From what I can find online, that book fires my snakeoil detectors. I'd be wanting citations to peer-reviewed papers for every claim about everything says makes a difference, and then I'd be looking up the papers myself to see whether they really said that. Unless the claims were things I wanted to be true, of course ;-) For example:
He maintains that we are all born with genes to learn (I guess some have genes that give them the potential to have very high IQs or low IQs.) The right environment, diet, and stimulation causes those genes to be "turned on" (or keeps "bad" genes from getting turned on, at least.)
My understanding, though it could be out of date or wrong, is that at this point, despite people having looked, we have practically nothing in the way of convincing connections between specific gene variants and IQ. Therefore I doubt that it can be known that particular environmental factors turn on or off particular relevant genes - we don't even know which genes that is! Without concrete evidence to the contrary, therefore, I'd write this off as pseudo-science: he's saying something that he guesses to be true and it sounds good, but he can't know.
Whether, and if so to what extent, IQ can be improved by environment is a highly controversial topic. The best book I've read on this is Flynn's
What is intelligence? but even this does not really answer the question.
In the end, the right answer is probably "who cares?". Many (all?) aspects of achievement *can* be improved by working at them, and the ability to work constructively can also be improved by practice. And for 0-3yos, the appropriate work of both kinds is play....
And yes, we've discussed this before at length (at least once that I remember), but I have a feeling it was in a thread whose title didn't match the contents very well, and am failing to find it.
He has a lot of resources listed in the back, but like I said, this stuff is in many of the books and things I have read. It isn't just him. All of these "experts" seem to be really excited about everything we've been learning about how babies 0-3 learn.
Well, I'm pretty sure motor skills can be improved if the baby has a chance to practice, right? I would think the same applies to the ability to think and problem solve. We also know that if a child is exposed to toxic chemicals (all kids are today) and eats a crap diet, this can lead to health problems.
Childhood cancer is the expression of the "wrong" genes you don't want turned on. I would think it is likely that brain functioning would also be affected by neurotoxins and poor nutrition (well, it is. I know there are many studies showing how toxic chemicals and poor nutrition can affect a growing child.) In the womb, babies develop problems or birth defects if a mother takes toxic substances or doesn't get enough of the right nutrients. Babies who are severely neglected don't develop properly.
So the flip side of this might be that if you provide good food, a safe healthy environment, and a stimulating one for a baby's brain, then she can develop optimally.
I do remember reading quite a few studies linking a higher IQ with breastfeeding and other things, but someone always tries to contest these findings, so I have no clue if they are definitive findings.
I know with breastfeeding, all the literature makes it sound like breastfeeding is a bonus and gives your child better health and a higher IQ or whatever. In reality, feeding your child anything but breast milk
may result in a lower IQ, health problems, etc. No one wants to put it that way. (Except her:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2812877/)
So, I see these "bonus" IQ points (if real) as being a result of your child having access to healthy food and such, which is the ideal circumstance (of course, people don't even agree on what a healthy diet looks like.) The book should really say thing like "Feed your kid chicken nuggets all day and that might impact his health and brain functioning. Feed him more vegetables and fruits and he will be more likely to function optimally."
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Also, the way I think of IQ:
To me, an IQ test mainly tests how well you can detect patterns and problem solve. These are thinking skills. I don't know if you can practice IQ test type problems and actually improve your score as an adult, but perhaps it is possible to influence IQ when you are talking about a baby whose brain is just starting to get organized.
