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Joining us now to talk about fostering a baby genius in your family is Janet Doman a specialist
in infant education and brain development. The Director of the Institutes for the Achievement
of Human Potential. Thanks so much for being with us. You've co-authored a book called
How Smart is Your Baby Develop and Nurture your Newborns full Potential. So you think
parents can have a real impact on their youngsters that way? Well we know parents can have the
impact. Mothers, Mothers and Fathers are really the best teachers that a child will ever have
in his whole life. and the baby's the best student, so if you put the best teachers together
with the best student so that's a great idea. Is it a recipe for genius? Well you know genius
is as genius does. It's an overused word. We believe genius is someone who sees the
way world is and the way the world should be and then moves the world closer to that
ideal scene. Well that takes time and experience and knowledge. I think that's pretty heavy
burden to put on an eight year old. I think we should be talking about highly capable
kids. The kids you just profiled. The kids you just profiled are highly capable kids
but will they change the world.Ihope so. They have the ability to change the world but Only
time will tell. If you had a kid like that would you necessarily know. It's been famously
said that Thomas Edison was not very good in school, Albert Einstein wasn't particulary
good at it either. Well of course, it isn't about school, its about the first six years
of life. If we go back and look at the early life of these children we will find that they
were in enriched environments. I think we think they're a product of some happy genetic
accident. and we would say every child born, every child born has a good greater potential
intelligence than leonardo ever used in his lifetime. We choose leonardo because he's
kinda of our favorite genius. Well a lot of parents, do the right thing today. Talk to
their chlldren, they read to their children they engage their children. Are there some
secrets that none of us know that we really ought to be using? Well you'll find that the
parents that really do talk to their babies and who do spend time with them and who do
really provide an enriched environment that those children do very well. They do very
well. They become the capable happy kid who is able to do things more easily and once
he's able to do things more easily he looks for problems to solve he solves those problems
and he learns more in life than other kids do.
I gather you think that it's important to let children move. Oh very important very
important. You know if you think about it a baby in utero is free he's in that warm
aqueous environment where he can kick he can even roll over and then he's born into a world
in which now he has one gravity pushing him down he's in a big fat body, he has to learn
very quickly how to move in that new environment the question is are we gonna help him or are
we gonna hinder him? are we gonna put him on his belly without a lot of heavy clothes
and blankets and get down on the floor with him and encourage him to move or are we gonna
bundle him up in five blankets really confining him from the neck down and when we do that
the baby must think you're crazy. He needs to move. How much of this though is inherent?
Aren't some kids just born smarter than others? You know we like to think that . that's kind
of an escape for us when we don't want to step up and really take responsibility for
our babies. We would say that you and I, all of us, we fell so far below our genetic ceiling.
It's so high above us that to even discuss genetics is almost its almost silly. Well
let me ask you about another contribution. to someone's overall intelligence. if not
the kinds of things their parents do for them. their own personalities the opportunities.
that the wider world affords them. well that's right. every baby is born with his own personality
his own unique personality . and the more we put him in that enriched environment the
more opportunity he has visually, auditorilly, tactilly, the more mobility opportunity and
manual opportunity and language opportunity the more he gets to express his own personality.
so it's really if you want to see that real personality in full bloom. you need to give
him that environment. Now we just have a moment so let me ask you. alot of parents are going
to be watching and feeling terribly guilty as i feel at this moment, wondering if they've
let their child down. I don't think so. because I think mothers , mothers are the best teachers
the world has ever seen and most mothers left to their own devices do almost everything
right. the only thing that really seriously worries us is that mothers will get kind of
bullied out of their own natural intuitive sense of what to do with the baby. um you
know mothering is the oldest profession, not the other one. and mothers you know if mothers
just follow their own instincts what would stimulate their baby, what would be fun for
the baby what will make them and the baby happy together, and they're right. almost
99 percent of the time. Janet Doman for the Institutes for the Acheivement of Human Potential.
Thanks so much. Oh my pleasure. It's not just success at school that marks you, brilliant
exceptionally talented people are often described as geniuses but researchers say intelligence
and creativity aren't the same thing we'll explore the world of savants when we return.