Construction Zone: Building a brain with everyday tools

Apr 16th, 2009 | By admin | Category: Features, Live and Learn

Construction Zone

Building a brain with everyday tools

Jessica’s father lowered her into a tub filled with warm water. Jessica (9 months old) immediately reached for the bright orange starfish toy floating in the tub and started chewing on it. As her dad lathered up a washcloth, he started to sing their special bath song. “Head and shoulders, knees and toes,” he sang, reaching to tickle her toes with the washcloth. Jessica giggled and kicked her feet. Her dad continued, “Eyes and ears and mouth and nose…” He kissed the tip of her nose. Jessica laughed and cooed and kicked some more.

From “Before the ABCs” in the journal Zero to Three

In this vignette, Jessica is developing socially and emotionally by having fun with her dad and trusting him to keep her safe in the tub. She responds to the song by kicking, cooing and laughing. Her gross motor and fine motor skills are being developed as she picks up the starfish and kicks her legs. She feels the kisses and tickles and begins to relate words like “nose” and “toes” to her body.
It sounds like an ordinary bath in an ordinary household—and it is. But think of all the learning that occurs. Taking advantage of ordinary times cannot be overrated. Parents with limitless resources can provide much to stimulate their babies’ physical, mental and emotional development. But any parent can get extraordinary results with tools that are readily available—the world around us and our own ingenuity.

Everyday tools

In her book Before the ABCs, Rebecca Partakian says children learn best when learning happens during the normal course of the day and when it emerges from the world around them. All domains are interesting and strengthen each other.
And remember when talking too much was a punishable offense? Chatty adults are a child’s best ally, say the authors of The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us about the Mind. Talking to your child and extending her language is a great and lasting gift. (For example, when a toddler points out “flower,” an adult can agree, “It’s a pretty, red flower.”)

Vocabulary is the most reliable predictor of an easy transition to reading. A child must not only hear a variety of words and make words, but he must also connect to logic and feel the rhyme and rhythm of sounds. If a child has a limited vocabulary, it’s hard for him to learn new words because he has nothing to reference. This builds a deficit as the years go by.

Quick—spread the word

What we are learning about brain development, particularly during the early years, is that parents need an intense sense of urgency to “spread the word” to their kids. By age two, 80 percent of the brain has developed, including language.

The most striking fact to come out of developmental research is just how much even very young babies know. Improved neuroscience techniques can show us how stimulation changes the brain, and how much those changes affect a child’s experiences in the world. Wow—we are in charge of those early experiences!

After birth, as experiences flood from all the sensory organs, the cells keep trying to make connections. That’s no simple task; when a baby must use its energy just to survive, there isn’t enough energy left to do the brain work. That’s where we come in to help our babies (and their quickly developing brains) with lots of engagement and stimulation. Science has shown that when this stimulation doesn’t occur, holes develop in the brain—and trouble begins.

So there’s visual proof: A child cannot develop and thrive without an engaged adult—and that’s us!

And what about those other “babies” around us?

Newborns aren’t the only ones who need adult engagement. We all talk about the terrible teen years, when some of us see our 13- to 18-year-old babies withdrawing from us into worlds as foreign as those final frontiers in the old Star Trek series. That’s about the time teens send messages that they don’t have much to say to their parents and that they aren’t very interested in what their parents have to say to them. Don’t believe a word of it!

During the teen years, when physical changes give birth to a whole new set of social and emotional needs, teens require more—not less—engagement with the adults who care most about them. We don’t recommend giving your teenager a bath, but think back to those times when trusting relationships were built around ordinary activities that let children know, “I can trust my parents to help me make sense of the way my body is changing and the new feelings that I am experiencing as a teenager.” Playing electronic games for hours and piercing parts of the body that were never meant to be pierced may be their way of saying, “Pay attention to me. I’m your baby, too.”

And after all …

As we care for our own children and engage with the children of our closest friends and neighbors, we can be a village, ensuring each child sings, dances, plays, makes up silly words, rhymes, talks, giggles, laughs and hugs life—for brains are under construction.
And as our babies become teenagers (and then grownups), we can continue to help them laugh more, embrace change, and trust us to be supportive when they have an unexpected tumble. The two of us had the benefit of super families who knew nothing about brain development—but did most everything right, anyway. (Thanks, parents!)