Brain Rules: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Baby from Zero to Five is an extremely informative book appealing to scientists and new parents alike. It is a useful and realistic guide to how a baby develops without sugarcoating the difficult problems parents will inevitably encounter.
This book is organized into five main brain rules: pregnancy, relationship, smart baby, happy baby, and moral baby. Each section outlines the biological processes occurring at different stages of development and the behavioral outcomes due to these processes and does so in a manner that is both interestingly anecdotal and informative.
I think I most enjoyed this book because John Medina tells all aspects of parenting and the real situations and emotions parents come across, even using mistakes of his own to enlighten readers. He relates scientifically proven studies to real-world experiences of everyday parents.
Pregnancy
Medina starts by taking myths commonly told to first-time parents and disproves every one of them with logic and clarity. For example, many new parents are told that playing Mozart to their unborn child in the womb will improve their cognitive abilities. Medina explains that although the child may remember the music when exposed to it outside of the womb, Mozart has no actual effect on cognitive abilities such as math skills. He then explains scientifically studied and proven things that women can do during pregnancy to help their child later in life, such as eating healthy, exercising, and reducing their stress levels. Specific things like B-complex vitamin folic acid and omega-3s help in the formation of neurons and actually reduce the risk of neural tube defects by 76 percent and the fact that babies actually want to be left alone during the first half of pregnancy are just a few of the useful tips provided. Medina also explains the formation of every sensory organ, the stage in pregnancy when these organs connect themselves to the brain, and the first uses of these senses by the baby. This initial sensing can even affect the child's preferences to food, among other things, later in life.
Relationship
This section of the book is basically about how normal it is for couples to suffer in their relationship during the first year of their first child's life. Although many statistics are given on the increasingly high divorce rate and the horribly negative effects of marital arguments on a child, Medina offers actual solutions to the common problems new parents face. Being prepared for the stress on a relationship a child brings is the best way to prevent the marital problems that lead to divorce; if you understand why you're fighting, you can fix it and prevent arguments in the future. He also mentions the beneficial effects of parents fighting and reconciling in front of the child, emphasizing the use of empathy and how it teaches them to argue rationally and fairly.
Smart Baby: Seeds
About half of a child's intelligence is due to genetics, and there's nothing parents can do to change that. IQ tests are only one way of measuring intelligence, and mostly only describe how well someone can take an IQ test. Intelligence is malleable and cannot be measured by a single assessment. Children need room to explore and be creative in order to truly be intelligent. The thirst for exploration is innate and helps babies learn about their environment through trial-and-error experiments. Creativity entails making connections between seemingly unrelated notions and "involves many groups of cognitive gadgets, including episodic memory and autobiographical memory systems." Intelligence is a mix of many aspects and not one test alone can even begin to quantify it.
Smart Baby: Soil
Medina outlines four things parents can do to actually help their baby be more intelligent. On cognitive tests done on children in America, "breast-fed babies score on average 8 points higher than bottle-fed kids, an effect still observable nearly a decade after the breast-feeding has stopped. They get better grades, too, especially in reading in writing." Talking to your baby increases their linguistic abilities and IQ, and does even more so with the amount and variety of words you use with them. Encouraging creative play and praising childrens' efforts rather than their intelligence are two more things that can help maximize a child's brain power.
Happy Baby: Seeds
Babies cry for almost every emotion they experience, which are controlled by many areas of the brain, many of which take years to fully develop. The ability to regulate these emotions and learning how to empathize with another person's emotions are how a child makes connections with other people to ultimately make friends. Having friends is the best predictor of happiness, but there is also some genetic component to how happy a child can become.
Happy Baby: Soil
Raising a happy child involves much parental attention and understanding of a child's emotions. The ability to recognize and empathize with a child's emotions affects how a parent reacts to these emotions and how parents deal with them are big factors in how happy the child will be as an adult.
Moral Baby
Although babies are born with an innate sense of right and wrong, moral behavior takes much guidance to develop. In order to properly teach children how to behave acceptably in society, parents much have clear, consistent rules and rewards; swift, reasonable consequences for breaking the rules; and explanations for why those rules exist. This explanation of the rules helps children internalize and understand moral behavior.
This book provides a very unique perspective on the developing child, combining both scientific and parental aspects. It is very easy to understand because Medina gives clear and even engaging evidence for the data he presents instead of merely a list facts or explanations in purely scientific jargon. He also tells both sides to every story. Not only does he show how parents can raise happy and intelligent children, but also he warns of the many consequences of not giving your child a healthy environment in which to grow.
Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five
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- Trent GillespieReviewed in Canada on November 19, 2013
Great insight
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase - ddmReviewed in Germany on October 3, 2013
Easy-to-read with lots of information
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase - Amazon CustomerReviewed in India on August 19, 2018
Must read for all the parents
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
