We Can Help Children Grow Healthy Brains
How your child’s brain develops each and every day is being shaped by the environment and experiences you provide. The world your child lives in actually affects how their brain grows. Your child needs lots of new, positive experiences in a safe, stable home environment to build a healthy brain. Healthy relationships are the most important experience your child can have.
A baby’s brain is ready to connect. Babies build their brains by connecting with you and the world around them. At birth, a baby’s brain has 100 BILLION nerve cells called neurons that are waiting to connect. Each neuron can make thousands of connections or only a few depending on a child’s environment and experiences. Spending quality time with your child can increase your child’s brain power. You can help your baby build brain connections by talking, hugging, singing, reading, playing, and exploring the world together.
The brain is a “use it or lose it” machine. There are windows of opportunity in early brain development. Some of these windows close very quickly. For example, areas of the brain involved in vision are connected by 18 months of age. If an infant’s vision is blocked by a cataract or an eye patch at the time when the brain needs to be making connections for vision, a child will lose the ability to ever see out of the affected eye.
Children need the right experience at the right time. Learn as much as you can about age-appropriate activities to take advantage of windows of opportunity for your child’s brain development. For example, children can learn to speak a second language without an accent. This window of opportunity starts to close as a teenager and it becomes much harder to learn and speak a second language without an accent.
Healthy, caring relationships are food for a child’s growing brain. By 6 months of age, babies can tell the difference between faces they know and don’t know just as well as you can! By 18 months of age, the areas of the brain that control emotions are connecting. Babies learn about healthy relationships and how to handle stress from you, so if you are stressed, your baby will be too. Your child needs you to love them, comfort them, and encourage them. Make sure that other caregivers are also providing a safe, nurturing environment for your child.
Understand The Building Blocks Of My Brain
A child’s brain develops from the bottom up like a stack of building blocks. The brainstem and mid-brain are the first areas of the brain to develop and connect. These areas are called the “survival brain” because they control body functions that keep us alive such as blood pressure and body temperature. The limbic system is the next building block of the brain. When you have a “gut response” about something, this comes from the limbic system in your brain which handles our basic emotions. The top building block of the brain is the cortex. This is the last area of the brain to mature. The cortex is responsible for our most complicated thinking from decision-making to multi-tasking to controlling our emotions. Reading, writing, language, and arithmetic are all cortex functions so children need to spend lots of time in this area of their brains to learn these new skills.
Build My Self-Esteem
It’s more than just words. We can build a child’s self-esteem through praise, encouragement, and positive experiences. Children need to hear that we believe in them and that they can be whatever they want to be. Give your child opportunities to succeed at new tasks and develop skills. From praising your child for sharing a toy with another child to teaching them how to climb up the stairs, your encouraging words can boost your child’s confidence and ability to face challenges.
I Need To Feel Safe
Children need to feel safe. Creating a safe home isn’t just the things you do to prevent your child from getting hurt such as plugging outlets, putting safety gates on stairways, and keeping poisons out-of-reach. It’s about creating a predictable, stable environment for your child. When a child feels safe and nurtured, they can focus their energy on upper brain development and learning. Children growing up in fear or chaos tend to spend more time in “survival brain” trying to feel OK. They adapt to their environment, but it comes at a high cost. Because these children are spending less time in the cortex or “thinking brain,” they often have problems paying attention, sitting still, and controlling their emotions.
Keep Being There!
There are big brain changes during adolescence. Adolescents do not have all the hardware in their brains yet to think like an adult. The adolescent brain goes through major remodeling that starts around puberty and continues into the early 20’s. Teens need parents and caregivers in their lives more than ever to help them finish building their brains. How teens spend their time matters!
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