A scientifically responsible parenting guide

As a mom-to-be, I’m thirsty for knowledge about baby. The author, John Medina is a developmental molecular biologist with two teenage sons. According to him, both genes and environment contribute to the development of baby’s brain. Or to say, child rearing is about nature and nurture. In this book, he teaches rookie parents how to raise smart, happy, moral and sleepy baby based on abundant research and science with numerous real-life examples. I think it is scientifically responsible, at the same time, quite readable because of the author’s witty writing.

During the first half of pregnancy, the best thing for the baby is to leave it alone. The very limited thing the mom-to-be can do for her baby is to take the right amount of folic acid which helps the brain development and reduce the risk of birth defect. Entering the trimester, the baby developed to have senses. At this stage, parents-to-be can start to play Mozart to mom’s belly and the baby remembers after birth! With the coming of the new family member, most couples experience a huge drop in marital quality because of sleep loss, social isolation, unequal distribution of workload and depression. But hostility between parents can harm a newborn’s developing brain and nervous system, which the new parents should be on guard.

To make the baby smart, happy with moral awareness and good sleeping habit, one thing parents should always practice is empathy. To have a smart baby, the four essential ingredients are breastfeeding, guided play, talking to the baby (a lot) and praising effort not intelligence. Meanwhile, one thing parents should be recommended about screen is that the amount of TV time for babies under 2 is zero. Babies should have interactions with real persons, not the machine, which will bring little benefit for the development of the brain, if not harm. To make children happy, parents should use their empathy to respect their kids’ emotions. Emotions don’t make people weak and they don’t make people strong. They only make people human. Kids experience emotions but to verbalize them is a learned skill, which should be taught by empathic parents. Another skill parents should teach their kids is how to make friends because the single best predictor of happiness? Having friends. To have a moral baby, the core is firm discipline with a warm heart. The three most important tools to raise a moral baby are 1) clear, consistent rules and rewards; 2) swift punishment; 3) rules that are explained. But kids should not only feel the discipline but also the love and care of caregivers. The most frustrating for new parents is that babies sleep has no pattern. Whether to adopt the best-selling author and pediatrician William Spear’s Night Attachment Parenting (NAP) or to implement Dr. Richard Ferber’s Cry-It-Out (CIO) depends on the parents’ choice. Every brain is wired differently and there is no one-fits-all answer for babies’ sleep issues. But frustrating parents should know that baby is not your enemy in his struggle to learn to sleep independently, just a very inexperienced ally. Adults should put the constant theme of this book in mind: babies are people, but they are not adults. Parents have to teach them everything.