Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Parents and caregivers strive daily to understand and support the development of their infant or young child. They feel that by having the infant listen to classical music while in the womb or providing a baby with toys and DVD's dedicated to making them academic all stars, they are setting their children up for future success. They feel helpless when a child seems to be crying uncontrollably or anxious when their youngster does not seem to develop at the same pace as that of a friend's child. Almost all struggle with the cognitive thought processes and emotional development of a child and feel helpless when they are not sure how to respond to certain scenarios. Enter John J. Medina's book "Brain Rules for Baby, How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five" as a guidebook for success.
Doctor John Medina, a famed developmental molecular biologist, tackles many of the issues that parents face dealing with the raising of small children. He lists five separate areas for discussion: pregnancy, relationship with the spouse, smart baby, happy baby, and moral baby and has identified twenty-two brain rules that parents should understand and follow if they desire to raise a healthy and well-adjusted child. Though it may seem daunting to read a book written by a scientist, Medina keeps the technical vernacular to a minimum and utilizes many stories from Internet blogs and his own experiences as a father of two boys.
The book begins with a look at the development of the child in the womb, with a preponderance of the information covering the physical and emotional development of the child. Medina dispels many of the myths associated with the purchase of brain enhancement devices and provides a general description of how a baby steps through the processes of development. Although much of the information appears to be general knowledge, Medina approaches the topics from a more scientific approach, using case studies and published medical information to affirm his beliefs. Of keen interest is his information on how a stressed mother can actually affect the development of her child's brain in the third trimester. Medina shows that children born from mothers that had intense stress during this period of pregnancy can have lower IQ scores, problems with motor skill development, behavioral issues, and even have a smaller brain. The information is thought provoking and frightening. He provides steps and techniques to mitigate stress and tips on how the father can assist his wife during this important time.
In his second category, relationships, Medina tackles a topic that few parents rarely receive enough information about. Medina begins this section by highlighting the fact that happy marriages equate to happy babies. Though the relationship may suffer due to the new edition in the family, Medina offers counsel and suggestion on how new parents can work to keep their marriage strong through love, empathy, and compassion. During this phase of an infant's development, they are extremely receptive to stressors and challenges in their environment, leading into Medina's second rule for this topic "the brain seeks safety above all". He discusses how humans have evolved over centuries and that when parents are constantly engaged in combat with one another the infant's brain suffers due to the release of stress hormones. He encourages parents that may have an argument in front of a child to make sure that when they apologize, they do so in the baby's field of vision. By doing so, the infant learns about conflict resolution and witnesses both sides of an altercation. His last statement about relationships "what is obvious to you is obvious to you" further illustrates the need for parents to have active and open communication channels. When one parent expects a certain outcome from the other, they need to ensure they request it be so.
On the development of a smart baby, Medina contradicts many of popular culture's perceptions about what a smart baby is capable of. He compels parents to rethink their position on certain aptitude tests, such as the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) assessment. Medina takes a more phased approach to the education of a young mind, highlighting areas such as executive function and impulse control as better predictors of a child's future intelligence. By incorporating the studies and research of many famed developmental psychologists, Medina challenges the notion that any standardized testing for a young child is misleading and can be potentially harmful. He identifies three key areas that parents need to remember; the brain cares about survival before learning, intelligence is more than IQ, and face time, not screen time. In this topic, Medina empirically states that children should not view any sort of television before the age of two. His rationale for this is sound; television lacks the physical depth of human interaction. A child that views television before the age of two has difficulty making the connection between characters and does not witness the non-verbal gestures inherent in face to face communication. By staying engaged with a child, using a wide ranging vocabulary, and challenging children to express creativity through play and art, the brain will develop into a more powerful cognitive tool, enabling the child to be more involved in their world and allowing for free flowing thought. He follows these thoughts with cautionary tales on what not to do with young children, particularly when it comes to expectation management. Often, parents attempt to push a child to complete tasks and solve problems that are out of their depth of comprehension. Medina cautions parents that pushing a child before he or she is ready is not only a fruitless endeavor but can actually be harmful to their child's brain development. His final thoughts on the subject of a smart baby include such ideas as guided play, praise effort over intelligence, and avoidance of learned helplessness and sedentary lifestyles.
It is a seemly tricky path to navigate but raising a happy child is not an overly complex evolution as described by Medina. Though he identifies new research that may point to a genetic relationship between a child's maximum level of happiness, he provides expert advice on items that assist in the process. The single biggest predictor of future happiness is the amount of friends a child has. Children that have many friends are more capable of regulating their emotions, identifying problems that other children face, and displaying empathy to those around them. Medina supports this statement by providing information on how the brain deals with emotions by using them as "Post-it notes" for how someone is dealing with a given situation. A child's ability to filter and prioritize different emotions from a varying set of people reflects a higher level of maturity and development; those that cannot do this normally suffer from personal emotional issues and therefore tend to be depressed. To further develop the discussion about emotional regulation, Medina covers steps that parents should take when dealing with their children. The overarching theme for this discussion is involvement; the child is looking to the parent to respond to their emotional needs. How the parent handles the situation reflects directly in how the child handles emotions with others. Medina cites Vgotsky's cognitive development principles in this section to illustrate how important community is to the development of a child's emotional response. Medina states, "how parents deal with their toddlers intense emotions is a huge factor in how happy they will be as adults", further illustrating the need to engage and deal with a child's emotions head on. Though he encourages active participation in the handling of these emotions, Medina cautions that parents should address emotions but not judge them. By asking children questions, encouraging them to engage in thought, and providing alternate solutions, parents provide their children with social mediation.
In the last topic of the book, Medina discusses the idea of a moral baby and addresses some key issues concerning the discipline of children. To have a smart, happy, and moral child it is imperative they are raised with discipline and warmth. This does not mean corporal punishment; Medina explains that children that are spanked are more likely to show aggressive tendencies by age five; he also dubs it "lazy parenting". By being firm, fair, and resolute with children, Medina argues that children will be more likely to not repeat offensive behavior. He challenges parents to set reasonable expectations, be consistent, and to be swift with punishment when a violation occurs. He also favors explaining why a particular act is inappropriate; in doing so, the child internalizes the rationale and will benefit from knowing why rules and consequences exist.
As a father of a three-year-old son, I had a deep personal reason to read this book. I found it rather informative, easy to read, and constantly engaging. Medina's thoughts are deeply moving, backed by years of evidence and research and his delivery was impeccable. I have since recommended this book to a number of my friends and co-workers and frequently find myself citing bits of Medina's information around the office and while socializing with friends. It has changed the way I approach parenting with my son and has highlighted a number of issues that led to my divorce. Though it may seem clichéd to write this, I wish this book had been published five years ago. It was worth every penny that I paid for it and I will continue to use it as a reference for years to come.

As expecting parents, we've been barraged by information and advice regarding how we should parent a child, both in pregnancy and after birth. Navigating through all of the slush to get at some good, hard facts about how babies actually "work" quite simply takes more time than we have to spend. In an ideal world, we'd love to get our hands on the original studies and gain a complete understanding of what academics, physicians, and research institutions know, don't know, and don't quite know yet about infant and child development. But without that option, we found Brain Rules for Baby to be exactly the sort of book we were looking for. Medina draws on research from diverse fields and distills the findings into concise, practical conclusions that are often accompanied by short personal illustrations and funny anecdotes. He then expounds on not only what the research means, but also what it doesn't mean - which to us was just as important. There are a lot of truths floating out there that need confirmation, but also a lot of myths that need breaking. We highly recommend this book to parents, grandparents, childcare workers, or anyone else who has or will have a significant role in a baby's life.

There are many books out on the market akin to "Brain Rules for Baby", and I found this book to be rather pedestrian in its approach. For example, the author pulls many of his teaching points from an Internet site where parents write about their woes. Most of the concepts taught in the book are not new and are found in other books, which I found to be better referenced, written with scientific examples, and generally more interesting. I preferred "Nurtureshock" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, and "What's Going on in There? : How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life" by Lise Eliot.

I own the authors Brain Rules book in audio form and enjoyed that book, and I am a new dad, so I looked forward to this book's release. This book does not disappoint and I think it is an exceptional book for new parents.

Some of the topics that were discussed like the relationship between mom and dad and its effect on the baby was completely unexpected but extremely valuable in my opinion. Even though my wife and I have an excellent relationship whenever I want to make a snarky comment the author of this book has caused me to give pause. If this alone has helped me in a very positive relationship it may be very valuable to others not as blessed with a wonderful relationship.

I was also impressed with the "Tools of the mind section". This section alone made the purchase worthwhile. Even though the program may not be available in your area you can use some of the ideas even in your home.

Obviously if you're looking at this book on Amazon you're probably pregnant or your wife is and are looking for the best ways to nurture the growth of the up-and-coming member of your family, this book is an excellent choice. It's in a breezy easy to read format that will make it a nice read compared to the heavy stereo instruction type books we got at our birthing classes. This is especially important to a sleep deprived new Dad like me.

My compliments to the author or publisher for having text-to-speech enabled on the Kindle edition. There is an audio book version of this book and I was delighted to see that text-to-speech was enabled. I have been highly critical of books with this feature disabled and the author and publisher should be commended for having this feature enabled. A great choice for new parents.

I bought this book to understand what I can do to help the mental development of my four month old daughter. I was looking for information such as the type of play or toys that would be most stimulating for her. The book didn't provide me with many new and implementable ideas (e.g., the small section on play is irrelevant until she is fully communicating). The best thing I took away was 'absolutely no TV before the age of two'.

What I liked:
1. The book is well researched and enjoyable to read. The author provides references and strikes a good balance between mentioning details of the studies and maintaining readability for the average parent.

2. I liked the very high-level organization of the book: What makes a baby smart? What makes him happy? What makes him 'moral'? A lot of emphasis is usually put on smarts, and recently a little more on 'Emotional Intelligence', but highlighting and addressing all three aspects was valuable.

3. The book debunks some myths that can save you time and money and your baby from some boredom (e.g., no 'Baby Einstein' / 'Baby Mozart')

What I didn't like:
1. The proof reading quality of the Kindle edition is embarrassing. There are numerous punctuation mistakes (e.g., 80% of the open quote marks are never closed) and some spelling errors. Not only is the book less readable as a result, it also feels very low quality. Is the book not worth a proper proofing?

2. The author seems to have had a hard time organizing the content. The top level breakdown (smart/happy/moral) works, as does the next level (genetics vs. upbringing), but further sub-sections are inconsistent and have overlaps. To further illustrate this point, the relatively long 'conclusion' chapter attempts to summarize the book with a different structure; it seems that the author couldn't decide which structure to go with and ended up including both. The internal references and terminology also make it difficult to jump to a section and understand the three things to do to have a moral child.

3. Much of the content is common sense (be consistent, don't blow up, explain the rationale behind your rules) or well publicized information (ability to defer gratification is a better predictor of who gets into college than IQ). It's nice to see the backing research, but the author does not provide sufficient specifics on implementation that would be valuable in practice.

In summary, it's a solid book and won't lead you astray, but I expected more given all the 5-star reviews.

Full of sound advice, backed up by scientific evidence, this book is a must-read for parents and grandparents. I recently finished it, and when my husband is done reading it I will be passing it on to my in-laws. It is easy to read without being dumbed down. It gives you the science behind the claims that are made, without the technical jargon that could easily throw you off. Be prepared to question your judgment while reading the book, as well as find flaws in the way you were parented yourself. You'll get a clear picture of what you should and should not do, what is realistic to expect from your child, and how you will need to change yourself (and your relationship) in order to have the best environment in which to raise your baby. I really enjoyed this book, and plan to read it a second time before the baby is born, and hopefully a third time within the first year. There are many lessons in this book that I would not want to forget a word of.

I found this book to be enjoyable and quick to read. The author only includes studies that have been well-tested and provides "rules" based on the results of the studies. The arrangement of the book is very user-friendly. I'll have no problem going back to reference information in the future and will certainly value his advice as I begin the adventure in parenting...

This book is extremely informative and insightful. John Medina is above all a scientist who breaks down the science of the brain and its development. One you understand "how" the brain works its easy to understand "why" certain aspects of its growth is so important. This book is best read during pregnancy but still excellent while your child is an infant. It may not help me make my child a future astronaut or microbiologist but I know what NOT to do and hopefully he'll at least have a happy childhood with minimal struggle! Afterall, happiness is all we really strive for our children.

Amazing. If you thought Brain Rules was a good read, you will love this one. This book answers questions that teachers, parents, and future parents have asked for years! Plus, John Medina addresses many of the myths we hold very sacred in how we raise children. Whether raising a child or working as an early childhood educator, you will turn each page and think to yourself "this is the book we have been waiting on for a very long time." I know kids don't come with an instruction manual...but this book is pretty darn close. As an educator, uncle, cousin, and future parent, the things I have learned from this book will have an impact on my next interactions with little brains...I just keep telling myself, seeds and soil! AWESOME.

I attended a "Brain Rules" seminar by John Medina that was geared toward educators though he spoke of also hosting them for Google and Microsoft. I think I was most fascinated by Brain Rule #1: Exercise. He spoke of both the impact of getting it and not getting it. I immediately advocated his message to my principal and my sedentary brother. As a result, I purchased Brain Rules for Baby. I love being able to point to the research and tell my mother in law--"See! This is why I breastfeed" or my neighbor "See! This is why I don't let my toddler watch television" or my cousin "See! This is why I run while I am 26 weeks pregnant!" I want my children to be happy and to be smart and this book has a lot of enlightening ideas about getting there.