Tracy Cutchlow - Zero to Five: 70 Essential Parenting Tips Based on Science (and What Ive Learned So Far)

ZERO TO FIVE. Copyright 2014 by Tracy Cutchlow.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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Pear PressP.O. Box 70525 Seattle, WA 98127-0525 U.S.A.

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FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication has been applied for

ISBN-13: 978-0-9960326-5-0

Designed by Nick Johnson/Cima Creative

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CONTENTS

About Tracy

Im a former journalist at the Seattle Times, editor of the bestselling books Brain Rules and Brain Rules for Baby, and mom to one precocious 2-year-old. I like to think Im a recovering perfectionist, but I still do way too much research on every little thing. Im a city girl who loves to be outdoors. Im staying home with baby, mostly, until either of us decides to renegotiate our contract. I live in Seattle with my husband, Luke Timmerman.

About Betty

Moments are special, dont you agree? My role is to anticipate fleeting glances, nuanced toe-curls and moist eyes that tell stories. I began using cameras in grade school, and I never stopped. Visual storytelling has taken me to Africa, Indonesia, Central and South America, and Israel. It also has deeply immersed me in the community of Seattle, where I worked for two-and-a-half decades as a staff photographer at the Seattle Times before leaving to pursue independent projects. I live in Seattle with my husband, Benjamin Benschneider (also a photographer) and three very nice cats.

For Geneva, Baby G, Little Cheeky, Beautiful Baby

For Luke, my rock

For Mom and Dad, who did many of the things in this book

We parents have questions.
Lots of questions.

At least, I do. My husband and I had our first baby in our mid-30s, after months of should we or shouldnt we? Wed spent about fifteen minutes around newborns before that point. Like many expecting couples, our preparation consisted of birth-education classes. And research on diapers, clothing, and gear. (As avid cyclists, we had a balance bike picked out as early as a baby swing.) These werent much help in how to raise a baby. Unlike many expecting couples, Id edited the childhood brain-development book Brain Rules for Baby. Very handy! But, of course, no book can match the experience of having a baby right there in your arms, crying or cooing. We had questions then, and we have questions now.

Every parent Ive come across has had challenges. The themes are similar, even if the particulars differ: Doing our best for baby during pregnancy, even when we dont want to. (Giving up wine or coffee comes to mind.) Sleep. Comforting baby. Feeding baby. Sleep. Getting out of the house. Getting a break. Keeping baby intellectually stimulated. Keeping up with friendships. Sleep. Digital devices. Discipline. Sleep.

My husband and I are certainly no different. Our baby surprises us, delights us, concerns us, and frustrates us. When she stumps us, I go looking for answers.

I ask friends. I talk with my mom. I search online, as my husband rolls his eyes. I like to consider all the options! But soon Im buried in opposing opinions (Best thing I ever tried; Didnt work for me AT ALL), vague parenting articles, and irrelevant forum comments.

Then Ill flip through the many brain-development and parenting books on my shelf, accumulated while editing Brain Rules for Baby or writing this book. I pore through studies, staring at sentences like Briefly, trajectory methodology uses all available developmental data points and assigns individuals to trajectories based on a posterior probability rule. All are filled with what seems, post-baby, like a very large amount of very small type.

And I think: it would be nice to have one inviting, just-tell-me-what-to-do, open-to-any-page collection of parentings best practices, based on what the research says.

This is that book. The wonderful images were captured by photojournalist Betty Udesen. We met in 2001, when we worked together on multimedia stories for the Seattle Times. I asked her if shed work with me on this book, and I feel very fortunate that she said yes.

Where do I get off writing a parenting book? Im not a neuroscientist or a child-development expert. Instead, Im drawing on my fifteen-year career as a journalist to help me assess the scientific research and distill it into something readable for tired parents. Ive sprinkled in anecdotes from my own life. Not because my experience is vast, and not because it will be exactly like yours, but to give you an idea of the fun, weird, funny, tough moments that make up parenting.

Ive focused on babys first five years because they involve an incredible amount of change. When it comes to mobility, language, empathy, and motor skills, you cant tell the difference between a 30-year-old and a 31-year-old. But the difference between a 1-year-old and a 2-year-old? Remarkable. Amazing. Fascinating. Crazy. More than 90 percent of brain development takes place in those first five years.

So, these early years matter. Were setting baby up for success. And were establishing our philosophies as parents, which will carry us well beyond five years. The themes in these pageslove, talk, play, connect, discipline, move, slow downare as important at 2 months old as they are at 2 years old, 5 years old, 15 years old, and even 50 years old. Were all human.

This book is rooted in research. I dont provide a citation within the text for every study, but all of the references are online at www.zerotofive.net. In trying to answer questions, researchers account for all kinds of variables, and they filter out bias as much as possible. Its the best guide weve got.

Still, social-sciences research rarely can give us absolute truth. Heres one example: say researchers are trying to determine whether music lessons make preschoolers smarter. They do a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard. This means they randomly assign half of the kids to take music lessons (the intervention group) and half not (the control group). They administer cognitive tests to both groups of kids before the music lessons and after. How reliable are the results?

Variables include the number of kids the researchers can afford to include in the study, what type of music class they choose, who teaches the class, how many weeks or months the lessons go on, and how frequently or intensely the kids train. Not to mention how many kids drop out of the study along the way, how soon after training the kids are retested, which tests the researchers use, to what extent their analysis attempts to rule out other potential causes for the results (usual suspects include parents income and IQ), whether previous studies lend credence to the results. And so on and so on.