62 Quotes by John Medina

The more parents talk to their children, even in the earliest moments of life, the better their kids’ linguistic abilities become.

There are great reasons to fear what happens if you don’t create a robust social schedule for the rest of your life or practice mindfulness meditation for the rest of your life.

Regardless of who you are, the brain pays a great deal of attention to several questions: “Can I eat it? Will it eat me?” “Can I mate with it? Will it mate with me?” “Have I seen it before?

Teachers find many children emotionally distracted, so upset and preoccupied by the explosive drama of their own family lives that they are unable to concentrate on such mundane matters as multiplication tables.

Kids come into the world before their brains are fully developed. The result? Parenthood.

Write this across your heart before your child comes into the world: Parenting is a not a race. Kids are not proxies for adult success. Competition can be inspiring, but brands of it can wire your child’s brain in a toxic way. Comparing your kids with your friends’ kids will not get them, or you, where you want to go.

Stress hormones can do some truly nasty things to your brain if boatloads of the stuff are given free access to your central nervous system.

The X chromosome does most of the heavy developmental lifting, while the little Y has been shedding its associated genes at a rate of about five every one million years, committing suicide in slow motion. It’s now down to less than 100 genes. By comparison, the X chromosome carries about 1,500 genes, all necessary participants in embryonic construction projects. These are not showing any signs of decay.