40 research-backed modules covering pre-conception through adolescence. Each module builds on rigorous scientific evidence.
Optimize parental health before conception
Evidence-based strategies for conception
Before you can optimize your child's development, you need to conceive. This foundational module covers the science of fertility for both partners—hormonal optimization, cycle tracking, sperm quality, and lifestyle factors that affect conception. Learn when to seek help and how to maximize your chances during the critical 90-day window before conception.
Programming brain development before birth
The most impactful window for your child's development begins before conception. This foundational module covers the evidence-based strategies for optimizing parental health, understanding epigenetics, and creating the ideal conditions for a healthy pregnancy. Learn how the first 1000 days begin at conception and how parental factors shape lifelong brain development, cognitive potential, and disease risk.
Protecting and nurturing the developing brain
Understanding your child's developing brain architecture
The first years of life represent the most explosive period of brain development humans ever experience. This module explores how your child's brain is constructed through experience, the science of neuroplasticity, optimal nutrition for brain growth, and how to create an environment that maximizes neural development. Understanding these principles empowers you to support your child's cognitive potential during the most critical developmental windows.
How immunity shapes neurodevelopment
The immune system does far more than fight infections—it actively shapes brain development. Microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, sculpt neural circuits during critical periods. This module explores how your child's immune system develops, how to support it through nutrition and lifestyle, and crucially, what to avoid during this vulnerable window to protect long-term brain health.
The invisible threat to neurodevelopment
Indoor air is often 2-5 times more polluted than outdoor air, and children breathe faster, closer to the ground, with developing lungs and brains. This module covers the science of how PM2.5, VOCs, combustion byproducts, and mold mycotoxins affect brain development, and provides practical strategies for source control, ventilation, and air cleaning to protect your child's cognitive potential.
Beyond calories: the hidden variables that shape brain development
The food you feed your child contains far more than macronutrients and vitamins. Hidden variables—pesticide residues, heavy metals, food additives, processing methods, and protein quality—can either support or undermine optimal brain development. This module provides the evidence-based framework for understanding what actually matters in food quality and how to make practical sourcing decisions that protect your child's developing brain.
Reducing chemical exposures that affect brain development
Modern environments contain thousands of synthetic chemicals, many of which can interfere with brain development during critical windows. This module examines the evidence on endocrine disruptors, heavy metals, plastics, flame retardants, and household chemicals. Learn which exposures matter most, how to identify them in your home, and practical strategies for reducing your child's chemical body burden without becoming overwhelmed.
Understanding and eliminating waterborne threats to brain development
Water is essential for life, but what is in your water matters profoundly for your child's developing brain. This module examines the neurotoxic contaminants commonly found in drinking water, including lead, fluoride, arsenic, nitrates, and PFAS. You will learn how to test your water, understand different filtration technologies, and implement practical solutions to protect your family. The research is clear: water quality directly impacts cognitive development, and most families are unaware of what they are drinking.
Evidence-based guidance for informed choices
Navigating medication decisions for your child can feel overwhelming. This module provides balanced, evidence-based information about ADHD medications, psychiatric medications, and fever reducers. Learn how to evaluate research, understand risk-benefit analyses, communicate effectively with healthcare providers, and make informed decisions that align with your family's values and your child's needs.
Understanding and reducing unnecessary EMF exposure
Modern children live in an unprecedented electromagnetic environment. This module separates established science from speculation, helping you understand what we know, what we don't know, and what practical steps make sense. Learn about the EMF spectrum, why children may be more vulnerable, what the research actually shows, and evidence-based strategies for reducing unnecessary exposure without sacrificing modern life.
How your wellbeing shapes your child's development
Optimizing yourself to optimize your child
Your nervous system state, stress physiology, sleep quality, and mental health are not separate from your parenting—they are foundational inputs that directly program your child's development. This module provides the scientific basis for why parental optimization is a developmental intervention, along with practical protocols for stress regulation, sleep optimization, trigger management, and building sustainable self-care systems.
The neuroscience of connection and bonding
Your nervous system is your child's first teacher. This module explores how parent-child interactions literally shape brain architecture through mirror neurons, oxytocin, and polyvagal engagement. Learn the neuroscience of attachment, emotional co-regulation, and evidence-based strategies for deepening connection at every developmental stage. Understand how your state of calm or stress directly programs your child's stress response systems for life.
Light, nature, and biological rhythms
Optimizing the body's master clock for development
Your child's circadian system is the master regulator of virtually every physiological process: sleep, hormone secretion, immune function, cognitive performance, and metabolism. This module provides a deep dive into the suprachiasmatic nucleus, chronotype development, meal timing effects, light as the primary zeitgeber, the dangers of artificial blue light, vitamin D as a neurosteroid hormone, and the mitochondrial-melatonin connection that underlies cellular health.
Harnessing nature for cognitive development
Humans evolved in nature, and our brains remain wired for natural environments. This module explores the biophilia hypothesis, the research on nature deficit disorder, and the compelling evidence that green space exposure enhances cognitive development, attention, stress regulation, and immune function in children. Learn practical strategies for reconnecting children with nature in our increasingly indoor world, including the emerging science of earthing and forest bathing.
Age-specific sleep mastery from infant through school-age
Evidence-based infant sleep from 0-12 months
Sleep is the foundation of infant development. During the first year, your baby's brain is constructing the circadian system, consolidating memories, and processing the day's learning during sleep. This module provides the complete science of infant sleep: how it differs from adult sleep, realistic expectations at each age, the evidence behind safe sleep guidelines, the research on co-sleeping, and an objective look at sleep training methods. Master infant sleep with evidence, not anxiety.
Navigating sleep from ages 1-5
The toddler and preschool years present unique sleep challenges that differ fundamentally from infancy: nap transitions, bedtime battles, curtain calls, nightmares, and night terrors. This comprehensive module provides evidence-based strategies for establishing healthy sleep patterns during this critical developmental period when sleep directly shapes behavior, emotional regulation, immune function, and cognitive development.
Optimizing sleep for academic success
School-age children need 9-12 hours of sleep, yet most get far less. This module covers the profound impact of sleep on academic performance, memory consolidation, and emotional regulation. Learn evidence-based strategies for managing screens and blue light, addressing anxiety that disrupts sleep, navigating pre-puberty circadian shifts, limiting caffeine exposure, prioritizing sleep over overscheduling, and teaching children to develop independent sleep habits that will serve them through adolescence.
Feeding the developing brain at every stage
Optimal nutrition for the first year of life
The first year of life is a critical window for nutritional programming of the brain and body. This comprehensive module covers the evidence on breastfeeding optimization, formula selection, introduction of solid foods, key nutrients for brain development (DHA, iron, choline, zinc), the infant gut microbiome, and essential supplementation. Learn to make informed feeding decisions that support optimal neurodevelopment.
Feeding the developing brain from 1-3 years
The toddler years are a critical window for brain development and for establishing lifelong eating patterns. This module covers the specific nutritional needs of toddlers, evidence-based approaches to picky eating, the reality of sugar and processed foods, the power of family meals, and how to optimize nutrition through food and supplements. Learn to navigate this challenging feeding stage while building foundations for healthy eating that last a lifetime.
Fueling growth and academic performance
Adolescence brings unique nutritional challenges: rapid growth, intense academic demands, athletic pursuits, and emerging body image concerns. This module covers the evidence on breakfast and cognitive performance, sports nutrition for young athletes, preventing disordered eating, and safely implementing special diets. Learn how to support your adolescent's brain and body during this critical developmental window.
The gut-brain axis and child development
Your child's gut contains trillions of microorganisms that influence everything from immune function to brain development, mood, and behavior. This comprehensive module covers how the microbiome develops from birth, the critical gut-brain connection, evidence-based strategies for feeding beneficial bacteria, protecting the microbiome from disruption, and age-specific approaches for optimizing gut health throughout childhood.
Teaching the body to thrive on varied fuel sources
Metabolic flexibility is your body's ability to efficiently switch between fuel sources based on availability and demand. While this concept has gained attention in adult health circles, children have fundamentally different metabolic needs due to their growing brains and bodies. This module explores what metabolic health means for children, why popular adult interventions like fasting and ketogenic diets are inappropriate for most children, and evidence-based eating patterns that support optimal development.
Evidence-based cognitive enhancement
Learning, intelligence, and academic development
Understanding and supporting exceptional learners
Giftedness is not simply 'being smart' - it involves neurologically distinct brain architecture, processing patterns, and developmental trajectories. This module explores the science behind gifted brains, the challenges of identification (especially for underrepresented populations), the complex reality of twice-exceptional learners, the intense inner world of high-ability children, and what the research actually shows about educational interventions. Learn to recognize, understand, and advocate for your exceptional learner.
Evidence-based approaches to learning at home
Decades of research reveal surprising findings about homework: it has almost no benefit for elementary students, modest effects for middle schoolers, and diminishing returns even in high school. This module examines Harris Cooper's landmark meta-analyses, explains why most homework fails to produce genuine learning, introduces cognitive science principles like spaced practice, retrieval practice, and interleaving that actually work, provides strategies for managing homework without destroying family life, and explores alternatives like reading and passion projects that support development more effectively than worksheets.
Creating spaces that enhance learning
The physical environment where your child learns profoundly affects their cognitive performance, attention, and academic outcomes. This module translates decades of research in environmental psychology, lighting science, acoustics, and classroom design into practical strategies for optimizing your child's study spaces at home. Learn how light, sound, temperature, air quality, and spatial design can either support or undermine learning—and what you can do about it.
Why writing by hand matters for the brain
Explore the neuroscience of handwriting and fine motor development for learning and cognition. From the hand-brain connection to cursive's cognitive benefits, this module examines the research on why writing by hand activates neural pathways that typing cannot replicate.
Nurturing innovative thinking in children
Creativity is not a mysterious gift—it is a cognitive process that can be understood, supported, and developed. This module explores the neuroscience of creative thinking, from the brain networks involved to the distinction between divergent and convergent processes. Learn evidence-based methods for fostering your child's creative problem-solving abilities and creating environments that nurture innovative thinking.
Understanding and optimizing cognitive ability
Intelligence is one of the most studied and consequential traits in psychology. This module cuts through the myths and marketing to explain what intelligence actually is, how genes and environment interact to shape it, what brain training can and cannot do, and the evidence-based strategies that genuinely optimize cognitive ability in children. Learn about the g-factor, fluid versus crystallized intelligence, the Wilson effect, the Flynn effect, and practical approaches backed by research.
Building the brain's control center
Executive functions are the brain's air traffic control system—the mental processes that enable planning, focus, remembering instructions, and juggling multiple tasks. These skills predict academic achievement, career success, and life outcomes better than IQ. This module covers the neuroscience of executive function development, why the prefrontal cortex takes until the mid-20s to mature, and evidence-based strategies for strengthening working memory, self-control, and cognitive flexibility in children.
The science of learning to read
Reading is not natural to the human brain. Unlike speech, which emerges spontaneously, reading must be explicitly taught and learned. This module explores how the brain rewires itself to decode written language, why phonemic awareness is the strongest predictor of reading success, the neurological basis of dyslexia, and evidence-based strategies for building fluent readers with deep comprehension skills.
Speed reading, memory, music, and language
Evidence-based methods to learn faster, remember more, and master any skill
This module separates learning myths from proven techniques. You'll discover the truth about speed reading, master the Feynman technique for deep understanding, learn how experts develop skills through deliberate practice, and apply meta-learning strategies that multiply your child's learning efficiency across all domains.
Master the neuroscience of how memories form, strengthen, and endure
Memory is the foundation of all learning. This module reveals the cutting-edge neuroscience of memory formation, from the molecular mechanisms of long-term potentiation to the practical techniques used by world memory champions. You'll learn how sleep consolidates memories, why testing beats studying, and how to engineer unforgettable learning experiences for your child.
How music shapes the developing brain
Explore the profound neuroscience of music and musical training on brain development. From the structural brain changes in musicians to the language-music connection, cognitive benefits, and emotional regulation, this module provides evidence-based strategies for incorporating music into your child's development at every age.
Building strong language skills from the first words
Language is the foundation of learning, thinking, and social connection. This module covers language milestones, evidence-based strategies to boost vocabulary, bilingualism, identifying delays, and creating a language-rich home environment.
Movement, resilience, emotional regulation, and focus
Physical development and cognition from 0-12 months
Movement and brain development are inseparable in infancy. This module covers the evidence on tummy time, motor milestones, the role of physical play in cognitive development, and how to create environments that support both physical and mental growth.
Building the ability to bounce back from adversity
Resilience isn't a trait you're born with—it's built through experiences and relationships. This module covers the science of stress, protective factors that build resilience, and practical strategies for helping children cope with adversity.
Helping children understand and manage their emotions
Emotional regulation—the ability to manage feelings appropriately—is foundational for mental health, relationships, and life success. This module covers how emotional regulation develops, co-regulation strategies, and evidence-based approaches to building emotional intelligence.
Building the ability to sustain attention in a distracting world
Attention is the gateway to all learning. This module covers how attention develops, factors that support or undermine it, evidence-based strategies for improving focus, and when attention difficulties warrant professional evaluation.
Navigating technology for healthy child development
Screens are ubiquitous, but their impact on children isn't simple. This module cuts through the noise to deliver evidence-based guidance on screen time, content quality, digital wellness practices, and how to manage technology in your family.
From preconception through adolescence, organized in 10 sections covering protection, optimization, and cognitive development.