Right now in my Educational Psychology class we’re talking about cognition and brain development. While I find the class itself immensely boring and pointless, (they’re treating the future teachers of America like 4 year olds, and it’s college here!!) they do touch on a few topics worth thought.

Our last class we discussed studies of IQ scores. My IQ score, 146 the last time I took a test, back in high school. One random fact, people with an IQ of 150 or above tend to have a happier life, better marriage, and job success according to them. I don’t know where they get their studies, so I don’t know how reliable our notes are, but I know they are from some professional source. I think that study is slightly off. I mean, think of all the geniuses that have committed suicide. Surely with so much intelligence, some of those people are doomed to see the pointlessness of life, since many of them have… but whatever. If you’re smart, you might just be happy.

We also looked at childhood development. Different factors were taken into account, starting with prenatal and ending with home life. What was interesting was that adopted children had slightly higher scores than their genetic family, but the difference was only by 15 points. Overall genetics put bounds on how far a child could develop. Also, those after school and extra learning programs were only beneficial when started before birth and continuing till kindergarten. Starting the mothers with prenatal vitamins and teaching them proper care before birth helped the kid develop more. And you know all those “My baby can read” programs? Well, although they give the kid a jump start early on, studies show that by 8th grade that edge is gone, and they are at the same cognitive level as their peers, sometimes even lower! And giving them extra stimulation with classical music and flash cards has little to no impact on their development. So don’t try to overwhelm your baby early on, let them be kids.

Thinking about childhood development makes me think about how I was raised and how I should raise my kids should that day ever come. (I’m still rather squeamish about the thought of something inside of me, so who knows if I’ll ever manage to go through birth!!) My mom emphasized calmness and study. Every day she would sit us down and do puzzles with us. And every night she would tuck us in and ask us to recall what all we did that day. I don’t know if that helped our cognition or not, but I know it made me value studying more later on.

Do you know your IQ score? How did your mother raise you? Did she put any emphasis on prenatal care?