Myths About Baby Brains
I'd like to share with you an excerpt from the introduction to my next book, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five (October 12, 2010). It tackles some of the common parenting myths about baby brain development. The information here will be useful to any parent or grandparent looking to provide the best future for the new addition to their family. --Dr. John Medina
Every time I lectured to a group of parents and grandparents-to-be about baby brain development, I made a mistake.
The parents, I thought, had come for a tasty helping of science about the brain in utero-a little neural crest biology here, a little axonal migration there. But in the Q&A session after each lecture, the questions were always the same. The first, delivered by a very pregnant woman one rainy night in Seattle, was "What can my baby learn while she is still in my womb?" Another woman asked, "What's going to happen to my marriage after we bring our baby home?" A dad delivered the third question, with some authority: "How do I get my kid into Harvard?" An anxious mom asked the fourth question: "How can I make sure my little girl is going to be happy?" And the fifth belonged to a downright noble grandmother. "How do I make my grandchild good?" she asked. She had taken over parenting responsibilities from a drug-addicted daughter. She did not want the same thing to happen again.
No matter how many times I tried to steer the conversation toward the esoteric world of neural differentiation, parents asked variations on these same five questions-over and over again. Finally, I realized my mistake. I was giving parents Ivory Tower when they needed Ivory Soap.
With that in mind, Brain Rules for Baby will be guided by the practical questions my audiences keep asking. "Brain Rules" are the name I give to what we know for sure about how the early-childhood brain works. Each one is quarried from the much larger seams of behavioral psychology, cellular biology, and molecular biology. Each was selected for its ability to assist newly minted moms and dads in the daunting task of caring for a helpless little human.
I certainly understand the need for answers. 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. I know firsthand: I have two boys, both of whom came with bewildering questions, behavioral issues, and no instructions.
I soon learned that's not all they came with. They possessed a gravitational pull that could wrest from me a ferocious love and a tenacious loyalty. They also were magnetic; I could not help staring at their perfect fingernails, clear eyes, dramatic shocks of hair. By the time my second child was born, I understood that it is possible to split up love ad infinitum and not decrease any single portion of it. With parenting, it is truly possible to multiply by dividing. My wife and I still marvel at how different our sons are from us, and yet how similar. Having kids is like mailing yourself a letter from the most delightful, meaningful future you can imagine.
My children also amplified the meaning of my work as a scientist. Watching a baby's brain develop is like having a front-row seat to the Big Bang. It starts out as a single cell in the womb, quiet as a secret. Within a few weeks, it is pumping out nerve cells at the astonishing rate of 8,000 per second. Within a few months, it is on its way to becoming the world's finest thinking machine. These mysteries fueled not only wonder and love but, as a rookie parent, I remember, anxiety and questions...
Read the rest of the article here.
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