Smart Parenting, Smarter Kids: The One Brain Book You Need to Help Your Child Grow Brighter, Healthier, and Happier - Softcover

David Walsh, Ph.D., is one of the world’s leading authorities on children, teens, parenting, family life, and the impact of technology on children’s health and development. He founded the internationally renowned National Institute on Media and the Family. He is on the faculty of the University of Minnesota and lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Monica. They have three adult children and five grandchildren. 

Smart Parenting, Smarter Kids ONE

Our Children’s Amazing Brains

The phone rang as I returned to my office.

“Hello, this is Dr. Dave Walsh,” I said as I sat down at my desk.

“Hi, my name is Eleanor Stephenson. My husband and I were at your seminar in Lake Crystal, Minnesota, a few weeks back. We found it helpful, and I wonder if you have a minute to give me some advice.”

“I’ll try,” I replied.

“Thanks,” she said. “Our son Jeremy is in second grade and we are having a problem with his teacher. I really need help knowing what to do.”

“What problem are you having?” I asked.

“Well, we had parent conferences the other night,” she began, “and Jeremy’s teacher told us that Jeremy had difficulty paying attention in class. I didn’t say anything, but I knew this couldn’t possibly be true. Jeremy can play video games for hours on end without blinking. It’s clear Jeremy can pay attention, so I think the problem is with his second grade classroom—it’s too boring. Do you have a suggestion for how I can handle this?”

“Well, Eleanor, there may be another explanation for what’s happening. It may not be the teacher’s problem. As a parent,” I said, “you, too, have probably noticed how hard it is to get your kid to pay attention to math homework, while he has no problem sticking with a video game for hours on end. This is explained by the way the brain pays attention. The brain is equipped with two attention systems. One, reactive attention, is located deep within the brain’s emotional center, automatic, instinctive, and involuntary. When something moves or is very stimulating in our environment, we automatically react and focus our attention, very handy when our ancestors needed to watch out constantly for danger.

“The second system is called ‘focused attention’ and is located in a different part of the brain, called the prefrontal cortex or the executive center, right behind our forehead. We use the focused attention system when we decide to pay attention. Unlike reactive attention, this one is not automatic. Focused attention is only developed with a lot of practice. It’s very important because we need focused attention to learn things that aren’t naturally stimulating. For example, word rhyming, a second grade reading skill, is not particularly exciting, learned only by listening closely, paying attention to word endings, and practicing words.”

Eleanor and her husband realized that their son’s reactive attention was engaged with video games, while his classroom work needed focused attention.

The distinction between reactive and focused attention is important to keep in mind—really important when we listen to teachers talk about their struggles to keep kids’ attention these days. We’ll explore in chapter 4 the important relationships between attention and memory and learning. For now this one example illustrates how recent brain science discoveries can help parents, teachers, coaches, or anyone interested in kids do a better job of raising healthy, successful children in the 21st century.

Parenting and our children’s amazing brains—that’s the focus of this book. I’ll explain what brain scientists have learned about children’s brains from prenatal development through the teen years. Whether you’re pregnant with your first child or trying to figure out why adolescents act the way they do, you’ll find important information and practical advice. The emphasis throughout will be on science made practical. The chapters will include checklists, tool kits, sample dialogues, conversation starters, and lists of dos and don’ts.
Unlocking the Brain’s Secrets

Consider a newborn’s three-quarter-pound brain and the teenager’s three-pound wonder: their brains control everything they do and who they are. As director of mundane but critical tasks like regulating body temperature and heart rate as well as higher functions like solving quadratic equations and falling in love, the brain works even when we’re sound asleep. While it occupies only 2 percent of our body mass, the brain burns 20 percent of our body’s energy. Only recently have we begun to discover how the brain really works or develops.

The brain is a particularly difficult organ to investigate. We can’t easily observe it, so we have to try other methods to explain the activity inside our heads. For centuries scientists devised theories, based not on direct observation of a living brain, but indirectly, on how people acted.

Sigmund Freud, for example, developed a very elaborate theory of brain functions from the behaviors he observed. After Freud’s ideas were published in the early 1900s, many others advanced their own pro- or anti-Freudian theories. Theories on the mind got so confused that mid-20th-century psychologist B. F. Skinner declared all these theories a waste of time. He called the brain the “black box” and claimed that behavior, not the mind, should be a scientist’s focus because we could measure behavior directly.

At the time, Skinner, the “father of behaviorism,” may have been right, but in the 1970s scientists invented machines including CT scans, MRIs, PET scans, and SPECT scans, that allowed researchers to peer inside the brain without harming it or its owner.

In the past forty years these machines have greatly improved and now provide high-resolution images, pulling back the curtain in front of the brain and enabling physicians to diagnose brain problems and dramatically improve treatment. We’ve also gained a wealth of information about the development and function of normal brains.

The new information about children and youth brain development is especially exciting. My book Why Do They Act That Way? A Survival Guide to the Adolescent Brain for You and Your Teen is entirely about how the teenage brain works. My previous book, No. Why Kids—of All Ages—Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It, pays special attention to the critical importance of self-discipline—how children learn to balance and manage the brain’s hardwired drive to seek pleasure. The book you are now reading expands my inquiries into children’s behavior to cover a wider range of brain-related topics.

We learn new brain secrets every day, and in the process even correct some mistaken beliefs. As recently as the mid-1990s, for example, students of the brain were taught that the only brain cells we will ever possess are the ones we are born with, that we never grow any more. Today, we know that isn’t true. The 1998 discovery of adult neurogenesis, the birth of new brain cells later in life, overturned that long-held theory.
Brain Science Saves the Life of a Teenager

Our friends Austin and Pam, parents of fourteen-year-old Jacob, benefited from this new brain information. The surprise neuroscience lesson happened one night while we visited over coffee and dessert.

“How are the kids?” I asked, as my wife, Monica, and I sat talking with them.

“Jenny is fine but Jacob’s driving us nuts,” Austin replied. “It’s almost like he’s had a personality transplant. He’s become more and more sullen, withdrawn, and grumpy. Our trip to Des Moines last week for my nephew’s wedding was miserable. All Jacob wanted to do all weekend was to listen to his iPod. He was downright rude to half the relatives.”

“Last night,” added Pam, “I asked him to take the garbage out after dinner. You’d think I asked him to clean the entire house. Jacob rolled his eyes, sighed out loud, and mumbled about doing everything around the house. I bit my tongue because I didn’t want to say something I would regret. He acts so annoyed whenever we ask him to do anything.”

Having survived three teenagers ourselves we had a pretty good idea of what was going on with Jacob. “Welcome to adolescence,” I tried, to lighten the mood a bit.

“Your kids were never like that,” Pam said as she looked at Monica.

“That’s just because you didn’t see them at home,” Monica replied. “Teenagers can be a little surly with adults, but they usually reserve the vintage collection for their own parents. I still remember all three kids’ predictable response when I asked for help: ‘Why do I have to do it?’”

“Parenting teens can be really difficult,” I chimed in. “It helps to try not to take it personally. Realize that right now his feelings probably confuse him as much as you. The issue is not really you,” I said. “It’s what’s going on in Jacob’s brain.”

“You mean hormones?” asked Pam.

“Hormones are only part of the picture,” I explained. “There’s a lot more going on in the teen brain than hormones. Brain science now tells us that adolescent brains are works in progress, a series of major construction zones. The changes going on inside their brains explain a lot of the moodiness, impulsivity, risk taking, and anger.”

Our neighbors’ response echoed that of many parents when they discover what brain science has learned about the teen brain. As Pam joked that night, “This little brain lesson might have saved the life of a fourteen-year-old. I was beginning to weigh a prison sentence against putting up with Jacob’s surliness. So do we just put up with him until his brain finishes growing?”

“Well, yes and no,” I responded. “Knowing what’s going on in Jacob’s brain can help us not take everything personally. On the other hand, we can’t become doormats for disrespect. Cutting teenagers some slack doesn’t mean a free pass for bad behavior. Adolescents need to learn accountability, too, and it’s our job to teach them. It’s a real balancing act.” We’ll explore more about the teen brain and how parents can strike that balance in chapter 10.
Brain Science 101

Austin and Pam had a ringside seat to one of the brain’s many growth spurts. A few brain basics will help us understand these spurts. The brain is essentially a vast electrical system. Right now, as you read this book, your brain is generating enough electrical power to light a twenty-watt lightbulb. That familiar lightbulb-over-the-head cartoon image turns out to be accurate after all. The basic unit of this electrical system is the brain cell, or neuron. While brain cells come in different sizes and shapes, they share a common structure, including a cable or axon with branches at each end. One set of branches is called dendrites and the other synaptic buttons. Electrical charges enter the neuron through one branch, zip down the cable, and exit out a branch at the other end.

The number of brain cells is quite impressive. An infant arrives in the world with about 100 billion brain cells, each with an average of ten thousand branches. A quick calculation reveals that the possible number of contact points in a newborn baby’s brain is one quadrillion. Trying to compute the possible number of match-ups with these quadrillion connections would stymie the most brilliant mathematician.

Consider this comparison. A piano has eighty-eight keys. How many possible songs or tunes can be composed with those eighty-eight keys in different combinations and sequences? Of course, the answer is “Who knows?” So if we can’t figure out the potential number with eighty-eight keys can you imagine the possibilities with one quadrillion? The late Nobel laureate Francis Crick, one of the co-discoverers of DNA, once said that the possible number of neural network configurations in one brain exceeds the number of atoms in the universe. The possibilities are limitless.

When a baby arrives in the world, however, only 17 percent of her brain cells are wired together. That leaves the rest—the vast majority—to connect in the days, weeks, months, years, and decades that follow. Two forces drive the wiring: genetics and experience. I like to think of genetics as the hard wiring and experience the soft wiring.

How a baby learns language provides a good example of the combination of hard wiring and soft wiring in action. As new parents know, their bundle of joy arrives perfectly capable of making noise. Vocalizing is hardwired. However, which of the world’s 6,500 languages a baby will eventually speak is not hardwired. Her language is shaped by her experiences, that is, the sounds she hears. (A whole chapter on how she acquires language follows later in this book.)

A child’s experiences are a key factor in how her brain gets wired. Neuroscientists have a phrase to underline the importance of experience in brain wiring: the neurons that fire together wire together. The more often neurons fire together, the stronger the connection becomes. Or as University of California, Los Angeles neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz puts it, “the survival of the busiest.” An elementary grade teacher drilling her students on basic math facts is an everyday example of this important brain principle in action. After a pupil repeats that 3 plus 2 equals 5 often enough the connection is made, and that fact becomes fixed in memory for easy retrieval.

I was explaining brain basics to a group of third graders at the Park Tudor School in Indianapolis recently and asked one little girl what her favorite sport was. “Tennis” was her immediate reply. “That’s a great example,” I said. “Tell me,” I continued, “what was it like when you first tried to play tennis?”

“I could barely hold the racket,” she said, smiling. “And I couldn’t even hit the ball.”

“Well, now that you’re in the third grade, how is your tennis game?” I asked.

“My dad says I’m getting pretty good,” she answered.

“How did you get from not being able to hold the racket to being pretty good?”

“I practiced.”

This little girl is a brilliant neuroscientist, because when we “practice,” the scientific principle “the neurons that fire together wire together” goes into action. Here’s my rule: Whatever the brain does a lot of is what the brain gets good at. That’s true whether we’re talking about studying math, playing the trumpet, or working on our tennis game.
Mental Experience Counts, Too

The brain isn’t just shaped by our actions. Even thinking wires the brain. When Alvaro Pascual-Leone was a scientist at the National Institutes of Health, he invited people who had never played the piano to be part of an experiment. After teaching them all how to play a simple tune, he randomly assigned them to two groups. The first group kept practicing the tune for two more hours. The second group just imagined playing the piece without so much as laying a finger on a keyboard. He mapped the brain activity of both groups before, during, and after the experiment and amazingly, the ones who had imagined playing the tune exhibited the same brain changes as those who had actually played. A pianist still needs to practice, but thinking had rewired their brains. When world-class athletes imagine their performance before the competition starts, they aren’t just concentrating. The neurological starting gun has already fired.
The Brain’s Growth Spurts

However, all experiences aren’t equal in wiring the brain. Some experiences are more important than others. Experiences with the greatest impact on brain wiring are those that happen during a brain’s growth spurts. “What’s a brain growth spurt?” you might wonder. Well, we know that our billions of brain cells wire together into circuits. We don’t know our total number of circuits, but we do know they develop in spurts at different times and spe...