Brain Rules for Baby

I happened to see a interview of Amy Chua about her book/memoir about raising her children. This interview made me see other documentaries about some parents relating to the topic of raising children to get a point of perfection, which meant getting admitted to colleges like Harvard, Carnegie Mellon and Yale. I wanted to understand more about how scientists understand this topic of child development and what is our current scientific frontier in this important area.

Here are some of my notes after reading a book titled "Brain Rules for Baby" by John Medina.
I am documenting some interesting facts that are observed during the growth of brain as human life starts out from the womb. I read that within a few weeks, inside a womb, the cells (fertilized egg) are dividing and pumping our nerve cells at a rate of 8000 nerve cells per second.

This book (mostly) contains facts that have been published in refereed journals and have been successfully reproduced.

Myth:
Playing Mozart to a baby inside a womb might improve baby's future math skills.
Truth:
Baby will/might remember Mozart along with many other things he/she heard,smelt, tasted in the womb and nothing in particular to her/his math skills are effected. If someone wants a child to do well in math at later years, teach that child about impulse control in the early years of growth.

Myth:
Exposing an infant or toddler to language DVDs might boost vocabulary
Truth:
It is true that the number and the variety of words a parent uses while talking to babies boos his/her vocabulary and IQ, but the words have to come from parents, real live human interactions.

Myth:
For boosting brain power of a child, they need to be exposed to French and provided a room full of brain-friendly toys and a library of educational DVDs.
Truth:
The best chance of training a child's brain power is to provide a plain cardboard box, new crayons and time. The worst being the huge flat screen TVS. I personally think Ipads and other touch screen electronic gadgets come in this category too.

Myth:
Continually telling children that they are smart will boost their confidence.
Truth:
This results in children becoming less willing to work on challenging problems and it is advisable to acknowledge a child's effort in doing an activity and the process used by the child in coming to a solution or in doing an activity.

Myth:
Children can find happiness by themselves.
Truth:
Interactions with peers and with parents is an important factor in predicting happiness. It is important for a child to be able to communicate with others. Learning a musical instrument boosts the ability by 50%. While, text messaging may destroy it.


Note: Science cannot give specific answers to everything and can at best provide overreaching rules.

Research tells us that parents might be better off if they have clear rules and swift consequences for rule violations. But it cannot tell what might be the specific consequence that befits a rule violation. Such is the limitation as:

Every child is different:
It is advised to know a child by spending time with them. Knowing that children's behavior and its evolution with time.

Every parent is different:
Both parents often have different parenting priorities and a combination of these two   guides tha child. This lends itself to the need of 100% cooperation between both the parents about how their children shall be raised. Additionally, the feed back from child is another input that needs to be blend into the mix. No substantial help from research in this area is currently available.

Kids are influenced by others
Research by the author has shown that peers, especially of the same gender share a child's behavior much more than parents do. There are other opposing views by other researchers also.

Researchers can say "linked to" but not "causes"

What parents do in child's first five years of life (not just the first five) profoundly influence how the child will behave as an adult. This is known from a research done on 123 preschoolers for four decades, its called the HighScope Perry Preschool study.


If a baby's head were to be too shall, they might not survive after their arrival to the world. If the head were too big then the mother might not survive while getting the baby to the world. What is the solution? It is to give birth to babies before their skulls become too big and before their brains are fully developed inside the womb. The rest of the development occurs in the world (outside the womb) in a process called Parenthood.  Parenthood is a developmental process of every child brought into this lovely world. As the lovely bun is brought out from the oven before its fully cooked, the child needs instructions from veteran brains for many years until adulthood. This book;s center point is to place importance on the need of human interactions that form an important basis for a child's development. Parents are encouraged to increase interactions of their child with others, peers, family members.