Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five QUOTES

41 " If you look at 4-year-olds, they are constantly asking questions. But by the time they are 6½ years old, they stop asking questions because they quickly learn that teachers value the right answers more than provocative questions. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

42 " Maybe you saw this soft-drink commercial. The camera follows a pleasant-looking, college-age young man at a social event in a large house. It’s the holidays, and he is busy introducing you to his various friends and family, singing a song, and passing out soft drinks. There’s his mom, his sis, his brother, his “surprisingly cool stepmother,” and the two kids his stepmom had before meeting his dad, plus aunts, cousins, office mates, his best friend, his judo coach, his allergist, even his Twitter fans. It was the clearest example I have seen that the definition of the American family is changing. Rapidly. It "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

43 " In fact, one of the biggest predictors of marital bliss appears to be the agreement to have kids in the first place. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

44 " Your meta-emotion philosophy turns out to be very important to your children’s future. It predicts how you will react to their emotional lives, which in turn predicts how (or if) they learn to regulate their own emotions. Because these skills are directly related to a child’s social competency, how you feel about feelings can profoundly influence your child’s future happiness. You have to be comfortable with your emotions in order to make your kids comfortable with theirs. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

45 " One of the hardest behaviors to quench in anyone is a habit that is only occasionally rewarded. Want to keep a gambler at a slot machine longer? Make sure the payout schedule is random. Studies show that people who experience random rewards in response to a behavior cling to that behavior much more solidly than those who don’t. This "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

46 " Parents face many issues on a daily basis in the raising of kids, but not all of them affect how their children turn out. There is one that does. How you deal with the emotional lives of your children—your ability to detect, react to, promote, and provide instruction about emotional regulation—has the greatest predictive power over your baby’s future happiness. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

47 " productive kid and a juvenile delinquent. Parents with the happiest kids started this habit early in their parenting careers and then continued it over the years. They kept track of their children’s emotions the way some people keep track of their stock portfolios or favorite baseball team. They did not pay attention in a controlling, insecure style but in a loving, unobtrusive way, like a caring family physician. They knew when their kids were happy, sad, fearful, or joyful, often without asking. They could read and interpret with astonishing accuracy their child’s verbal and nonverbal cues. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

48 " Experiments show that infants just entering the third trimester will move or alter their heart rate, or both, in response to a strong light beamed at the womb. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

49 " At birth, your baby can distinguish between the sounds of every language that has ever been invented. Professor Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, discovered this phenomenon.

She calls kids at this age “citizens of the world”. Chomsky puts it this way: We are not born with the capacity to speak a specific language. We are born with the capacity to speak any language.

Unfortunately, things don’t stay that way. By their first birthday, Kuhl found, babies can no longer distinguish between the sounds of every language on the planet. They can distinguish only between those to which they have been exposed in the past six months.

A Japanese baby not exposed to “rake” and “lake” during her second six months of life cannot distinguish between those two sounds by the time she is 1 year old. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

50 " is to teach her impulse control in her early "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

51 " Infants track these characteristics of language at an astonishingly early age. At birth, your baby can distinguish between the sounds of every language that has ever been invented. Professor Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, discovered this phenomenon. She calls kids at this age “citizens of the world.” Chomsky puts it this way: We are not born with the capacity to speak a specific language. We are born with the capacity to speak any language. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

52 " 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: "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

53 " taurine, "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

54 " The effect is so powerful that what you eat during the last stages of pregnancy can influence the food preferences of your baby. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

55 " Create a Chocolate Factory There may be as many different types of playrooms as there are families, but every one of them should have the following design element: lots of choices. A place for drawing. A place for painting. Musical instruments. A wardrobe hanging with costumes. Blocks. Picture books. Tubes and gears. Anything where a child can be safely let loose, joyously free to explore whatever catches her fancy. Did you see the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? If so, you may have been filled with wonder at the chocolate plant, complete with trees, lawns, and waterfalls—a totally explorable, nonlinear ecology. That’s what I mean. I am focusing on artistic pursuits because kids who are trained in the arts "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

56 " What to say instead: “You really worked hard” What should Ethan’s parents have done? Research reveals a simple solution. Rather than praising him for being smart, they should have praised him for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said, “I’m so proud of you. You’re such a bright kid.” That appeals to a fixed, uncontrollable intellectual trait. It’s called “fixed mindset” praise. His parents should have said, “I’m so proud of you. You must have studied a lot.” This appeals to controllable effort. It’s called “growth mindset” praise. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

57 " The only time I ever felt qualified to be a parent was before I had kids. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

58 " Here’s something you can try at home if you are eight months pregnant or if you have a baby younger than 5 months old. If the infant has already arrived, place him on his back. Then gently lift up both of his legs, or both of his arms, and let them drop back to the bed of their own weight. His arms will usually fling out from the sides of his body, thumbs flexed, palms up, with a startled look on his face. This is called the Moro reflex. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

59 " What you praise defines what your child perceives success to be. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five

60 " think that grown-ups create children. The reality is that children create grown-ups. They become their own person, and so do you. Children give so much more than they take. "

― John Medina , Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five