Word: parently
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...does anyone really want to be brilliant all the time? Though heightened intelligence would seem to be a universally desirable goal, not all tasks and stages of life demand the amped-up cognitive speed and processing power the new regimens and medications may make possible. Becoming a parent, for example. I read somewhere once that many mothers and fathers suffer a rapid, appreciable drop in IQ after their babies are born. This, if true, is a huge gift from nature. Diapering, feeding and comforting little ones demands dumb endurance, in my experience, not penetrating cleverness. Thinking too clearly while cleaning...
...unspoken assumption behind most of those products is that stimulation is good and that more stimulation is even better. But that's not necessarily so, says Meredith Small, an anthropologist at Cornell University and author of Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent. In fact, she says, "there's a growing thought that maybe Americans are overstimulating their babies, or stimulating them in the wrong ways...
There's a lesson there for any parent who wants to encourage early learning. Most experts agree that what matters most is not what toy the baby plays with but the ways in which you interact with your child. "There's no question that the experiences a child has in its first year are crucial for cognitive, emotional and physical development," says Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist at Chicago Medical School and author of What's Going On in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life. "But the good news is none of this...
That's because babies are remarkably attuned to emotions. The best?and easiest?gift a parent can give his or her child is relaxed time when the parent is focused on the baby and follows the baby's lead. If the baby grabs at waxed paper, the adult can repeat the word paper and show him or her how it makes noise or how it can be crumpled. "The infant brain craves novel stimulation, but that can be found in ordinary nonstructured, nonmarketed things around the house," says Ross Thompson, a psychologist at University of California at Davis...
...When a 9-month-old raises his arms to be picked up by Daddy, that demonstrates an incredibly complex chain of learning," says Claire Lerner, director of parent education at Zero to Three, a national nonprofit focused on early-childhood development. "First the child has to have an emotional connection to his father. Then he has to form an idea: I want to be picked up. Then he has to know to raise his arms. In that tiny vignette, you can see how complicated a baby's development...