4 Ways to Help a Child Become Smarter

According to research, there are four things you can do to help a child be smarter:

1. Feed your baby breastmilk rather than use formula. Many kinds of formula do not contain long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA), and even when it is included, human LC-PUFA seems to have a different makeup and absorption than that found in formula.
   I say, “feed your baby breastmilk” rather than saying “breastfeed” because it’s the milk that makes the difference, not whether that milk gets into the baby directly via nipple or through a bottle. If you can’t breastfeed on your own (latching issues, insufficient milk supply, etc.), can you pump or get supplemental milk from another mother? There are online communities to connect women who are in need of milk with those who can supply, like OnlyTheBreast and EatsOnFeets, though I can’t endorse any of them since I have no experience of my own with them. If anyone finds a community to be particularly great or awful, I will update this to reflect that.
   Even if you can’t supply milk for all of your baby’s needs, even a bit of human milk may help boost your baby’s brainpower.

1. Read with your child in an interactive manner. See my previous post about Interactive Reading with Baby.
2. Enroll your child in early educational interventions. This item and the next seem very similar to me in reading the research. Both items encourage stimulation outside of the home, but “early educational interventions” seems to include things before actual preschool, like daycare, and may include other activities like early sports classes/programs, piano lessons, and so forth.
   To quote the researchers in explaining a bit more: “The goal of early educational interventions is to raise young children’s intelligence while also fostering other desirable outcomes, such as improved social skills and self-regulation. The results of our meta-analysis support the idea that early educational interventions raise a young child’s IQ by the time he or she completes the intervention. Because these interventions are multifaceted, we cannot identify any particular feature of it as a causal mechanism. However, our findings are consistent with the idea that environmental complexity promoting intelligence and providing a more cognitively stimulating and demanding environment raises the IQ of those who engage with it.”
   From my own experience, I’ve seen that daycare can offer exposure to things that I wouldn’t have been able to provide on my own, like more advanced music time, art experiences, foreign language exposure, and field trips. Yes, I can take my daughter to a pumpkin patch around Halloween, but the experience she has with her parents is very different than experiencing it with her peers. Being around other kids and getting that social experience is a very worthwhile benefit for her.
3. Send your child in preschool. The benefits of preschool are much more pronounced for children coming from lower income houses, but there are still gains to be had for children from other households, too.

Sources and Further Reading:

• “Baby Formula: What are DHA and ARA?” Consumer Reports News. 15 Sept 2009. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2009/09/baby-formula-what-are-dha-and-ara/index.htm
• Gemake, Josephine. “Interactive Reading: How to Make Children Active Readers. Reading Teacher. Feb 1984. Vol. 37, №6: pp462–66. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ291311
• Koletzko, B. et al. “Long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) and perinatal development.” Acta Paediatrica. April 2001. Vol. 90, Issue 4: pp.460–464. DOI: 10.1111/j.1651–2227.2001.tb00452.x
• Protzko, John, Joshua Aronson, and Clancy Blair. “How to Make a Young Child Smarter: Evidence From the Database of Raising Intelligence.” Perspectives on Psychological Science. January 2013. 8: 25–40, doi:10.1177/1745691612462585
• Shute, Nancy. “Moms Who Can’t Nurse Find Milk Donors Online.” NPR. 24 January 2011. http://www.npr.org/2011/01/24/133110199/moms-who-cant-nurse-find-milk-donors-online