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

by John Medina

That communal need was so strong, and so critical to our survival, that researchers have given the phenomenon its own name: alloparenting. If as a parent you feel as though you can’t do it alone, that’s because you were never meant to.

The inner cell mass at this stage possesses a cell whose entire offspring will form the human brain. The most complex information-processing device ever constructed is on its way. And it starts out a fraction of the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

Key points

Marital quality, which peaks in the last trimester of a first pregnancy, decreases anywhere from 40 percent to 67 percent in the infant’s first year.

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.

Fortunately, research shows that the amount of fighting couples do in front of their children is less damaging than the lack of reconciliation the kids observe.

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.

Sleep-deprived people become irritable—far more irritable—than people who are not. Subjects saddled with sleep debt typically suffer a 91 percent loss in their ability to regulate strong emotions compared with controls.

Problem-solving abilities typically plummet to 10 percent of their non-drowsy performances, and even motor skills become affected.

Outside of their spouses, typical new parents have less than 90 minutes per day of contact time with another adult. A whopping 34 percent spend their entire days in isolation.

Tribes with females who could quickly relate to and trust nearby females were more likely to survive.

Females release oxytocin as part of their normal response to stress, a hormone that increases a suite of biological behaviors termed “tend and befriend.”

“Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women. We push them right to the back burner. That’s really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other.”

“Any woman who still thinks marriage is a fifty-fifty proposition is only proving that she doesn’t understand either men or percentages.”

Women with families do 70 percent of all household tasks.

The lack of contribution is so great that having a husband around actually creates an extra seven hours of work per week for women.

“Making a decision to have a child—it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

As long as you are willing to put in some effort, babies are not some terminal disease from which no marriage safely recovers.

“What is obvious to you is obvious to you.”

When fighting, people believe they are perfectly unbiased, informed, and objective, while simultaneously thinking their opponents are hopelessly prejudiced, clueless, and subjective.

We are amazingly blind to the limits of extrospective information. We know when our actions fail to match our inner thoughts and feelings, but we often forget that this knowledge is not available to others. The disparity can leave us bewildered or surprised at how we come across to other people.

Choosing to empathize—at its heart it is simply a choice—is so powerful, it can change the developing nervous systems of infants whose parents regularly practice it.

Research shows that 70 percent of marital conflicts are not resolvable; the disagreement remains.

One of the reasons empathy works so well is because it does not require a solution. It requires only understanding.

If there is wiggle room for negotiation only 30 percent of the time, empathy becomes the premier exercise in any couple’s conflict-management workout.

1. Describe the emotional changes you think you see. 2. Make a guess as to where those emotional changes came from.

Key points

Many ingredients make up the human intelligence stew, and I’d like to describe five that I think you would do well to consider as you contemplate your child’s intellectual gifts. They are: • The desire to explore • Self-control • Creativity • Verbal communication • Interpreting nonverbal communication

The biggest common denominator of these characteristics? A willingness to explore.

“If you look at 4-year-olds, they are constantly asking questions. But by the time they are 6½ years old, they stop asking questions because they quickly learn that teachers value the right answers more than provocative questions. High-school students rarely show inquisitiveness. And by the time they’re grown up and are in corporate settings, they have already had the curiosity drummed out of them.

Tucked into these data is a bombshell of an idea, one with empirical support across the developmental sciences. Human learning in its most native state is primarily a relational exercise. Intelligence is not developed in the electronic crucibles of cold, lifeless machines but in the arms of warm, loving people. You can literally rewire a child’s brain through exposure to relationships.

Key points

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. Brain research tells us there are also several toxins: pushing your child to perform tasks his brain is not developmentally ready to take on; stressing your child to the point of a psychological state termed “learned helplessness”; and, for the under-2 set, television.

If you want a well-educated child, you must create an environment of safety.

If America knew what breast milk can do for the brains of its youngest citizens, lactating mothers across the nation would be enshrined, not embarrassed.

The type of play is called mature dramatic play, or MDP.

In a group setting, such a task is extremely intellectually demanding, even for adults.

These data flatly state that emotional regulation—reining in impulses—predicts better cognitive performance.

This appeals to controllable effort. It’s called “growth mindset” praise.

Children with a growth mindset tend to have a refreshing attitude toward failure. Rather than seeing mistakes as failures over which to despair, they see mistakes simply as problems to be solved.

And what you expect to be out there is directly tied to what you allowed into your brain in the first place.

What you allow into your child’s brain influences his expectations about the world, which in turn influences not only what he is capable of perceiving but his very behavior.

The linkage used to be controversial (maybe aggressive people watch more TV than others?), but we now see that it’s an issue of our deferred-imitation abilities coupled with a loss of impulse control.

Recall that from marriages to workplaces, the largest source of conflict comes from the asymmetry between extrospective and introspective information. A great deal of asymmetry can be averted through the correct interpretation of nonverbal cues. The less practice humans get at it, the more immature their social interactions are likely to be, and the implications of that affect everything from future divorce rates to erosion of productivity in the workforce.

hyper-parents often pursue their child’s intellectual success at the expense of their child’s happiness.

If little kids sense a parent wants them to accomplish some intellectual feat for which their brains are not yet ready, they are inexorably forced into a corner. This coerces the brain to revert to “lower-level” thinking strategies, creating counterfeit habits that may have to be unlearned later.

Write this across your heart before your child comes into the world: Parenting is a not a race.

Key points

Successful friendships, the messy bridges that connect friends and family, are what predict people’s happiness as they hurtle through life.