7 Ways To Build A Brighter Baby

Give your little one a brain boost with these 7 ways to build a brighter baby

- Sally Michener

New insights into how a baby’s brain grows show that parents can have a profound effect on how smart their child later becomes. The brain grows more during infancy than at any other time, tripling its weight and reaching approximately 60% of its adult size by one year. As the brain grows, nerve cells called neurons proliferate, resembling miles of tangled electrical wires. Your infant is born with much of this wiring unconnected. During the first year, these neurons grow larger, learn to work better and connect up with one another to make circuits that enable baby to think and do more things.

The new and exciting field of neurobiology tells us that the more connections the nerve cells make, the smarter the child’s brain. Smart-start parenting means helping your baby’s brain make the right connections. The parenting style you practise, the way you play with your little one, and the food you feed your infant all stack up to be important blocks for building your baby’s brain.

1. A SMART WOMB START

At the moment sperm meets egg, your baby’s brain growth takes off. In fact, a baby’s brain develops faster during the nine months in mother’s womb than at any other time in the child’s life. The development of the foetal nervous system is affected (for better or worse) by what’s in mother’s blood during pregnancy. Inhaling or ingesting substances called neurotoxins—such as cigarette smoke, excessive alcohol and many kinds of drugs—has been shown to harm the baby’s brain development and increase the risk of having learning and behavioural problems later on.