Brain Rules for Baby; Summary & Review

Brain Rules for Baby: How to raise a smart and happy child from zero to five, by John Medina

“Brain Rules” provides advice on raising happy, smart and moral children based on what science tells us. A major concept in the book is “seed vs. soil” otherwise knows as nature (seed) vs. nurture (soil). There are some factors parents can control, and some they can’t; all the grooming in the world won’t change the fact that half of your child’s potential is genetic. However, we can exert a ton of influence on our kids’ behavior.

This book was a super interesting and compelling read. In general, I am partial to books that are based on studies versus anecdotal evidence. Yes, I know, studies aren’t bulletproof and can contain inherent biases based on who’s funding it. In addition, deciding what to study has a huge impace on what we know –  many scientists shy away from conducting and publishing studies that are politically or socially unpopular or conduct those that push a popular idea. And all this is assuming the study is being done absolutely “kosher” – which is hard! A study presents data and statistics, which can be spliced and diced to suit any premise.  As the adage goes, “there’s lies, there’s damn lies, and there’s statistics.” So yeah, I’m aware of a study’s limitation.

Having said that, studies are the best thing we’ve got (along with a healthy dose of common sense), so I value them a bit more than someone’s subjective experience.

Marriage

More than 80% of couples experience a huge drop in marital quality during the transition to parenthood. Satisfaction continued to fall over the next 15 years and didn’t improve until kids left home.

Dissatisfaction usually starts with the mother and then shifts to the father. A couple’s hostile interactions increase sharply during baby’s first year. This has serious consequences for the baby’s brain. Sustained exposure to hostility can erode a baby’s IQ and ability to handle stress. An infant’s need for caregiver stability is so strong, conflict will profoundly impact her developing self.

This absolutely happened to us. When my daughter was born, my husband was in total bliss over his new venture into fatherhood. I, on the other hand, became really testy during the first few months of motherhood. The transition was HARD for me. I was exhausted and felt I couldn’t eat, get dressed or go to the bathroom in peace anymore. Let alone do any other thing I used to enjoy doing. My husband is, and always has been, an extremely attentive husband and father, but the transition to parenthood is generally more difficult for mothers. We dealt with these issues straight away, as I firmly believe kids feel everything and didn’t want my daughter living in a tense environment.

Children are constantly observing you, their caregiver, and are profoundly influenced by their environment. Babies try to form attachments as soon as possible. There’s a window of several years in which babies strive to create these bonds and what’s most important to them is the presence of a safe harbor. The inability to find safety, due to a consistently angry or emotionally violent home environment or severe neglect, affects behavior years later. 

These babies are much less able to regulate emotions, calm themselves and recover from stress. They can also experience physical developmental delays. If marital hostility continues, children are at greater risk for anxiety disorders and depression. Children of divorced homes are 25% more likely to abuse drugs at a young age, do poorly in school, get pregnant out of wedlock, and are twice as likely to get divorced themselves. 

I agree with the overall sentiment, but the author only talks about extremes here—either a perfectly kumbaya home or one that is angry and neglectful. I’d venture to guess that most homes fall (within a wide range) in between. I’d look at the general sentiment versus the specific details here. The takeaway should be to try and maintain a respectful, calm and loving relationship with your spouse for the benefit of your family. No home environment is perfect, but it’s important to maintain a general feeling of safety, consistency and calm.

I also wouldn’t take his information on divorce as a reason to stay married; staying in a bad marriage is not the solution. It’s likely not the actual divorce that contributed to these outcomes, but because of the factors that led to the divorce: a hostile home environment, parents not being willing or able to compromise, irreconcilable differences, etc. I remember a friend telling me of the relief he felt when his parents divorced. There was so much yelling and fighting that the kids were relieved when their parents finally parted ways.

Interesting to note: fighting in front of kids is less damaging than the lack of reconciliation they observe. If your emotions get the best of you and you argue in front of your kids, reconcile in front of them as well. Many couples fight in front of their kids and reconcile in private; this skews kids’ perceptions. Parents who practice making up after a fight, deliberately and explicitly, allow their children to model both how to fight fair and how to make up

I find this to be a relief! I made it a point to hold in my displeasure in front of my daughter, but it was hard! I was a stay-at-home mother and my daughter was always with me. It’s tough to hold in your feelings until after bedtime (which is anyways never with a baby) and if you do, your kids may feel the tension. So, what I’d often do is set my daughter down and speak to my husband in a separate room. We are all human, and that, combined with functioning on little sleep plus the burdens of being a new mother, is not a great recipe for patience or self-control. It’s a relief to know that making up in front of your children is helpful to your children.

What to Do

You can protect your marriage by knowing the potential challenges you’ll face after the baby is born and preparing for it. Couples who make themselves aware of these potential issues and are mindful of their behavior tend to do better.

Main sources of parental conflict:

• Sleep loss: Lack of sleep makes you more irritable and unable to regulate emotions. I totally saw a difference in myself when I was tired. When I started getting more sleep, I was much more patient with husband.
• Social isolation: This may lead to clinical depression. With so little time or energy, social interaction is first to go.
• Unequal workload: Studies show women (both working and stay-at-home moms) are saddled with the brunt of housework. A typical stay-at-home mom works 94.4 hours per week; most men don’t work that much. This may explain why the increase in hostile interactions usually starts with the woman and spreads to the man.
• Depression: 10-20% of women experience postpartum depression. If left untreated, PPD will debilitate the lively, interactive bonds that are supposed to develop between parent and child. These children become more insecure, socially inhibited, timid and passive.

I’m hesitant to post this last point as I’m afraid it may make post-partum moms feel more hopeless and depressed. However, the key here is “untreated” and “prolonged exposure.” Getting help will be best for you and for your baby so that neither of you suffers from any long-term effects.  

“Perceptual asymmetry” plays a key role in marital conflicts. It occurs when people view their own behaviors as originating from situations beyond their control, but they view their partner’s behaviors as originating from inherent personality traits. (Meaning, you’re not a mind reader [and neither is your spouse] so you just think he’s being an as* rather than knowing his actual intentions.) The great cure here is: empathy. 70% of marital conflicts are not resolvable; the same issues keep on arising throughout a marriage. That’s why empathy is a great antidote: it doesn’t require a solution. Couples who incorporate empathy regularly see stellar results. According to one study, if the wife felt she was being heard by her husband, the couple was virtually divorce-proof.

I can absolutely attest to this! Men are solution-based, women just want to be listened to. I often tell my husband I just need him to be a sympathetic ear and not try to come up with solutions. In his defense, he can’t stand seeing me upset and so badly wants to fix things for me, but it’s not what’s needed.Just listening makes all the difference!

How to empathize

When you first encounter someone’s “negative” feelings:

1)     Describe the emotional changes you think you see.

2)     Make a guess as to where those emotional changes are coming from.

Other tips

• Get a social structure in place before baby comes: parenting groups, friends, churches, etc.
• Begin regular “check-in” times with each other in the morning and afternoon.
• Schedule sex regularly, but also try to incorporate spontaneous intimacy.
• Balance housework until you’re both satisfied.
• Find a mental health professional before baby arrives.
• Engage in active-constructive behaviors: be truly happy or sad for one another. The best marriages have a ratio of 5:1 of active-constructive versus toxic-conflict interactions.

Raising Smart Babies

Nature controls about 50% of our smarts and environment determines the rest. IQ tends to vary over one’s life span and is responsive to environmental influences such as family dynamic, home life and socioeconomic status. For example, poor people score significantly lower on IQ tests than rich people. Children born in poverty but adopted by a middle-class family will on average gain 12-18 IQ points. Aspects of your child’s intelligence will be influenced heavily by what you do as parents.

The author wades into the correlation therefore causation pool a lot, and does so especially here. The fact that children in poverty score lower doesn’t mean the cause is lack of funds. It can be the stress of poverty, spending time acquiring things they need instead of focusing on studies. As with divorce, I’d take the general sentiment here: that minimizing your child’s stress can help in the intelligence department.

Human intelligence has two essential components: the ability to remember information, and the capacity to adapt that info to unique situations. However, many other qualities make up intelligence, including these five.

1. Desire to explore/Inquisitiveness. The willingness to experiment, explore and ask extraordinary questions of seemingly ordinary things. These are qualities of innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs; qualities that are highly valuable in the “real” world. Babies and children are naturally curious and are forever exploring. By the time they’re grown up, curiosity is often drummed out of them. You, as the parent, can encourage your child’s natural desire to explore.

I have a nephew who was able to tell you every president, their term years, their vice president, what number president they were, among a bunch of other facts all at the ripe age of 5. Now, of course, my nephew has the smart gene, but many people do, and they can’t spit out this information. I honestly believe it’s because his parents saw he had an interest in something and they encouraged it. They gave him books, puzzles, games and spoke to him about his interests; instead of squashing his curiosity, they made tons of space for it and allowed it to blossom. He is still incredibly fascinated by many different subjects and has a tremendous zest for learning.  

• Self-control. Impulse control falls under ”executive function.” This is actually a better predictor of academic success than IQ. In a study, kids who could delay gratification for 15 minutes did better in school and scored 210 points higher on their SATs than children who lasted 1 minute. Executive function allows one to stay on task and not be distracted. Children can be trained to enhance self-control and other aspects of executive function.

• Creativity. Creativity is the ability to think of ideas or things that do not currently exist. It involves a healthy dose of risk taking. Creative entrepreneurs score astronomically high on tests that measure risk taking, and they have a strong ability to cope with ambiguity.

Of course! But how many risk-takers ended up screwed and poor because they took a risk with an unprofitable idea? We can’t just look at those who gained from risk, but at the sum total of risk-takers. Just because entrepreneurs score high in risk taking doesn’t mean all risk-takers become successful entrepreneurs. I think it’s important to encourage children to take risks, but risks need to be tempered with reason and rationale.

• Verbal communication skills. At birth, a baby can distinguish between the sounds of every language. By her first birthday, she can only distinguish between languages she’s been exposed to in the last 6 months. To give baby exposure to language, an actual person needs to speak it to baby, not a recording. Language is primarily a relational exercise. You can literally rewire a child’s brain through exposure to relationships, the basis of which is verbal communication.

• Interpreting non-verbal communication. We constantly communicate information with our bodies in coordination with our facial expressions. Our relationships depend on our ability to interpret it. Babies learn to read these non-verbal cues soon after they are born, with significant development occurring between five and seven months after birth.They can improve accuracy by interacting with other people. Therefore, babies need human time in their formative years, not TV time.

IQ tests don’t test most of these skills, though they do play a powerful role in future success. Don’t be discouraged if your kid doesn’t rank high; she may have other things in abundance that IQ tests can’t detect. But take note, not every kid can be Einstein; gifts are unevenly distributed and most have genetic components.

Smart Baby: Soil

The best thing you can do to increase your child’s IQ is to provide love and attentive guidance. A child’s brain’s day job is not learning, it is surviving. Therefore, it is imperative that their home is an environment of safety. If your child feels safe, her brain will be freed up to focus on learning and developing.

Four things proven to improve intelligence: 

1. Breastfeeding for a year. According to study after study, breastfed babies score higher on cognitive tests and get better grades.   

• Talking to your baby. Speak to your child as often as you can. The correlation between talking to your child and increasing her IQ is one of the most well-established findings in developmental literature. The gold standard is 2100 words per hour; this is a moderate rate of conversation. Overstimulation (babbling) can be just as hazardous to brain development as under-stimulation; watch baby for signs of fatigue. The variety of words (nouns, verbs, adjectives) and length and complexity of phrases and sentences reinforce language skills. They also learn through interaction: look at your infant while talking, imitate her vocalizations, laughter and facial expressions. “Parent-ese” (baby talk) helps a baby’s brain learn language. Start using language as a development tool as soon as baby is born.

• Guided play. Allow your child to use her imagination and pretend, while following certain rules. This kind of play is called Mature Dramatic Play, or MDP.  An example of MDP is where a child imagines she is a pilot and acts as if she is a pilot, but still has to follow the “rules” of a pilot. Kids may argue until they agree on the rules. Several hours of MDP each day is needed in order to see benefits.

• Praise effort, not intelligence. Praising effort encourages a child to continue trying without getting discouraged; praising intelligence can cause your child to perceive mistakes as personal failures. When you praise intelligence, your child believes that success/failure is simply due to some static ability. They become more concerned with looking smart than actually learning and trying. When you praise effort, children learn they can remedy mistakes by trying harder.

So, as with a lot of this book, I had a lot of questions here. What does an environment of safety mean? Is it just an environment free of neglect? Is it giving your child Thai massages and doing baby yoga together? What is it?

I also wanted details on talking to baby. The author recommends starting to talk from birth, but when is most critical? I ask because I found it difficult to talk when my baby was very young; when my daughter started babbling it came much more naturally and easily. I didn’t feel like forcing myself to talk inauthentically would benefit my baby. Was I wrong?

My final question was: When does praising effort end? When you focus on praising effort, you seem to disregard “seed” or nature. Some kids just can’t do certain things. I used to volunteer at an inner-city school as a tutor. One of the kids in our group was an illiterate 11-year old. He would desperately try to read, but he simply couldn’t. We learned that his mother’s IQ was so low she had an intellectual disability.  Knowing this, was it good to focus on teaching him to read or have him focus on a skill? Should we have told him that with more effort he will succeed?

And there is a downside to effort that isn’t being acknowledged here. There’s a limit to IQ/ capabilities/skill but there’s no limit to effort. Kids can always “do” more. If we praise and, therefore, encourage effort , we can inadvertantly start our child down another harmful path.

To me there is no win, if you praise smart, your kids may do things just to look smart and not take on challenges. But if you praise effort, your kid may practice the guitar until his fingers bleed. I know many books advocate for this “praise effort” idea but I don’t buy it completely. I think it’s a middle ground type of thing.

Just as certain things can increase a child’s IQ, certain things can detract from it. 

Television. No TV before age 2. TV can lead to hostility with peers, trouble focusing, violence, lower grades and diminished reading and language skills. Baby Einstein TV products don’t work; some do actual harm. After 2, you can help kids choose shows, watch with them and interact with the media. Help the child analyze and think critically about what they just experienced. Don’t have a TV in their room. Just having the TV on while no one is watching seems to do damage.

In the spirit of redundancy, I’ll bring up my correlation vs causation argument here. I am 100% on the bandwagon of no/limited TV. I cringe when I see children hypnotized and transfixed by a screen. However, I’m not sure you can blame increased violence on the actual watching of TV. I think this is a chicken/egg issue. The kind of household where kids watch violent TV creates kids who become violent. I don’t think a present, mindful and engaged parent would allow a young child to watch violence. So, it’s not the TV that’s the issue, but the reason the kid is watching violent TV.

Video games. Kids need physical exercise; video games are consumed in a sedentary position. Exercise, especially aerobic exercise, is fantastic for the brain and increases executive function abilities anywhere from 50-100%. For best results (results that affect executive function), do the exercises with your children. Encouraging an active lifestyle is one of the best gifts you can give your child. (This is SO hard for me because my parents did not encourage exercise or movement at all. It’s a habit that’s been extremely difficult for me to form. Because of my experience, I absolutely agree that it’s important for parents to set this example. I’m envious of the joy others get from exercising!)

Texting. While real data on texting is limited, kids who text often likely don’t get much practice interpreting nonverbal cues, which is a requirement for succeeding in life. Real life is messier and not anonymous like screens. Keep these screens off for as long as possible.

Hyper-parenting. Some parents are so obsessed with their child’s development, they place a high amount of pressure on their child to succeed. However, this actually hurts a child’s intellectual development. Extreme expectations stunt higher-level thinking, as kids will revert to shortcuts or “pony tricks” to please their parents. Such pressure can extinguish curiosity and put appeasement in its place. Finally, consistent anger or disappointment on the part of pushy parents becomes toxic stress for the kids (and a gateway for depression). 

Additional tips:

• Create playrooms filled with music stations, reading, drawing, painting and crafting areas, lots of Legos, and cardboard boxes. Make a math and science station, include a toy microscope. Change the contents of stations on a regular basis.

• Play “opposite” day, where your child needs to say the opposite of what you say, e.g., day/night. For other good activities, check out Ellen Galinsky’s Mind in the Making.

• Take a critical look at your behavior. List your behaviors (laugh a lot, talk about weight, watch TV, etc.), rate them and decide which you don’t want your kids to emulate. Make changes.

Happy Babies

As with IQ, a large part of a child’s future happiness is dependent on genetic makeup. Studies show that a large component of happiness is having fulfilling relationships with friends, spouse, family, etc. Friendships are a better predictor than any other variable, and a romantic relationship is necessary for getting to the peak of happiness. The success of interpersonal relationships depends on one’s ability to empathize, regulate emotions and forgive.

Other fundamentals of happiness include being quick to forgive, having an “attitude of gratitude” and performing altruistic acts. Your child’s temperament will play a significant role in her future happiness. It turns out that it’s true that money doesn’t buy happiness – like not at all (unless it lifts someone out of poverty).

I’m a little skeptical of this “money doesn’t buy happiness” bit. I’m actually skeptical of any of these “happiness” studies. How do you measure happiness? It’s such a subjective feeling. People have different interpretations of it, what one considers happy another doesn’t. And while I’m not saying money does or doesn’t buy happiness, it’s hard to imagine, logically, how it wouldn’t be a contributor- not even a litle bit – as the author states.

How you respond to your child’s intense emotions and tantrums can profoundly impact her future happiness. Your ability to detect, react to, promote, and provide instruction about her emotional reactions is one of the greatest predictors of how she will turn out. It affects her ability to empathize with people and thus maintain relationships. Attentive, patient interactivity helps your baby’s emotional stability. It helps foster attachment and the ability to form healthy relationships in the future. 

Parents who consistently apply attention, especially in these early years, statistically raise happier kids.

There are six parenting behaviors that are helpful in responding positively to your child’s strong emotions.

• A warm but demanding parenting style. It’s important to be warm, supportive and accepting with your children, but also have reasonable rules and expectations. Explain rules and encourage your children to state their reactions to them. In short, encourage high levels of independence but expect children to comply with family values.

• Comfort with your own emotions. You have to be comfortable with your own emotions to be comfortable with theirs.  

• Tracking emotions. Starting early, subtly keep track of your kid’s emotions; become keenly attuned to their emotional cues. Notice what works and doesn’t work in reaction to them, to help guide you in the future. This will help you know when kids are happy, sad, afraid, often without asking. It results in an instinctive feel about what is most likely to be helpful, hurtful, or neutral to your child. You will then be able to forecast your child’s likely reactions and not be caught off guard. But be careful to maintain balance; if your child is stifled or smothered, it will affect healthy attachment.

• Verbalize emotions. Establish a habit of labeling emotions early so kids have many examples. Helping kids label emotions and verbalize the feelings associated with them (“We call it being jealous. You wanted Johnny’s truck but you couldn’t have it. You were jealous, and it’s an icky feeling. I get jealous too when…”) makes them better at self-soothing, more able to focus on tasks and have successful peer relationships. Tantrums happen because a child experiences an overwhelming feeling she doesn’t understand and can’t verbalize. Labeling helps her minimize confusion. Adult behaviors influence child behaviors in two ways: by example and through direct intervention. Practice labeling your own emotions by simply stating the feeling out loud. You can do this by yourself, with your spouse or close friends.

• Running towards emotions. Parents with happy kids don’t judge or ignore emotions; they acknowledge them. They know there is no such thing as bad or good emotions—that they don’t make people weak or strong. They only make people human. If you ignore feelings (“It’s ok, it’s no big deal.”) you completely ignore how your kid is feeling and sidestep dealing with intense emotions. Your kid might be thinking, “If this is not supposed to matter, why do I still have this big feeling? There must be something wrong with me.” Parents with happy kids understand that emotions are not a choice (although the reaction to them is, and bad behaviors should be addressed), and they use crises as teachable moments. Some have a list of actions that are and aren’t approved, consistently teaching their kids which choices are appropriate and which are not.

People produce lasting change only in response to a crisis. A problem may seem ridiculously small to the parent, but they don’t need to like the problem to solve it. Replace “potential catastrophe” with “potential lesson.” The consequences of this: Parents become remarkably relaxed in the face of the emotional meltdowns, which gives children a powerful example to emulate, and there are fewer emotional disasters.

• Empathy. Parents who raise happy children show them lots of empathy. For example, the conversation during a tantrum over a broken water fountain could be: “You’re thirsty, aren’t you? Getting a big gulp of cold water would feel so good. I wish the drinking fountain was working.” Verbalize her feelings, validate them and show understanding. The more empathy your child gets, the more socially competent and happier she’ll become. According to research, if 30% of your interactions with your child are empathetic, you’ll raise a happy kid.

We are most likely to maintain deep, long-term relationships with people who are nice: thoughtful, kind, sensitive, empathetic, outward-focused, accommodating, forgiving, and who demonstrate socially appropriate behaviors. If you want your kids to be happy, you will spend lots of time teaching them socially appropriate behaviors.

Last random point: A study of those who played an instrument for at least 10 years, starting before age 7, showed they responded quickly to emotional cues. This suggests that, if you want happy kids later in life, get them started on a musical journey early in life.

As long as you play an active, loving role in shaping behavior, even the most emotionally finicky child will grow up well.

Additional tips:

• Monitor your child’s emotions and jot down descriptions of likes and dislikes. Making a list gets you in the habit of paying attention and noticing changes in behavior. 
• Help make friends and arrange plenty of playdates with a variety of children.
• Verbally speculate about other people’s perspectives in front of your children. For example, you can wonder out loud about why the person behind you in line is so impatient or what the joke is when you see someone laughing. It’s a great way to practice seeing other people’s points of view.
• Read together.

Moral Babies

When children observe bad behavior, they’ve learned it. Even if the behavior is punished, it remains easily accessible in the child’s brain. Therefore, “observational learning” plays a powerful role in moral development. Emotional regulation and executive function are important components of raising a moral child. A child has an innate sense of right and wrong, so how do we get her to that coveted stage of moral internalization? By providing clear, consistent, reasonable rules and by providing positive reinforcement and praise for complying with such rules on a regular basis. You should be warm and loving when administering rules, and they should be fully explained. Compliance rates soar when a child is given a cognitive rationale explaining why the rule and its consequences exist. When rules are not administered in safety, the brain jettisons any behavioral portion except one: escaping the threat.

Every time your child follows the rules, offer praise. Reinforce behavior even before it happens. If you have a child too timid to go out, reinforce when she gets close to the door, then reinforce her behavior when she opens the door, then when she goes outside. This process is called shaping. Praising the absence of bad behavior is just as important as praising good behavior. You can also punish bad behavior, by:

• letting the child make mistakes and suffer the natural consequences of her bad behaviors. (If your kid throws off shoes in a tantrum, don’t argue. Let her walk outside in the snow barefooted.) Children internalize behaviors best when allowed to make their own mistakes and feel the consequences. This is the most effective punishment strategy known.

• “Punishment by removal,” such as taking away a child’s toy or giving her a “time out.”

Either type of punishment can produce enduring changes in behavior. However, it must be done right, otherwise it can cause lasting damage to your child. The punishment should include explaining how the bad behavior affected others (either before or after a rule is broken, “Don’t do ____, or you’ll get time out.”) and how she might offer amends, such as apologizing. Proper administration of punishment is firm, consistent (every time rule is broken), swift (the closer to the infraction, the faster the learning), emotionally safe and consists of a real consequence. This is inductive parenting. No more “Because I said so!” or “Because I’m the parent.”

All kids need rules, but every brain is wired differently, so you need to adapt your discipline strategy accordingly.

The American Psychology Association found spanking causes more behavioral problems than other types of punishment, producing more aggressive, depressed and anxious children with lower IQs.

The link between spanking and behavioral issues is more solid than the link between exposure to lead and IQ. It’s more concrete than the association between secondhand smoke and cancer. Few people argue about these associations; people win lawsuits with associative numbers in those cases. So why is there controversy about spanking? Hitting a kid does not take effort; it’s a lazy form of parenting.

Surveys show that the style of correction kids liked the best was an inductive style spiced with a periodic sprinkling of a display of power. Laissez-faire permissiveness and withdrawal of parental affection came in last. Restrictive but warm is the style statistically most likely to produce the smartest, happiest, and most moral children.

Additional tips:

• Post important rules where the whole family can see.
• Be patient as children rarely internalize rules the first few times.
• Videotape yourself parenting and analyze what you’re doing and how effective your actions are.

Sleeping Babies

There are so many books on baby sleep because everyone’s guessing; we don’t even know the basics. There are many factors that affect a baby’s ability to sleep, like temperament and environmental factors. The author believes that some infants sleep through the night fairly early because they are simply born more capable of it.  

What to do:

The instant your baby shows signs of sleepiness, don’t disrupt the process. If you are holding her, continue. Pay attention to how long it takes her to reach quiet sleep. Give it an extra 10 minutes as an insurance policy, then place baby in her crib.

Having a consistent bedtime routine helps babies fall asleep. Choose a bedtime around 6 months of age. Whatever time you choose, be consistent. Bedtime rituals can be singing, turning down the lights, a bath and nursing. Whatever you do; same content, same order, same place.

The author brings up the big controversy between Nighttime Attachment Parenting (NAP) versus Cry it Out (CIO).  According to NAP, when an infant cries, you should immediately respond. According to CIO, you should wait. NAP advocates say that CIO can result in permanent psychological harm. Both ideas have some merit. CIO methodologies have been the ones most rigorously tested and, to date, there are no published studies demonstrating adverse effects. Despite this, there still isn’t enough research to confirm either approach.

“Graduated extinction” which entails waiting a bit longer to respond each time your baby cries, has undergone the most scientific scrutiny and works quickly if applied consistently. This is true for the spectrum of CIO strategies. With NAP style, the more a parent “rescued” their infant at night, the more sleep problems the infant displayed over time. Studies have found co-sleeping babies cry less; however, parents and infant all sleep poorly with more interruption.

The author is pretty skeptical of the NAP philosophy; we no longer live in a hunter-gatherer society, so why mimic one? Unless your living arrangement requires it, it makes sense to practice approaches that are more consistent with our contemporary lifestyle.

I completely agree with the author’s perspective on this. You can’t take one element of a society (or anything for that matter), apply it somewhere else and assume it works the same. There are so many elements that affect an outcome that taking just one element is, well, elementary. It doesn’t make sense to take one lifestyle choice of our evolutionary ancestors and stick it into a completely different life and time. Evolution happens for a reason. Just because it worked then, doesn’t mean it’s the best option now.

The author suggests “test before you invest.” For the first three months, you should respond to baby on demand. After that, monitor your baby’s sleep habits, monitor her reactions to intervention, at 6 months pick a side—NAP or CIO—deploy and adjust as you learn what works and what doesn’t.

The author does state that, “Researchers and I do not advocate for the unmodified extinction model under any circumstances.”

I didn’t quite understand why the author takes this position. From my understanding, he seemed to believe that any form of CIO is OK. I’m not the biggest fan of CIO—especially with a young baby. I know it’s been studied extensively but, as the author says, there isn’t enough there to make a conclusion. For me, if CIO is, in fact, damaging, it’s a devastating effect. Therefore, I prefer to err on the side of caution, not to take the chance and approach CIO in a very specific and particular way (which I’ll write about separately).  

Summary

All in all, I think this book is a great read to help guide parents raise smart, happy and moral humans. As with other books I like, it wasn’t written with religious zeal. However, I found the book often waded into the “correlation, therefore causation” territory and I didn’t quite buy it. That being said, the book is not overrun by anecdotael evidence, though I found some of the studies used to be stretched a bit thin. Despite its minor flaws, I do utterly respect the author and this book and take his recommendations seriously. They simply just make sense and he makes a generally compelling argument for them.

I decided not to include the benefits and risks for each activity the author mentions, and instead make one big list. If you follow many of these recommendations, you will increase the likelihood that your child will: be more creative, less stressed, more social, more successful. more able to cope, less prone to acts of violence, more loyal to parents and parental wishes out of connection, not fear; have a better memory, better emotional regulation, higher academic achievement, greater empathetic responses, fewer incidences of pediatric depression and anxiety disorders, fewest infectious diseases, deeper friendships.