Helpful science for raising a child
As a new parent I thought that I had a pretty good idea of how to raise my child, but soon I began questioning my knowledge, recognizing that it is little more than a collection of personal observations mixed in with the popular tales. As a child grows and develops many questions for how to deal with different developmental stages arise, but where are the reliable answers? Cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology seem to abound with theories and research, but they are of limited merit for parents with no time to delve into such a body of research. This book compensates for some of the discontinuity between scientific knowledge and practice and deserves the praise. In what following I will mention several notable concepts picked up from the book.
Parenting style and environmental circumstances in general have limited, though measurable, effect on child development under good enough conditions. If you do not neglect, abuse or constantly chastise your child, the home conditions are considered good enough. One important recommendation for parents: relax, do not over-think it and enjoy watching how your child's brain develops itself.
Most pregnancies turn out fine as long as they are allowed to run the full course. Expectant mothers should avoid drugs, smocking, alcohol, and stress and should pay attention to their nutrition (not the same as dieting).
Both heredity and the environment determine brain development. The interactions between environmental and hereditary influences are non-linear and are entangled in closed causal feedback loops. Inherited personal characteristics bias a child toward a particular environment which subsequently may cause epigenetic modifications to some regions of the DNA. Therefore, identifying strictly environmental and hereditary causes for a particular behavior when the two components are coupled may be impossible. One conclusion is that heredity or the environment separately does not determine particular developmental outcomes, but the interaction of them does. The possibility to change the environment therefore gives some wiggle room in developmental outcomes.
By birth the addition of new neurons is nearly complete and structural brain development continues by elaboration of axons, dendrites and formation of new synaptic connections. In fact, a huge number of nonselective synapses is being formed during the first year, and unused synapses are gradually pruned during sensitive periods of development. A sensitive period is a developmental interval when experience has a particularly strong effect on the construction of brain circuitry. The quality of a child's experience during sensitive periods can have a permanent effect on the construction of brain circuits. The formation of native language and deficits of visual acuity in infants with surgically removed cataracts are manifestations of the crucial importance of specific experiences during sensitive periods of development.
Sleep enhances remodeling of brain circuits in response to experience and is implicated in memory consolidation. A baby's sleep can be made more regular by establishing a regular feeding schedule. Children learn to associate particular cues with sleep, therefore a consistent bedtime routine is essential for falling asleep.
Most behavioral gender differences are too small to matter because variability within each sex group in most cases is greater than between the sexes. The noticeable differences are that the boys are significantly more active and aggressive than girls. Girl's brains mature earlier; their brains are moderately better at inhibitory control and fine motor coordination when starting school. On the other hand, boys are better at mentally rotating objects through space which predicts performance on the math part of the SAT.
Babies can hear before they are born, starting at the beginning of the third trimester. Loud noises can cause partial hearing loss throughout the lifetime.
Babies who are not snuggled enough in early life become developmentally delayed, which is not an issue in most households.
Flavor preferences learned in infancy can last a lifetime. Small children can be taught to like vegetables after consuming them multiple times. Seeing parents and siblings eat vegetables and participating in the preparation of food seems to work as well. Combining a new flavor with a familiar well-liked flavor also helps to develop new food preferences.
Preschool children's ability to resist temptation is the best known predictor of eventual academic success. Self-control can be improved at any age (no sensitive period there). Parents can help their children to self-regulate by encouraging children to pursue their own interests, i.e., the activities children like to intensely concentrate and engage in.
Play is necessary for forming normal social interaction. Outdoor play improves vision. Children who spend more time outdoors are less likely to become myopic.
Exercise is vital for cognitive ability. Children should be physically active at least an hour a day, and it is best to introduce them to sports which then can become lifelong hobbies.
People cannot perform multiple attention-demanding tasks. Attempting to do multiple things at once merely switches attention.
Babies are born with specific temperaments which show strong heritability, although environment also plays a role in shaping their adult personality. In particular, culture has a strong influence on personality development.
Children are extremely emotional because the parts of the brain which produce raw emotions (amygdala) mature earlier than the parts that interpret and manage them (prefrontal cortex). A child's ability to recognize and regulate emotions improves throughout childhood. Parent should coach their children on experiencing emotions and suggest constructive ways to deal with them.
By age four children develop the capacity to think about other people's state of mind such as emotions, desires and beliefs including false beliefs.
A child is likely to remember more if there is time to process the learned information between training sessions. The most likely reason is that breaks between study sessions allow time for the newly acquired information to be consolidated. Since memories are reconsolidated learning, tests, except for the multiple choice test, improve learning. Also varying timing, location, and the presentation of different examples of the learned concepts improves memory consolidation.
It is much more effective to praise children for their specific efforts, rather than generally. For instance, it is better to say "you did a great job building this castle", than "you are so smart".
Reasoning ability is mostly controlled by genes and modestly by the environment. Educational baby videos are detrimental to development, especially before the age two. Listening to classical music does not make children smarter. However, learning to play a musical instrument has some cognitive benefit.
Children before age 5-6 lack the capacity to distinguish letter "b" from "d" and mirror images along the vertical/horizontal plane in general. Studies show that babies watching videos claiming to teach reading are doing nothing more than forming associations between sounds of the word and symbols on the card, rather than reading them.
A moderate amount of stress is helpful for developing coping skills in children: it should be high enough to notice, but low enough that they can handle it. Chronic stress causes hippocampal damage leading to impaired learning.
Children's behavior is strongly influenced by the positive or negative consequences that immediately follow a certain action. Setting appropriate expectations for behavior and selecting the right consequences (rewards or their absence) will convince your child to follow the household rules. Children yearn for parents' attention, thus completely ignoring the problem behavior is usually an effective way to stop it. Conversely, a parent's approval, expressed enthusiastically should be the best reward for positive behavior rather than toys and food. Another good type of reward is letting children exert more control over their lives: the right to decide what is for dinner, etc. Yelling and spanking are not effective means of behavior modification in the long run and lead to fear and anxiety. In order to suppress undesired behavior, parents need to promote positive behavior by explaining to the child what exactly the positive behavior constitutes and reinforce it when it occurs.