Infant brain development knowledge can really help parents and carers learn HOW to help their child.
To raise a smart baby, parents need to learn how the infant brain develops and what they can do to nurture the process.
Baby brain development is so complex that many areas and systems of neural connections must work together for any activity. Brain activity in a child's brain differs from brain activity in an adult's brain. Maturation and experience prepares the brain for new and different tasks over time.
Infant brain development is predicted partially on the density of synapse formation in the relevant systems and partially on a process called Myelination. Myelin is a fatty substance in the brain that gradually coats message-sending axons to transmit messages to relevant areas around the brain quickly. Myelin develops in the brain from before birth to the age of twenty or thirty years.
The rate of myelination is mainly determined by nature and it does not appear possible to be able to speed up myelin formation.
Some speculate that essential fatty acids from our diets may influence the amount of myelin laid down.
Myelin formation begins at the top of the spine and moves up to higher, more complex brain structures at the same time it is progressing down the spinal cord.
WHAT should we encourage and WHEN?
A fine line exists between appropriate support and excess pressure. Parents and caregivers can stimulate stimulate child brain development when the cell networks are ready, but many aspects of brain development cannot be rushed.
Most people have at least heard or been told that it can be harmful to push or force skills too early, but not everyone knows why.
When skills are forced by intensive instruction too early, this can cause the child to use immature, inappropriate neural networks and distort the natural growth process. Trying to speed learning over unfinished neuron systems can be detrimental to long term learning.
My suggestion is to encourage learning but never force it, keeping in mind baby's "readiness" for new skills. We need to provide an array of interesting, curiosity-stimulating objects and experiences, be able to offer new learning opportunities and allow the brain to take in what it needs to make appropriate connections.
