Children grow and learn best in a safe environment where they are protected from neglect and from extreme or chronic stress external icon with plenty of opportunities to play and explore.
Parents and other caregivers can support healthy brain growth by speaking to, playing with, and caring for their child. Ensuring that parents, caregivers, and early childhood care providers have the resources and skills to provide safe, stable, nurturing, and stimulating care is an important public health goal. Promoting the development of a healthy brain can start even before pregnancy. For example, a healthy diet and the right nutrients like sufficient folic acid will promote a healthy pregnancy and a healthy nervous system in the growing baby.
Vaccinations can protect pregnant women from infections that can harm the brain of the unborn baby. During pregnancy, the brain can be affected by many types of risks, such as by infectious diseases like Cytomegalovirus or Zika virus, by exposure to toxins , including from smoking or alcohol , or when pregnant mothers experience stress, trauma, or mental health conditions like depression.
Healthy brain growth in infancy continues to depend on the right care and nutrition. Smooth, slimy, cold, beautiful — these are a few fun adjectives your child can learn through playing with a sensory board. So, the next time you see your child play with random items like paper towel rolls, pots, straws, and toys; encourage them. A child can use anything and everything to explore the world. And by allowing her to follow her instincts, you help nurture her senses.
Parenting For Brain does not provide medical advice. If you suspect medical problems or need professional advice, please consult a physician.
Have trouble motivating your child? Check out:. Gauvain M, Cole M. Readings on the Development of Children. Worth Publishers; Psychobiology of plasticity: effects of training and experience on brain and behavior. Behavioural Brain Research. June Hensch TK. The motions to the songs encourage children to cross all three body mid-lines, reaching the top to bottom, left to right, and front to back. These physical movements demand coordination from both the left and right sides of the brain.
This strengthens the tissues called the corpus callosum that divides the two sides of the brain that is important for communication from one side of the brain to the other. These movements help to develop and strengthen neural pathways laying the foundation for further development in language, literacy, and math skills. Crossing mid-lines can help stimulate brain activity in adults too. Try this activity. Extend one arm straight in front of you. It doesn't matter which one. Point your index finger, and draw a large, imaginary figure 8 lying on its side, crossing left to right in front of your body.
Run your finger along this imaginary figure several times. Now switch to the opposite arm. It may be harder since it is probably your non-dominate arm. Trace the same large figure 8 several times. This activity stimulates both sides of your brain and refreshes your thinking process.
It might help you get through those long afternoon workdays. There is one easy way that you can boost your child's brainpower through movement activities. Van der Meer mentions the fact that Chinese babies hear a difference between the R and L sounds when they are four months old, but not when they get older. Since Chinese children do not need to distinguish between these sounds to learn their mother tongue, the brain synapses that carry this knowledge disappear when they are not used.
Babies actually manage to distinguish between the sounds of any language in the world when they are four months old, but by the time they are eight months old they have lost this ability, according to van der Meer.
In the s, it was believed that children could only learn one language properly. Foreign parents were advised not to speak their native language to their children, because it could impede the child's language development.
Today we think completely differently, and there are examples of children who speak three, four or five languages fluently without suffering language confusion or delays. Brain research suggests that in these cases the native language area in the brain is activated when children speak the languages. If we study a foreign language after the age of seven, other areas of the brain are used when we speak the language, explains Van der Meer.
Since a lot is happening in the brain during the first years of life, van der Meer says that it is easier to promote learning and prevent problems when children are very young. The term "early intervention" keeps popping up in discussions of kindergartens and schools, teaching and learning. Early intervention is about helping children as early as possible to ensure that as many children as possible succeed in their education and on into adulthood -- precisely because the brain has the greatest ability to change under the influence of the ambient conditions early in life.
Today, 98 per cent of Norwegian children attend kindergarten, so the quality of the time that children spend there is especially important. I believe that kindergarten should be more than just a holding place -- it should be a learning arena -- and by that I mean that play is learning," says van der Meer.
She adds that a two-year old can easily learn to read or swim, as long as the child has access to letters or water. However, she does not want kindergarten to be a preschool, but rather a place where children can have varied experiences through play. When it comes to children with motor challenges or children with impaired vision and hearing, we have to really work to bring the world to them," says van der Meer. Today untrained temporary staff tend to be assigned to the infant and toddler rooms, because it's 'less dangerous' with the youngest ones since they only need cuddles and nappy changes.
I believe that all children deserve teachers who understand how the brains of young children work. Today, Norway is the only one of 25 surveyed OECD countries where kindergarten teachers do not constitute 50 per cent of kindergarten staffing," she said.
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