An
Important Message to Parents
Current
scientific research shows that most of the development of the human brain
takes place during the first three years of life. To ensure healthy
development, children need appropriate cognitive, emotional, and physical
stimulation. Parents need to be aware of their child’s developmental
stages in order to encourage healthy development in an age-appropriate
manner.
Cognitive
A
study by Dr. William Greenough at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana
found on autopsy that rats exposed to an enriched environment full of toys,
food, exercise devices, and playmates had superbrains. They had about
25% more connections between brain cells than rats raised in standard,
dull laboratory cages. Studies also show that the IQ’s of premature
children or those born into poverty can be significantly increased by exposure
to toys, language, appropriate parenting, and other stimuli.
What
You Can Do:
*
Challenge your children to think. Teach them to count, match colors,
recite the alphabet, learn nursery rhymes, and work puzzles. Most
importantly, read to your children or show them picture books.
*
Create a stimulating environment. Surround your child with bright
colors, various textures, and interesting sounds and smells.
*
Talk to your children. Children are eager to learn and to understand.
Talk to them often and talk to them in complete sentences. Tell them
about their environment—situations, people, places. Don’t underestimate
their ability to take in information.
Emotional
Dr.
Ned Kalin, chief of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison,
found that rats stressed during pregnancy have offspring that are very
emotional and reactive. They are hyper-responsive to stress and their
brains produce more adrenaline, a stress hormone. Neuroscientist
Bruce McEwen of Rockefeller University and others have found that with
increased mothering behaviors, newborns grow up calm and ready to explore.
What
You Can Do:
*
Show how much you care. Provide an abundance of love, concern, and
care for your child.
*
Take good care of yourself. Monitor your own stress and mental health.
Find help if you feel overwhelmed. Your state of mind will affect
your child’s development.
*
Do your best to shelter your child. Shield children from stressful
or violent environments.
Physical
Dr.
Saul Schanberg of Duke University and Tiffany Field of the University of
Miami noticed a lack of growth among premature infants in “do not touch”
incubators. The doctors felt these children were so small that they
should not be disturbed. Yet no matter how well fed or medically
cared for the children were, they struggled to survive. To understand
this phenomenon, Schanberg and Field studied rats without physical stimulation
from a caretaker and found that the baby rats released stress hormones
to decrease the body’s need for nourishment and cause growth to cease.
The animals’ brains were responding to the absence of a caretaker by telling
their bodies to stop growing because they would not be cared for.
With this information, hospitals started to hold and rub the backs of the
preemies, and the infants began to grow and thrive. Their growth
rates nearly doubled!
What
You Can Do:
*
Cuddle, hug, kiss, and hold your children. Children need a lot of
affection many times a day!
*
Make sure your children have opportunities to run, stretch, skip, and jump.
*
Feed your children healthy foods: fruits, vegetables, milk, cheese; fish,
chicken, whole-grain breads and cereals.
The
studies cited were reported in Ronald Kotulak’s 1993 “Unlocking the Mind,
A Prize-Winning Series from the Chicago Tribune.”
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