For the parents who are still on the early learning journey or about to embark upon it, I thought I should share this…
Positive Emotions Help Infants Remember

Early learning experts – Doman, Shichida, Heguru, TweedleWink – have always stressed the importance of being joyful, happy, and loving when teaching young children. In fact, four of Doman’s early learning rules are devoted to it:
- Be joyous at all times
- Teach only when you and your child are happy
- Create a good learning environment
- Remember the fail-safe law: if you aren’t having a wonderful time and your child isn’t having a wonderful time – stop. You are doing something wrong.
If you want to know why this is important, an article from PsyBlog explains the science behind it: The Basic Emotion That Makes Infants Remember What They’ve Seen –
“Babies can remember what they’ve seen if it is paired with a positive emotion, a new study finds, but nothing otherwise.”
In the study, researchers tested the effect of a positive, negative and neutral tone of voice and found that infants could only remember what they had learned if the voice was positive. When neutral and negative tones were employed, the infants remembered nothing.
So remember, when you are teaching your infants, always be joyful, happy and positive.

Notes on Choosing a Preschool
Although the study was done on infants, I would probably also be inclined to extrapolate this effect for toddlers and preschoolers. If you are sending you child to preschool or considering it, another factor I think we should add to our list of considerations for choosing the right school would be to see how the teachers interact with the children and whether they convey these positive emotions during their teaching.
Related:
- How to Choose the Right School for Your Child
- Right Brain Kids: Right Brain Education Begins with Relationships First
- Right Brain Education Philosophies, Principles and Practices
- Right Brain Education Rule: Love, Relationship, then Knowledge