How to Make Your Baby Smarter

In our society, parents are continually trying to find ways to give their child an advantage. One advantage that parents want their kids to have is brains. Trends including reading to your baby and playing classical music to your baby in order to make them smarter have come about, but does it really work?

While researching I have determined that “making a baby smarter” doesn’t mean that you are able to increase the baby’s IQ, it means you are trying to make the baby’s brain develop faster. Infancy is the most fragile and essential time for the brain to develop. The brain doubles in size and grows to 60% of its adult mass in one year (Sears). In the field of Neurobiology, smartness is measured by the number of connections a neuron makes (Sears). A baby is born with most of its neurons unconnected, so in the first year a lot of those connections can be aided by the parents. The connections of these neurons create circuits and allow for the baby to better think and do things (Sears).

Parents performing simple tasks such as making eye contact with the baby and making faces will cause the image to be sent to the visual information part of the brain and eventually the motor part of the brain because the baby will try to react. Therefore, a circuit will be made by the neurons connecting the visual part of the brain to the motor part of the brain.

In extreme cases of neglect and abuse parents can also be responsible for inhibition of their child’s development. On the Anderson Cooper show, child psychologist, Bruce Perry, discussed the effects of neglect on babies. He said that without any affection or interaction the baby’s brain and neural connections will atrophy. This can lead to lifelong mental impairment and irreversible effects.

Sears. How baby brains grow. Dr.Sears Family Essentials. 2011. http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/child-rearing-and-development/smart-start/how-baby-brains-grow