“You want to get your kid into Harvard?"

Listen to the audio excerpt from the Brain Rules for Baby Relationship chapter.

For most first-time moms and dads, the first shock is the overwhelmingly relentless nature of this new social contract. The baby takes. The parent gives. End of story. What startles many couples is the excruciating toll it can take on their quality of life—especially their marriages. The baby cries, the baby sleeps, the baby vomits, gets held, needs changing, must be fed, all before 4:00 a.m. Then you have to go to work. Or your spouse does. This is repeated day after day after ad nauseam day. Parents want just one square inch of silence, one small second to themselves, and they routinely get neither. You can’t even go to the bathroom when you want. You’re sleep deprived, you’ve lost friends, your household chores just tripled, your sex life is nonexistent, and you barely have the energy to ask about each other’s day.

 Is it any surprise that a couple’s relationship suffers? It’s rarely talked about, but it’s a fact: Couples’ hostile interactions sharply increase in baby’s first year.

When I lecture on the science of young brains, the dads (it’s almost always the dads) demand to know how to get their kids into Harvard. The question invariably angers me. I bellow, “You want to get your kid into Harvard? You really want to know what the data say? I’ll tell you what the data say! Go home and love your wife!” This chapter is about that retort: why marital hostility happens, how it alters a baby’s developing brain, and how you can counteract the hostility and minimize its effects.

Get the updated and expanded Brain Rules for Baby audiobook on Libro.fm.

Theory of Mind

Theory of Mind is about as close to mind-reading as people can get. Most formal definitions go along the lines of the ability to discern the intentions, and motivations of yourself or another person. To develop a Theory of their Mind, hence the term. I think it has two components to it, especially if you're talking about one person trying to understand another's behavioral space. 

First, it's the ability to penetrate inside someone else's psychological interiors and understand the rewards and punishment systems inside that interior.Second, it's the ability to understand at all times that the rewards and punishment systems inside your head are not necessarily the same ones inside your neighbor's head. But he or she is not going to react like you do because he or she doesn't have the same rewards and punishment systems you do.

I joke in the book about calling the following saying John Medina's Second Law of marriage. Here's the saying: what is obvious to you is obvious to you.

I believe Theory of Mind skills are very important in the establishment and maintenance of social relationships. Necessary for success, though I would argue not sufficient. People often confuse it with empathy, but there are important distinctions. You can have terrific Theory of Mind skills and be a Mother Teresa. You read people insightfully and care about what you see. You can also be an SOB with it, too. You can read people insightfully and manipulate them in order to achieve some goal of yours. A dictator may be born with terrific Theory of Mind skills, but they use their talents to squash anybody that gets in their way.