•At the absolute minimum, three to six months of direct parental care is necessary in the period after birth. This is the mandatory period anyone needs to develop parenting skills, to bond with the baby, and to influence the infant brain as only a parent can.
•Full-day childcare places the youngest children at risk for problems with attachment, signaled by withdrawal on the one hand and indiscriminate sociability on the other. Also, children exposed to too many caretakers are likelier to end up uncertain of their place in the world, and emotionally insecure.

The first few years

•The so-called quality time that working parents set aside for their children can do more harm than good. A couple of hours of intense stimulation can be damaging, but more natural rhythms set a pattern that will enhance the parent-child relationship and correctly wire the brain.
•Rational, reasoned explanations of why certain behaviors are or are not desirable should be delivered in a forceful, feeling way. The parent's message has to carry an emotional charge to have a lasting effect.

Overturning Outdated Concepts of Development

The new findings about prenatal and postnatal development emerge against erroneous concepts that have led us astray for years. For instance, the new brain science has mounted a staggering assault on the notion that learning is more or less constant through the first three years of life.

Instead, brain scans tell us, learning is actually explosive, occurring as different regions of the brain fire up, on schedule, for the acquisition of specific skills, from language to music to math. Teach something to your child when the learning window for that skill is open, and he or she will learn it well. Miss it, and the skill will be hard if not impossible to acquire later.

No longer can we invoke abstract developmental tables suggested by the likes of Freud and Piaget, who attributed scant perception or cognition to the child under three. No longer can we point to Darwin's theory of evolution as proof that humans are mindless automatons driven by their genes to mercilessly propagate the species and survive.

The social nature of brain building means this can't be so. And no longer can we view our children through the lens of economics -- asking how exposure to poverty or crime will affect their lives -- unless we factor in the more important elements of mothering and fathering, too.

In the past we knew that stimulation was good. But what kind is best, how much, and by whom? Does a mother's tone of voice make a difference, and what kind of music should a child be exposed to in the womb? When and how can parents sculpt the growing brain for something as seemingly elusive as basic goodness? When is it too late? Where do depression and violence start, and can parents extinguish the predispositions to these traits before they become self-fulfilling for life?

Until recently, we could answer these kinds of fundamental questions about infancy and early childhood development only intuitively. Today, parents can follow a road map based on definitive studies illuminating the complex web of influences essential for building a brain.

In Tomorrow's Baby, Dr. Thomas Verny reveals the truths about prenatal and early childhood development gleaned from cutting-edge science, while exposing the inadequacies of old ideas. As we now know, we can no longer separate the mind from the body, or nature from nurture. Even more important, Dr. Verny outlines how our new knowledge will change the way we parent and teach the young. He offers scientifically sound recommendations for optimizing an infant's potential in the areas of language, intelligence, and social skills, and for raising bright, healthy, and loving children.

Excerpted from Tomorrow's Baby: The Art and Science of Parenting from Conception through Infancy

Thomas R. Verny, M.D., D. Psych., FRCPC is the author of six books, including Tomorrow's Baby and thirty-five papers and articles. In 1998, he collaborated with Sandra Collier to create Love Chords, a compilation of classical music for pregnancy published by The Children's Group of Pickering, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Verny has lectured and given workshops on prenatal and perinatal psychology throughout the world. He has also discussed his research on many major radio and television programs, as well as in newspaper and magazine interviews. He lives in Toronto, Canada with his wife.

All content copyrighted © Thomas Verny. Permission to republish granted to Pregnancy.org, LLC.