help the neurons correctly process information. It’s a good name; glial is a Greek word for glue. The second type of cell is the familiar neuron. Though they do a lot of your child’s thinking, neurons make up only about 10 percent of the total number of brain cells. That’s probably where we get the myth that you use only 10 percent of your brain.

Biology

baby’s brain has to lash together an astonishing 1.8 million new connections per second to make a complete brain.

the brain is the last organ to finish developing.