Brain Rules for Baby Quotes

“Children have never been good at listening to their parents, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“Ethan’s parents constantly told him how brainy he was. “You’re so smart! You can do anything, Ethan. We are so proud of you, they would say every time he sailed through a math test. Or a spelling test. Or any test. With the best of intentions, they consistently tethered Ethan’s accomplishment to some innate characteristic of his intellectual prowess. Researchers call this “appealing to fixed mindsets.” The parents had no idea that this form of praise was toxic.

　　Little Ethan quickly learned that any academic achievement that required no effort was the behavior that defined his gift. When he hit junior high school, he ran into subjects that did require effort. He could no longer sail through, and, for the first time, he started making mistakes. But he did not see these errors as opportunities for improvement. After all, he was smart because he could mysteriously grasp things quickly. And if he could no longer grasp things quickly, what did that imply? That he was no longer smart. Since he didn’t know the ingredients making him successful, he didn’t know what to do when he failed. You don’t have to hit that brick wall very often before you get discouraged, then depressed. Quite simply, Ethan quit trying. His grades collapsed.


What happens when you say, ‘You’re so smart’

　　Research shows that Ethan’s unfortunate story is typical of kids regularly praised for some fixed characteristic. If you praise your child this way, three things are statistically likely to happen:

　　First, your child will begin to perceive mistakes as failures. Because you told her that success was due to some static ability over which she had no control, she will start to think of failure (such as a bad grade) as a static thing, too—now perceived as a lack of ability. Successes are thought of as gifts rather than the governable product of effort.

　　Second, perhaps as a reaction to the first, she will become more concerned with looking smart than with actually learning something. (Though Ethan was intelligent, he was more preoccupied with breezing through and appearing smart to the people who mattered to him. He developed little regard for learning.)

　　Third, she will be less willing to confront the reasons behind any deficiencies, less willing to make an effort. Such kids have a difficult time admitting errors. There is simply too much at stake for failure.

　　 

　　What to say instead: ‘You really worked hard’

　　What should Ethan’s parents have done? Research shows a simple solution. Rather than praising him for being smart, they should have praised him for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said,“I’m so proud of you. You’re so smart. They should have said, “I’m so proud of you. You must have really studied hard”. This appeals to controllable effort rather than to unchangeable talent. It’s called “growth mindset” praise.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“You may think that grown-ups create children. The reality is that children create grown-ups. They become their own person, and so do you. Children give so much more than they take.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“Having a first child is like swallowing an intoxicating drink made of equal parts joy and terror, chased with a bucketful of transitions nobody ever tells you about.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“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.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“Many families actively discourage the expression of tough emotions like fear and anger. Happiness and tranquility, meanwhile, make it to the top of the list of “approved” emotions. There is no such thing as a bad emotion. There is no such thing as a good emotion. An emotion is either there—or it is not. These parents seem to know that emotions don’t make people weak and they don’t make people strong. They only make people human. The result is a savvy let-the-children-be-who-they-are attitude.

-They do not judge emotions.
-They acknowledge the reflexive nature of emotions.
-They know that behavior is a choice, even though an emotion is not.
-They see a crisis as a teachable moment.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“(preschoolers demand some form of attention 180 times per hour, behavioral psychologists say),”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“People view their own behaviors as originating from amendable, situational constraints,but they view other people's behavior as originating from inherent, immutable personality traits.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“The more parents talk to their children, even in the earliest moments of life, the better their kids’ linguistic abilities become”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“mothers suffered from major nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. When the children reached school age, 21 percent scored 130 or more points on a standard IQ test, a level considered gifted. If their mothers had no morning sickness, only 7 percent of kids did that well. The researchers have a theory—still to be proven—about why. Two hormones that stimulate a woman to vomit may also act like neural fertilizer for the developing brain.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: how to raise a smart and happy child from zero to five

“As always, there are exceptions. Adults with training can still learn to distinguish speech sounds in other languages. But in general, the brain appears to have a limited window of opportunity in an astonishingly early time frame. The cognitive door begins swinging shut at 6 months old, and then, unless something pushes against it, the door closes. By 12 months, your baby’s brain has made decisions that affect her the rest of her life.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: how to raise a smart and happy child from zero to five

“Kids come into the world before their brains are fully developed. The result? Parenthood.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“But what you do in your child’s first five years of life—not just the first year—profoundly influences how he or she will behave as an adult.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“As C.S. Lewis observed in The Silver Chair, one book in the Chronicles of Narnia series: “Crying is all right in its own way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“Affect detection. First, a person must detect a change in the emotional disposition of someone else. In the behavioral sciences, “affect” means the external expression of an emotion or mood, generally associated with an idea or an action. Kids who are autistic usually don’t get to this step; as a result, they rarely behave with empathy. • Imaginative transposition. Once a person detects an emotional change, he transposes what he observes onto his own psychological interiors. He “tries on” the perceived feelings as if they were clothes, then observes how he would react given similar circumstances. For those of you in the theater, this is the heart of Stanislavski’s Method Acting. For those of you about to have children, you have just begun to learn how to have a fair fight with them, not to mention your spouse. • Boundary formation. The person who is empathizing realizes at all times that the emotion is happening to the other person, never to the observer. Empathy is powerful, but it is also has boundaries.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“　　A former fighter pilot, teaching at an aeronautics university, discovered how this works in the classroom. One of his students had been a star in ground school but was having trouble in the air. During a training flight, she misinterpreted an instrument reading, and he yelled at her, thinking it would force her to concentrate. Instead, she started crying, and though she tried to continue reading the instruments, she couldn’t focus. He landed the plane, lesson over. What was wrong? From the brain’s perspective, nothing was wrong. The student’s mind was focusing on the source of the threat, just as it had been molded to do over the past few million years. The teacher’s anger could not direct the student to the instrument to be learned because the instrument was not the source of danger. The teacher was the source of danger. This is weapons focus, merely replacing “Saturday Night Special” with “ex-fighter pilot.”

　　The same is true if you are a parenting a child rather than teaching a student. The brain will never outgrow its preoccupation with survival.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“If you want a well-educated child, you must create an environment of safety.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“What you praise defines what your child perceives success to be.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“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.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“Verbalizing has a soothing effect on the nervous systems of children. (Adults, too.)”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“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.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“More research has since confirmed and extended these simple findings. In addition to satisfying relationships, other behaviors that predict happiness include:        •    a steady dose of altruistic acts        •    making lists of things for which you are grateful, which generates feelings of happiness in the short term        •    cultivating a general “attitude of gratitude,” which generates feelings of happiness in the long term        •    sharing novel experiences with a loved one        •    deploying a ready “forgiveness reflex” when loved ones slight you If”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“Couples who regularly practice empathy see stunning results. It is the independent variable that predicts a successful marriage, according to behaviorist John Gottman, who, post hoc criticisms notwithstanding, forecasts divorce probabilities with accuracy rates approaching 90 percent. In Gottman’s studies, if the wife felt she was being heard by her husband—to the point that he accepted her good influence on his behavior—the marriage was essentially divorce-proof. (Interestingly, whether the husband felt heard was not a factor in divorce rates.) If that empathy trafficking was absent, the marriage foundered. Research”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“If my husband tells me one more time that he needs to rest because he “worked all day,” I will throw all of his clothes on the front lawn, kick his car into neutral and watch it roll away and I’ll sell all of his precious sports stuff on eBay for a dollar. And then I’ll kill him. He seriously doesn’t get it! Yes, he worked all day, but he worked with English speaking, potty trained, fully capable adults. He didn’t have to change their diapers, give them naps and clean their lunch from the wall. He didn’t have to count to 10 to calm himself, he didn’t have to watch Barney 303,243,243 times, and he didn’t have to pop his boob out 6 times to feed a hungry baby and I KNOW he didn’t have peanut butter and jelly crust for lunch. He DID get TWO 15-minute breaks to “stroll,” an hour break to hit the gym, and a 1 hour train ride home to read or nap. So maybe I don’t get a paycheck, maybe I stay in my sweatpants most of the day, maybe I only shower every 2 or 3 days, maybe I get to “play” with our kids all day … I still work a hell of a lot harder in one hour than he does all day. So take your paycheck, stick it in the bank and let me go get a freakin’ pedicure once a month without hearing you say “Maybe if you got a job … and had your own money.” Ouch.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“This rarely happens in a visit to the pediatrician’s office, but it should. The good doctor would ask you about the health of your baby and give your little bundle of joy a routine examination. Then she’d look you in the eyes and ask some truly intrusive questions about your social life. “Do you have many friends?” the pediatrician would inquire. “What social groups do you and your husband belong to? How important are these groups to you? How diverse are they? How much contact time do you and your husband have with them?” The doctor doesn’t ask about these things because your social life is none of her business. The problem is, it is plenty of the infant’s business.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“Many couples will fight in front of their children but reconcile in private. This skews a child’s perceptions, even at early ages, for the child always sees the wounding but never the bandaging. 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.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“One of the reasons empathy works so well is because it does not require a solution.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“One of the reasons veteran parents don’t focus on the hardness of having babies is that “hard” is not the whole story. It’s not even the major part. The time you will actually spend with your kids is breathtakingly short. They will change very quickly. Eventually, your child will find a sleep schedule, turn to you for comfort, and learn from you both what to do and what not to do.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“Money doesn’t make the cut. People who make more than $5 million a year are not appreciably happier than those who make $100,000 a year, the Journal of Happiness Studies found. Money increases happiness only when it lifts people out of poverty to about $50,000 a year in income. Past that, wealth and happiness part ways. This suggests something practical and relieving: Help your children get into a profession that can at least make around $50,000 a year. They don’t have to be millionaires to be thrilled with the life you prepare them for. After their basic needs are met, they just need some close friends and relatives. And sometimes even siblings, as the following story attests.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

“Author Elizabeth Stone once said, “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.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five