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

by John Medina

Parenting research is tough to do, for four reasons:

Brain Rules for Baby encompasses brain development in children ages 0 to 5.

HighScope Perry Preschool Study,

Aside from perhaps a whale or two, we have the longest childhood on the planet.

evolutionary biologists theorized,

From the baby’s point of view, the best feature of life in the womb is its relative lack of stimulation.

No commercial product has ever been shown to do anything to improve the brain performance of a developing fetus.

Women who take folic acid around conception and during the first few weeks of pregnancy are 76 percent less likely to create a fetus with neural tube defects than those who don’t take the supplement. It is the first thing you can do to aid brain development.

The brain spends the first half of pregnancy setting up its neuroanatomical shop, blissfully ignoring most parental involvement. (I am referring to well-intentioned interference. Drugs, including alcohol and nicotine, clearly can damage a baby’s brain during pregnancy.)

One of the earliest senses to come on line is touch. Embryos about 1 month old can sense touch to their noses and lips. The ability spreads quickly, and nearly the entire surface of the skin is sensitive to touch by 12 weeks of age.

Not until about the fifth month after conception can babies truly experience touch in the way you and I might perceive it.

When do these structures hook up to the rest of the brain, allowing babies to hear? The answer should be familiar by now: not until the beginning of the third trimester.

what you eat during the last stages of pregnancy can influence the food preferences of your baby.

flavor programming,

Four things proven to help baby’s brain

Brain size predicts about 20 percent of the variance in her IQ scores (her prefrontal cortex, just behind her forehead, is particularly prescient). Brain volume is related to birth weight, which means that, to a point, larger babies are smarter babies. The increase slows as baby reaches 6.5 pounds: There is only 1 IQ point difference between a 6.5-pounder and a 7.5-pounder.

malnutrition

When they grow up, the kids carrying these brains exhibit more behavioral problems, show slower language growth, have lower IQs, get worse grades, and generally make poor athletes.

add about half a pound a week in the critical second and third trimesters of pregnancy.

Is there any evidence you should pay attention to these cravings? Is the baby telegraphing its nutritional needs? The answer is no.

paleo diet.

heavy emphasis on fruits and vegetables,

folic acid taken around conception. The other: omega-3 fatty acids.

more fish starting in the second trimester had smarter babies than those who didn’t.

eat at least 12 ounces of fish per week.

it can:

Moderate stress in small amounts, the type most women feel in a typical pregnancy, actually appears to be good for infants.

major life events

stress has passed. Excess hormone from mom can mean baby has a difficult time turning off her own stress hormone system.

The baby can carry this damaged stress-response system into adulthood.

practice general stress relief,

Aerobic exercise elevates a molecule in your brain that can specifically block the toxic effects of those nasty glucocorticoids.

When her heart rate goes up, so does baby’s. When mom’s breathing rate increases, so does baby’s.

Your oxygen reserve levels are pretty low by the third trimester, so it’s a good time to wind down strenuous activities in preparation for labor.

Swimming is one of the best forms of exercise in later stages; the water helps transfer excess heat away from the womb.

Sustained exposure to hostility can erode a baby’s IQ and ability to handle stress, sometimes dramatically.

four of the

most important sources of marital conflict in the transition to parenthood: sleep loss, social isolation, unequal workload, and depression.

Couples going into pregnancy with strong marital bonds withstand the gale forces of baby’s first year better than those who don’t. Those who carefully plan for their children prior to pregnancy do, too. In fact, one of the biggest predictors of marital bliss appears to be the agreement to have kids in the first place.

All conflicted couples where one partner had caved (usually the man) were either separated or divorced by the time the child was 5.

If the children were adopted before the fourth month of life, they acted like every other happy kid you know. If they were adopted after the eighth month of life, they acted like gang members.

That’s what the first year of life is for.

Babies in emotionally unstable homes are much less able to positively respond to new stimuli, calm themselves, and recover from stress—in short, regulate their own

emotions.

Even their little legs sometimes won’t develop properly, as stress hormones can interfere with bone mineralization. By the time these children are 4 years old, their stress hormone levels can be almost...

infants younger than 8 months who are taken from severely traumatized homes and placed in empathic, nurturing environments can show improvements in their stress-hormone regulation in as little as 10 weeks.

greater risk for anxiety disorders and depression. They catch colds more often, because stress cripples the immune system. They’re more antagonistic toward peers. They’re less able to focus attention or regulate their emotions. Such children have IQs almost 8 points lower than children being raised in stable homes.

don’t complete high school as often as their peers and attain lower academic achievement when they do.

Children from divorced households are 25 percent more likely to abuse drugs by the time they are 14. They are more likely to get pregnant out of wedlock. They are twice as likely to get divorced themselves. In school, they get worse grades than children in stable households. And they are much less likely to receive support for college. When marriages stay together, 88 percent of college-bound kids will receive consistent support for their college education. When marriages fall apart, that figure shrinks to 29 percent.

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.