** 15th book of 2020: Science Says… Emotions Matter **

Parenting is about brain development. This isn’t a science, it’s an art. Yet like most toddler ‘artists’, we parents don’t have much experience or instruction, making our art something only a parent could love. Indeed, beyond our own children, most of our experience with parenting is the n=1 exercise of remembering what our parents did for us. So even if parenting is an art, I’d like to rely on the science. Unlike Expecting Better (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2809106496?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1), which takes an economist-skeptic’s view of things that parents shouldn’t do, brain-rules takes a credulous approach to the meagre state of the literature when it comes to parenting and what matters to kids.

From the author, * Studies must have been published in the literature and successfully replicated. * like What’s Going on In There (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3537564424?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1), the author also takes an overly credulous approach to the studies cited, but as a broad understanding of what science can tell us, Brain Rules for Baby is excellent. Medina summarizes the studies, and provides the frameworks in an actionable bulletized list. Just what the parent-scientist ahem parent-artist in me would like to read.

For intelligence, Medina lists seven key ingredients. This is like a stew: * There were only two ingredients needed to pull off the soup. One was the quality of the meat, the other was the quality of the gravy. … like mom’s stew, human intelligence has two essential ingredients: memory and improvisation. * But there are 5 additional elements that are critical to overall intelligence: * 1. Desire to explore, 2. self control, 3. creativity, 4. verbal communication, and 5. non-verbal communication. * Medina goes through studies on how mental development from learning ASL (results look good, but not replicated), to Tools of the Mind program (further studies are less promising than the ones Medina cites). Perhaps what I appreciate the most throughout the book is the subtle turning of attention from raw intelligence to teaching children about relationships: * Human learning, in it’s most native state, is primarily a relational exercise. * Of course it’s not that simple, everything in the brain is connected in one way or another, even vocabulary relies on motor skills: *infants did not develop sophisticated vocabulary until their fine motor finger coordination improved. *

To discuss helping kids have a happy life, Medina relies on Vaillant’s analysis (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2809132254) which focuses on the quality of relationships, and Medina and even provides a compact framework for what happiness is:

3 Definitions of Happiness:

  1. Emotional Happiness (transient)
  2. Moral Happiness (intertwined with virtue, eudaimonia)
  3. Judgemental Happiness (happy about a specific think) This is achieved through following Gottman’s principles (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10650879-the-science-of-trust) on meta-emotional attitudes:

Positive meta-emotional attitudes:
a. Do not judge emotions b. acknowledge the reflexive nature of emotions. c. acknowledge that behavior is a choice, even though emotion is not d. they see a crisis as a teachable moment.

The best way to help children have positive relationships? Demonstrate to them what a positive relationship is, reconcile deliberately and demonstrate empathy. Learning to make friends takes years of practice.

Brain Rules for Baby is also the first book that actually tells me in context what it means to be an authoritative parent: a combination of having high standards, along with being responsive to children’s needs. For reference, the ‘four types’ of parenting styles that are highly predictive of children’s outcomes and line are:

  1. Authoritarian: Unresponsive + demanding
  2. Indulgent: Responsive + undemanding
  3. Neglectful: Unresponsive + undemanding
  4. Authoritative: Responsive + Demanding I just wish that every book on parenting had this framework, and the science supporting it, in the preface. Yet here I am, 15 books into my parenting journey and this is the first time I’ve come across it. There were a few more useful frameworks that I wanted to include, but it’s better just to reread this book in a few years. There’s still plenty of the art to learn, but I’m happy to have some evidence as a canvas to start painting.