Parents can have a lot of impact on their child’s developing brain — from conception through college — but not in the ways they may think. In fact, many of us do a lot of wrong things in attempting to cultivate our little geniuses IQ’s by sitting them in front of a Baby Einstein DVD, for example. And we skip some right ones, like eating fish when we’re pregnant because we’re afraid of the mercury content.
Those useful gems are found in a new book called Welcome to Your Child’s Brain (Bloomsbury, 2011) by neuroscientists Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang. Wang, an associate professor of neuroscience at Princeton University, spoke with me about smart things parents can do to cultivate their child’s mind and stupid things they should avoid.
Smart: Eat fish when pregnant. Women are told to limit their fish intake when pregnant since fatty fish tends to contain some mercury, which can be toxic at high levels. But the latest research suggests that babies born to mothers who eat fatty fish like salmon and tuna regularly have higher IQ’s. That’s because fatty fish contains omega-3 fatty acids, which are crucial for brain development. Aim for two six-ounce fish servings per week, said Wang, preferably salmon or sardines, which have the highest levels of omega-3’s.
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