Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina) / quote 36 of 91
Fertilizers and toxins for a smart baby
Regardless of their genes, you can help your children mobilize their intelligence as fully as Theodore Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, or the most successful innovators working today. Just how do you grow a smart baby? We’re thinking in terms of soil, so it makes sense to formulate a fertilizer. What you put in is as important as what you leave out. 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. A few additives, hawked by marketers, are optional to irrelevant. What we’ll discover is the profound need to strike a balance between intellectual freedom and well-disciplined rigor.