Infant Development
Baby yawning!
Brain Wiring
By the time a baby is 6 months old the brain has doubled in weight. Essential, life-determining synaptic connections are being formed even before your child can smile. These complex circuits shape our future thinking, feeling and behavior and they form at an astonishing rate. By the age of three a young child's brain has twice the number of nerve connections that it will have as an adult. Those connections that get reinforced survive to adulthood, while other connections are lost. The kind of care your child receives, the behavior you model, and the kind of activities and experiences she is exposed to will influence which connections ultimately survive. This is the most important "use it or lose it" period in our entire life and such rapid brain growth will never happen again.
Early on, the part of the brain that is developing most rapidly is the brain stem and the sensory-motor system. Every day is filled with new information, sights, smells and movement possibilities. A safe, nurturing environment, full of age appropriate motor challenges creates new synapses and strengthens ones already formed. The brain stem is where basic survival information is regulated and sensory-motor programs integrated. Because these basic neural networks of the sensory-motor system are at the foundation of all further growth, gaps or underdevelopment at this stage can have ramifications throughout life.
The prefrontal cortex also develops towards the end of the first year, and its development is tightly linked to caregiver interactions. The affect modeled by the caregiver imprints on the baby's prefrontal cortex and has a determining effect on the child's world view, sense of self, and ability to relate to others. The second major developmental phase of the prefrontal cortex happens in later adolescence.
Immunity
The other important system that has very rapid development during this period is the immune system. The infant is born immuno-suppressed and receives it's first burst of immunity from the mother in the form of colostrum. As the infant develops she receives further immunological protection from breast milk while her own system is developing. As a species we are under an unprecedented immunological challenge as our environment becomes increasingly toxic, our food sources less and less nutritious, and our predilections more and more towards processed foods – pseudo food substances we were never meant to eat. We are also in the first century of adjusting to early childhood immunizations and the jury is still out on the long term effects these will have on our natural immunity as a species.
Back to Infants and Toddlers
By the time a baby is 6 months old the brain has doubled in weight. Essential, life-determining synaptic connections are being formed even before your child can smile. These complex circuits shape our future thinking, feeling and behavior and they form at an astonishing rate. By the age of three a young child's brain has twice the number of nerve connections that it will have as an adult. Those connections that get reinforced survive to adulthood, while other connections are lost. The kind of care your child receives, the behavior you model, and the kind of activities and experiences she is exposed to will influence which connections ultimately survive. This is the most important "use it or lose it" period in our entire life and such rapid brain growth will never happen again.
Early on, the part of the brain that is developing most rapidly is the brain stem and the sensory-motor system. Every day is filled with new information, sights, smells and movement possibilities. A safe, nurturing environment, full of age appropriate motor challenges creates new synapses and strengthens ones already formed. The brain stem is where basic survival information is regulated and sensory-motor programs integrated. Because these basic neural networks of the sensory-motor system are at the foundation of all further growth, gaps or underdevelopment at this stage can have ramifications throughout life.
The prefrontal cortex also develops towards the end of the first year, and its development is tightly linked to caregiver interactions. The affect modeled by the caregiver imprints on the baby's prefrontal cortex and has a determining effect on the child's world view, sense of self, and ability to relate to others. The second major developmental phase of the prefrontal cortex happens in later adolescence.
Immunity
The other important system that has very rapid development during this period is the immune system. The infant is born immuno-suppressed and receives it's first burst of immunity from the mother in the form of colostrum. As the infant develops she receives further immunological protection from breast milk while her own system is developing. As a species we are under an unprecedented immunological challenge as our environment becomes increasingly toxic, our food sources less and less nutritious, and our predilections more and more towards processed foods – pseudo food substances we were never meant to eat. We are also in the first century of adjusting to early childhood immunizations and the jury is still out on the long term effects these will have on our natural immunity as a species.
Back to Infants and Toddlers