Matthew Walker Quotes

A sympathetic parent might see the spark of consciousness in a baby's large eyes and eagerly accept the popular claim that babies are wonderful learners, but it is hard to avoid the impression that they begin as ignorant as bread loaves.

I honestly think that kids should not exercise: they should keep fit through play. The most important age is zero to seven, both for the kid and the parent - for parents, because this is the time when your kid learns how to walk, talk and other behaviour.

I just happen to believe that what's at stake in the early child's development is so vital and so important, and I think it is founded in the main, in the broad cultural sense, on the relationship between the mother and child.

I believe that the first 8 years are most important and the time in a child's life when parents must be absolutely and completely present.

Putting babies as young as two weeks into child care for the first year of their life, for 60 hours a week, will cause their brains damage.

It is a rare privilege to watch the birth, growth, and first feeble struggles of a living mind; this privilege is mine.

What use does a newborn infant have?

During the first few months of an infant's life, its manner of taking the breast, of laying its head on the pillow, etc., becomes crystallized into imperative habits. This is why education must begin in the cradle.

I have for many years interested myself in the study of children from three years upwards. Many have urged me to continue my studies on the same lines with older children. But what I have felt to be most vital is the need for more careful and particularized study of the tiny child.

The greatest development is achieved during the first years of life, and therefore it is then that the greatest care should be taken. If this is done, then the child does not become a burden; he will reveal himself as the greatest marvel of nature.

I was running around and bouncing out of the pram as a baby.

My job is to help parents give their children the best start in life.

If we didn't need eight hours of sleep and could survive on six, Mother Nature would have done away with 25 percent of our sleep time millions of years ago. Because when you think about it, sleep is an idiotic thing to do.

The period from conception to two is about the development of a baby's emotional capacities. Mum saying, 'Oh, darling, I love you,' and singing baby songs and pulling faces literally stimulates the synapses in the brain.

The fact that we don't have that biologic pressure to have highly polyphasic sleep, I think, probably tells us something in terms of, truly, whether it's useful or not.

I honor health as the first muse, and sleep as the condition of health. Sleep benefits mainly by the sound health it produces; incidentally also by dreams, into whose farrago a divine lesson is sometimes slipped.

[S]leep, and enough of it, is the prime necessity. Enough exercise, and good food and enough, are other necessities. But sleep—good sleep, and enough of it—this is a necessity without which you cannot have the exercise of use, nor the food.

Sleep is God. Go worship.

From the child of five to myself is but a step. But from the newborn baby to the child of five is an appalling distance.

Infants need the most sleep, and, what is more, get it. Stunning them with a soft, padded hammer is the best way to insure their getting it at the right times.

I would say sleep can always be emphasized - I didn't do it enough in my 20s, because you don't think you need it.

I studied, I met with medical doctors, scientists, and I’m here to tell you that the way to a more productive, more inspired, more joyful life is: getting enough sleep.

Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late, he honestly slumbered a fool's allowance.

Getting regular restful sleep is an essential key to staying healthy and vital, yet it is so often neglected or underemphasized.

I eat mostly vegan, try to get enough sleep. For me, that's really critical.