How to maximize your child's brain development. Child's brain. Exercise to improve blood circulation

Brain structures are formed by age three
What happens to a baby's brain after he is born? How to stimulate child's brain development?

After birth, the set of neurons that the child will have has already been formed; there are more than 86-100 billion of them (and according to some estimates, much more). It was already formed before the mother’s mid-pregnancy. New neurons are not formed on a large scale after birth (there are only hundreds or perhaps thousands of hippocampal neurons, and neurogenesis has not yet been proven for cortical neurons).

The way our brain works is determined not by the number of neurons, but by the number of connections between them, they are called synapses. In an adult, neurons are connected to each other into neural networks that intersect many times. One neuron can participate in a huge number of completely diverse neural networks. Each neuron receives approximately 15,000 inputs from other neurons and gives approximately 1,500 inputs to other neurons.
A child is born, all his neurons are in place, but there are very few connections between them.

Then a completely fantastic process begins, of which ordinary people have little suspicion. Starting somewhere from two to four months of life, then another leap to six, literally every hour 15,000,000 synapses (connections between neurons) are formed in the child’s brain. Mad dash. The child’s neural networks become hyperconnected. This period is called the period of synaptic overproduction. Any of us has much less than a child.
By eight to nine months of life, a child has a much more complexly connected neural network than any adult - the best way to adapt to an unknown future.
The plasticity potential of the newborn brain during the period of overproduction is extremely high. Neural networks in this period, when they are extremely plastic, due to the fact that they are super-connected, can be re-educated.

So, two years after birth, a complex neural network is formed in the child’s brain, more complex than that of any adult. And at 6 years old, the complexity of this neural network begins to decline. The number of synaptic contacts is greatly reduced. Why?

Synaptogenesis. Formation of connections between neurons from 39 weeks of pregnancy to 6 years

During development, a child's brain competes frantically for binding space, called synaptic competition. Those connections that are not used disappear.

Use it or you'll lose it!

Interesting example

If a 5-6 year old adult has a cataract in the eye, clouding of the lens. Then this cataract is “removed” and the eye continues to see - everything is fine. If the cataract is congenital, surgery is performed at three years of age - the eye remains forever blind. Why?

We modeled this situation on animals that had one eye closed from birth. It turned out that no degradation of neurons occurs. The lack of visual influx led to the fact that there was not a single neuron left in the cerebral cortex that would respond to stimulation of the previously closed eye. All neurons responded to stimulation of the eye that received visual experience in the first three months of the animal's life.

It turns out that the connections that came from the closed eye lost the competition in some kind of competitive struggle. Those connections that did not work, were not excited, did not conduct information, were lost, and all synaptic sites for connecting neurons in the visual cortex were occupied by working connections.
The principle is: “Use it or you will lose it.”
You will lose in the competition.

At the moment when this incredible growth of synapses in the child’s brain begins (synaptic overproduction), one immature neuron has a huge number of branches, it seems to organize redundant binding sites. In fact, the left and right eyes compete for the binding site. And in some places the left eye wins, in other places the right eye wins. Nerve connections are divided: connections from one eye go to one place, connections from the other eye to another place. (This is how the function of binacular vision arises, i.e. the ability to perceive the depth of space). This competition is necessary for the function to arise. Developmental processes are processes that await experience. This vigorous synaptic overproduction, which is determined genetically, awaits experience as the sculptor who will create from it the final structure of neural connections, which will be optimal for processing the information that the brain encounters in this particular environment.

During this synaptic overproduction, unused synapses are destroyed, losing competition; used synapses rapidly branch, change and form more and stronger connections.

Nothing is guaranteed in the development of neural networks in a child’s brain. The result will be one way or another, depending on what environment the developing brain finds itself in and how strongly the processes of competition work.

“Every newborn child is a born genius, but under the involuntary influence of the people around him and/or not very fortunate circumstances, he gradually turns into mediocrity.”

B. Fuller

To what extent can external stimuli drive the development of the child's cerebral cortex during this early period of development?
To an incredible degree! Even blind children can develop vision during this early period.

In special experiments on animals with tricky surgical transections, the flow of visual information was redirected from the visual cortex to the somatosensory cortex (which processes information about sensations and temperature sensitivity), and the visual cortex was destroyed. If the visual flow is redirected to the somatosensory cortex, and the somatosensory flow is removed altogether, then in such small animals that should have been blind, the somatosensory cortex begins to process visual information. It has been proven that these animals see, and all their somatosensory neurons acquire visual properties. This is the incredible plasticity of neural networks in the early period of anthogenesis.

The higher association areas of the cortex are more associated with the organization of complex brain functions. They go through the same period of synaptic overproduction, and then synaptic pruning, thinning, in competition. Survival of the fittest. First, too many synapses are formed, and then some of the synapses are destroyed.

If you deprive the eye of the ability to see, do not allow it to conduct and process information in the early period, it becomes functionally blind, loses its connections with processing neurons, but what if more complex associative areas are deprived of experience?

Many results have been obtained from studies of children in Romanian orphanages under Ceausescu, whose terrible conditions shocked the whole world. Despite foster families, consultations with psychologists, teachers, etc., the enriching experience that they tried to arrange for them, it turned out that a number of functions in these children were not sufficiently restored. Significantly worse than normal. Studies using instrumental methods have shown persistent severe hypometabolism in the frontal regions of the brain.

Deprivation of the experience of social contacts in the first two to three years of life leads to severe underdevelopment and changes in these areas of the cerebral cortex. This incredibly adaptive, incredibly plastic developmental process responds heavily to deprivation. Not because we remove the processes of competition, but because in this competition we allow the worst to win.

We change the processes of competition. We give the opportunity to win to the process, which will then poorly adapt the brain to behavior in a particular environment.

We used materials from lectures by Tatyana Aleksandrovna Stroganova, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of Developmental Psychophysiology, Faculty of Clinical and Special Psychology, Moscow City Psychological and Pedagogical University, Head of the Center for Neurocognitive Research (MEG-Center) at MSUPE.

“The period when connections between neurons are most actively formed is the period from the birth of a child to three years. At this time, approximately 70-80% of such compounds are generated. And as they develop, the capabilities of the brain increase. Already in the first six months after birth, the brain reaches 50% of its adult potential, and by three years - 80%. Of course, this does not mean that a child’s brain stops developing after three years. By the age of three, the back part of the brain mainly matures, and by the age of four, the part of it called the “frontal lobe” is included in this complex process.

Mature abilities such as thinking, needs, creativity, feelings develop after three years, but they use the base formed by this age.

Thus, if a solid foundation has not been formed in the first three years, it is useless to teach how to use it. It's like trying to achieve good results while working on a bad computer."

Masaru Ibuka
Founder of the Japan Early Development Association in 1969.

Human Brain Development

Synapse formation depends on early experience (700 per second in early years) Human Brain Development

From birth, a child's ability to perceive new things grows as rapidly as a rocket takes off. And, like a rocket, this amazing ability reaches its highest point, after which it freezes. By the age of six, her growth is virtually zero. But the wisdom curve gradually begins to grow, and it can even be considered that it first manifests itself at the age of six. All this can be depicted in the following diagram.

Ability and Wisdom Curves

The ability to learn increases and then quickly decreases, but at the same time wisdom begins to gradually increase. By the age of six these two curves meet. At the point where they meet, a child's ability to perceive information without any effort reaches its limit, and any significant brain growth actually stops. However, wisdom only begins to develop and gradually increases throughout the rest of life.

What is not used atrophies

If you do not provide nutrition to a newborn baby during the first three months and put him on water, this will lead to the fact that these children become not fully developed throughout their lives, turning into inferior adults.

If you close your eye in the first months of life, it stops seeing (experiments on animals). It is known that if a child grows up in darkness for the first years of his life, he will remain blind forever. Despite the fact that his visual organs will be in order, the visual function, which is formed in the brain only during the period of its growth, will not function.
If a child grows up in a sound vacuum for the first years of his life, he will remain deaf for the rest of his life.

If you do not communicate with a child for the first two or three years of life, this will lead to severe underdevelopment throughout his life.

Monstrous case

In 1970, a monstrous incident occurred in the United States - a feral girl, Genie, was discovered, who for the first 12 years of her life was imprisoned by a mentally ill father in a room, being in complete social isolation.
Her physical development corresponded to the development of a two and a half year old child, and in terms of mental development the girl was at the level of a one-year-old child. Naturally, she couldn’t speak and was a complete idiot. According to medical records, the girl was absolutely healthy during the first six months of her life.

Susan Curtis: “Gini's functional delay is due to the conditions in which she was kept during the first years of her life. She is not mentally retarded in the strict sense of the word. In particular, Genie took tests every year and demonstrated the development of intelligence every year. This doesn’t happen to mentally retarded people.”

After many years of training, Genie finally began to speak, but only reached the level of speech development of a 5-year-old child.

The same fate could have awaited Leonardo da Vinci, Lomonosov or Shakespeare if they had found themselves in similar circumstances.

If a child’s brain does not develop in the first years of life, then it will never develop in the future.

Children who were in a materially and emotionally impoverished environment during the first 6–12 months can no longer catch up in development with their normally developing peers.

All stages of human development are important, but the first one to two years are a critical window that forms the mental foundation for future life.
Scientists identify several main factors that influence the formation of a child’s brain: genes, daily experience, contact with parents, nutrition, physical activity, love.

The influence of positive emotional connections on the development of brain activity has also been scientifically proven.

An increase in brain mass is an increase not in the number of neurons, but in the number of connections between them. The computational resource of the brain is not its weight, or even the number of neurons, but the number of connections that neurons establish with each other, i.e. number of synapses. They number in the trillions. And the normal development of a child’s brain in the first stage, especially two years, is a very rapid increase in the density of synapses. And it turns out that the location of many neurons in our brain is genetically determined, but what kind of network will be formed, how many contacts there will be, how its work will depend on this or that type of reinforcement - all this is largely reinforced by the first years and months of life.

Vyacheslav Albertovich Dubynin,
Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor of the Department of Human and Animal Physiology, Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University.
The child's intelligence grows in proportion to the amount of information received.
Moreover, it leads to physical growth of the brain.
Neurons in a three-year-old child's brain are twice as active as neurons in an adult's head.

Every day, more and more new connections between neurons appear in the heads of babies, and a lot depends on what they will be like, including their future character, skills, abilities, and habits.

A child's brain can accommodate an unlimited amount of information.

The ability to absorb information is much higher in a child's brain than in an adult. It is impossible to “overfeed” or overstimulate him: a child’s brain, like a sponge, quickly absorbs knowledge, but when it feels that it is full, it switches off and stops perceiving new information. We should be concerned not that we are giving the child too much information, but rather that there is too little of it to fully develop him.

Those psychologists and learning experts who say: "Don't deprive your child of his childhood!" , for some reason they don’t mention anything about how the children themselves feel about this. They simply express their attitude to the learning process. Try getting a small child to do something! You won't succeed. He will always do only what he likes and is interested in!

The best time for a child is the time he spends with his parents.
The human brain grows only through constant use and this growth is virtually complete by the age of six. Everything that can come out of a given child is determined by the first six years of his life.

The ability to learn new facts is inversely proportional to age.
Most people believe that as we age, we become brighter and more gifted. In this case, they simply confuse giftedness with wisdom.
From conception to the moment of birth, the brain grows at an amazing speed; this speed remains gigantic from birth to thirty months, after which, up to the age of six, it continues to be quite high, and only then slows down sharply. From here it is easy to understand that from birth to six years, during each subsequent month the brain grows more slowly than during the previous one. Needless to say, the earliest moments of life are in this regard the most valuable.

Interesting

Carl Friedrich Gauss, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 19th century, discovered the formula for the sum of arithmetic series when he was only 8 years old.

Gauss's father was a simple mason, he repaired walls, fences, fireplaces and often took his son with him to work. Gauss handed his father bricks and counted them. Apparently, Gauss's mathematical abilities were formed under the influence of this habit in early childhood.

If you tell your child the facts, he will begin to look for the rules himself.
to which they obey.

Children learn three times more in the first six years of life than in the rest of their lives. By age six, brain growth is largely complete.

During the first six years of life, the human brain absorbs information at an astonishing rate. During these years, the child is an accumulator of information that will be useful to him throughout his life, and we can hardly imagine the size of this “accumulator”. This information will serve as the basis for other knowledge and wisdom that will grow throughout your life. What we don't use, we lose. And this is so obvious that it does not require additional explanation.

Knowing that the brain grows through its use during the first six years of life, and that we can influence that growth, is truly invaluable.

In 2007, a panel that included representatives from 30 business schools, 9 leading global experts and Nobel laureate Mr. Fin Kindlan concluded that early childhood development was the most effective social investment strategy among 30 other strategies proposed for consideration ( improvement of the tax system, investment in infrastructure development, reduction of public debt, etc.).

This conclusion was also supported by economists from the Cosensus Center in Copenhagen and experts from the University of California.

The first six years of life are the time when geniuses emerge.

During these same six years, mainly the formation of the brain occurs. How amazingly quickly the brain grows and how quickly this growth stops is clearly shown by the following figures: How quickly the brain develops

Head size
Newborn - 35 cm
2.5 years - 50 cm by 15 cm more
21 years old - 55 cm 5 cm more

Our whole life is not enough for us to use even one thousandth of the potential that lies in our brain. The human brain has the capacity to hold 125"500"000"000"000 bits of information.

People are only intelligent because they use their brains. The development of our child’s brain is more successful the more we help him in this. And we can contribute to this by providing him with a lot of information. And it is best to do this in the first six years of life for reasons that have already been mentioned many times.

Our children are smarter the more opportunities we give them to be smart. And this is especially true during the first six years of life.

Child brain development and intelligence quotient (IQ)

If a child does not receive any information during the first six years of his life, he will turn into a complete idiot. If you treat him like an idiot, the result will be about the same. He himself is not able to learn too much: the structure of his toy, yes, thanks to the conversations that took place around him, his native language. By the age of six, his level of development will be below average, and his IQ, accordingly, will be below 100 (i.e., the norm). If you treat your child as if he were the most ordinary, he will become the most ordinary, reaching an average IQ level of 100. Child Development

If you are familiar with the principles of brain development, you will begin to treat your child completely differently, organizing systematic reading and math classes for him, and giving him the opportunity to gain encyclopedic knowledge. In this case, your child will reach the six-year development level when he is only four years old, and his IQ will be equal to 150. If you follow the methods of Glenn Doman, he will achieve the same result in three years, and his IQ will be equal to 200, or even higher. But the most important thing is that already at the age of three the child’s brain will be equal in development to the brain of a six-year-old. All this has been proven at the Institute for the Development of Human Potential in Philadelphia, whose founder was Glenn Doman.

Neuroscientists at the Institute for the Development of Human Potential, led by Glenn Doman, have devoted fifty years to solving the problem of children with brain injuries. They were given the task of developing the brains of mentally retarded children. And they managed to do this; moreover, sick children began to develop faster than healthy ones.

Previously, brain injuries were considered an incurable disease. The Glen Doman Institute for the Development of Human Potential has proven that a child with mental retardation can develop into a normal, educated person if he is taught correctly from birth.

When this technique was tested on healthy children, the results exceeded all expectations! Healthy children developed twice as fast.
IQ allows you to track this growth - and nothing more. If a two-year-old child can cope with tasks for a four-year-old, this means that his IQ is 200, that is, twice the average level. Even then, in 1965, there were hundreds of mentally retarded children aged two or three years old who had serious brain injuries, but who could read and fully understand what they read.

“Scientists have discovered that children who are often praised become more intelligent than children who are often scolded. This is the creative element of praise.”

Thomas Dreyer

“Since ancient times, it has been believed that outstanding talent is, first of all, heredity, a whim of nature. When we are told that Mozart gave his first concert at the age of three, or that John Stuart Mill was reading classical literature in Latin at the age of three, most people say: “Of course, they are geniuses.”

However, a detailed analysis of the early lives of both Mozart and Milla suggests that they were strictly raised by fathers who wanted to make their children outstanding. I assume that neither Mozart nor Mill were born geniuses; their talent developed to its maximum due to the fact that favorable conditions were created for them from early childhood and they were given an excellent education.

Conversely, if a newborn is raised in an environment that is initially alien to its nature, it has no chance of fully developing in the future. The most striking example is the story of the Indian girls Amala and Kamala, found in the 1920s in a wolf cave southwest of Calcutta.

Great efforts were made to restore the children raised by wolves to human form, but all efforts were in vain.

It is taken for granted that a child born of a human is a human, and a wolf cub is a wolf. However, these girls continued to exhibit wolfish habits even in human conditions. It turns out that the education and environment into which a baby finds itself immediately after birth most likely determines what he will become - a man or a wolf!
As I reflect on these examples, I think more and more about the enormous impact education and environment have on a newborn. This problem has become of the greatest importance not only for individual children, but also for the health and happiness of all mankind.

Therefore, in 1969, I set about creating the Japan Early Childhood Development Association. Our and foreign scientists gathered in experimental classes to study, analyze and expand the application of Dr. Shinichi Suzuki’s method of teaching children to play the violin, which was then attracting the attention of the whole world.”

Masaru Ibuka
Founder of the Japan Early Development Association.

From birth we weigh the child and measure his height: yeah, plus 4 centimeters. We notice how it develops. We buy new clothes without trying to wear small ones. And if the purchases turn out to be large, we carefully put them in the closet and leave them “to grow.” However, we do not have the same simple tools as scales or a measuring tape to assess the psycho-emotional maturation of a child. How a child's brain changes from year to year and how this affects behavior.

Any problems in relationships with children, in my opinion, come from ignorance. We don’t understand why children don’t hear us, don’t obey, often do everything out of spite, don’t respond to a hard “no” or scream when everything seems to be in order. The little man seems to be going crazy even though you are doing everything right.

Many problems in raising children come from a lack of understanding of how the human brain develops. Often a child is physically or psychologically incapable of doing what we demand of him, or, on the contrary, he wants to do something that he is interested in doing at the time, but it seems to us that it is too early.

If the maternity hospital gave out a book describing the different stages of human brain development, many conflict situations could be avoided. Parents who understand how a child's brain develops would be able to calmly help their children move through the stages of adulthood. Moreover, such knowledge always has a beneficial effect on the couple’s relationship, because mom and dad are looking in the same direction.

“Is there any book or article that describes the stages of child development?” - I ask the psychologist and look into her eyes with hope. No, there is no single book. Many articles and books have been written about each age. Therefore, there is only one piece of advice. Do you want to understand children, not go crazy from powerlessness, not sprinkle ashes on your head because you couldn’t raise a normal child? Read as much as you can about human physiology.

I will try to go through the main milestones of a child's development and will start at two years old. Why is 2 important?

2 years is the age when the child no longer looks like a baby. He walks, talks and even demands, and the parents begin to demand in return. Most parents of two-year-olds think that their children are able to control emotions and impulses. However, this is an illusion. Only by the age of four will a child’s brain be developed enough to provide the body with self-control.

Is your two-year-old hysterical, climbing on the table despite being told not to, or refusing to share? Everything is fine, he is developing as normal.

The parent's task is to adapt the child to the world. And self-control is one of the skills that we have to develop in order to fit into social norms. If all adults sat on a table or threw shoes, chaos would ensue. However, there are different ways to teach your child to control his impulses. I would call them revolutionary and evolutionary.

Evolution is a progressive change in a child's behavior under the influence of adults. Help him learn to control himself and his emotions. For example, distract him with a favorite toy while passing a candy store, or give him a sense of control by allowing him to buy something very small. Or offer to watch cartoons for another 5 minutes. The feeling of being able to influence life processes gives the child peace of mind.

Terrible twos are considered in psychology to be children of the age of discontent. The child still speaks poorly, which means he is rarely understood. Misunderstanding is often the cause of a child's emotional collapse. Try speaking a foreign language when your vocabulary is limited to twenty words! You will most likely experience severe irritation.

From 1.5-2 years to 3.5-4 years, a child begins to understand that the world is huge and there are many opportunities in it. Now he strives for autonomy. Many different desires collide with minimal possibilities. Parents constantly interfere: you cannot cross the road on your own, climb the steepest stairs, or drink water from the toilet. Many things simply don’t work out because your fingers don’t obey you and your legs don’t run as fast as you’d like.

You can get out of this difficult stage with different results. You can teach your child to be aware of his emotions and manage them in the future. With a calm, balanced approach, you will get a confident little person. He will feel a sudden newfound control and try to do a lot of things himself. He will not be afraid to take initiative and be proud of his achievements. This is evolution.

Revolution implies a completely different approach and a different result. The child’s desire to explore the world runs into a parental “no.” Sometimes it’s for business (he grabs a knife, reaches for a pan of boiling water), and sometimes it’s just for the worse. Mom stops where this is no longer necessary. The child goes barefoot onto the wet grass, the mother shouts: “Stop! It is forbidden!" Why not? The contact of the sole with the wet grass is useful and pleasant. “What if he slips,” my mother thinks.

The child demands sweets, passing by the department with chocolates, and the father begins to threaten, harshly grabs him by the hand, and when leaving the store he also spanks him on the bottom. Children of such parents often look well-mannered. They sit calmly at the table and respond to their parent’s call. But this is unconscious behavior. This is fear. For some time, such a system will work, but will produce its unhealthy fruits closer to adolescence. Protest, disobedience, aggression, lack of initiative - parents will have to deal with the consequences of a revolutionary approach. A suppressed child will become a suppressed adult or will come out in resistance and protest.

Some advice for “victim” parents of two-year-olds:

The adult's task is to gradually give the child freedom. It is impossible to limit everything all the time. Determine what is definitely not possible. And show your child what you can do in return. If you can’t draw on the wallpaper, then where can you. Oddly enough, this is not always obvious to a child.

Always share your feelings. “I feel uncomfortable now,” “I’m offended.” The moment will soon come when your feelings will become important to him.

But don't forget about the good. “I’m so glad you did this,” positive reinforcement works better than negative reinforcement.

Acknowledge your child's feelings and voice them. “Don’t you want to go to the garden? I understand you want to stay home with me.” Often understanding is most important.

Give a feeling of control over the situation - ok, another 3 minutes of cartoon and that’s it. In a hysterical situation, take him out of the “hall”. Theater and audiences instill artistry in a child. Sometimes it's enough to just walk away.

The human brain undergoes the greatest transformations in the first years of life. It is in infancy that intelligence and abilities, “mind and feelings” are formed. Parents need to try to ensure that the baby’s brain develops intensively and harmoniously. What needs to be done, what methods are there? Did you know that the development of a child’s brain begins in the womb and in the first year of life takes on an avalanche-like character? Let's try to trace the entire process from birth and find out what adjustments parents can make to it using the latest techniques.

It often happens that mothers of babies aged more than a year or two notice obvious deviations in behavior and rush to a neurologist for help. Obvious signs of dysfunction of the central nervous system can be corrected in most cases, but it would be worth paying attention to the problems much earlier. Many mothers remain captive to stereotypes: it is believed that a baby under one year old is simply stupid; parents pay much more attention to the fight against digestive problems, allergies, colds and other physical health problems, leaving deviations in psycho-emotional development out of the scope. Without denying the importance of physical development, one must not miss the precious days of intensive formation of the intellect!

Processes of brain development that can only be judged by the result

Here are some very compelling facts about brain development in the first days and months of human life:

By the end of the first year, a baby's brain doubles in size and weighs 1 kg - almost half the weight of an adult brain.
In one second, about 700 synapses are formed in the baby's brain. This is a neural connection that is formed in the process of a little person getting to know the world around him and gaining any experience. Billions of neurons in a baby's brain are exceptionally active in the first year of life, especially in the sectors of the brain responsible for physical development, emotions, speech functions, and smell.
Infants are very emotional; with the help of emotions they express their attitude to surrounding events. The amygdala is responsible for the manifestation of emotions, but the frontal lobes, responsible for intelligence, develop slowly as the child “gets smarter.”

How to learn to control brain development in children, ensure the development of abilities with age, and increase IQ to record levels?

Child brain growth and development

If we take the entire period of formation of a child’s brain, then its main part (up to 70%) occurs during the period of intrauterine development. For the first year - 15%, another 15% - for the period from one year to 6-7 years. By the age of 6-7 years, the structure of the brain is almost completely formed and differs little from that of an adult. This is precisely the reason for establishing the optimal age threshold for starting school: the brain is already ready to assimilate information that becomes more complex every year and form logical connections.

From conception to birth

From the point of view of anatomy and morphology, the child’s brain is formed literally in the first weeks of fetal development, and by the third week of pregnancy it is already possible to consider the division of the brain into three parts.

Sonya is visiting her grandmothers. Talking to mom on the phone:
- Mom, when will you pick me up?
- Do you know how many fingers there are on a hand? I'll be back in so many days.
- Mom, it’s a pity you don’t have three fingers.

From birth to one year

With the advent of tomography, scientists have discovered that the microstructure of a child’s brain begins to form immediately after birth. After birth, a baby already has hundreds of billions of neurons - nerve cells, but the connections between them are primary and not structured. It is in the process of interaction with the external environment that stable connections are created between neurons, a kind of “network” or “web” is formed, a tree-like structure of neurons is created, and the development of the brain hemispheres in children occurs.

As soon as you rattle the baby with a rattle, he immediately forms stable connections that characterize the image, shape, color and sounds emitted by this object, characterizing its movement and relationship with the mother’s hand and with the mother herself. The example is simple, but that's how it works, from simple to complex. It’s not for nothing that a very specific baby can learn any language on the planet!

The structure of the network of neurons becomes more complex every minute and every day, and the infant’s cerebral cortex thickens (its thickness is a criterion of human intelligence). Motor activity and the development of child brain functions are closely interconnected: the structure of the cerebellum and vestibular apparatus is being formed, connections are being established between the cerebellum and the frontal area of the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for thinking.

Development of both hemispheres of the brain occurs, but not always evenly. Scientists believe that a certain asymmetry is the norm rather than the exception. In girls, the left hemisphere develops more intensively, in boys - on the contrary, and brilliant people in most cases have a more developed right hemisphere.

From one to three years and beyond

By the age of three, the brain volume reaches 80% of the adult brain. Intelligence grows, the ability to think and speech functions develop, and stable social connections are formed. After three years, the rate of brain development begins to gradually decline; by the age of 10, it is too late to correct anything.

John Medina on how to develop your baby's brain

The popular book by the American author can be purchased or downloaded on the Internet. In his work, the researcher states that “all children are different and all parents are different, so there is no advice for all occasions.” Taking as a basis the individuality of both babies and their parents, Medina encourages spending as much time together as possible and turning this time into a fascinating process of learning about the baby, his needs, his already developing character.

In his book, the scientist pays great attention to the methods and techniques of developing the brain and thinking in young children, and warns against typical mistakes of inexperienced parents.

Early development: how good is it and what needs to be done?

The ideas of early development are by no means new; they are already hundreds of years old. It is believed that even during pregnancy, not only the expectant mother, but also the child in the womb receives undoubted benefits from going to concerts of classical or simply pleasant, positive music; the mother should receive as many positive emotions as possible. After birth, adherents of the ideas of early development try to talk with the baby as much and on serious topics as with adults, sometimes in several languages, play Mozart and everything that they themselves like to listen to. It is believed that this stimulates the development of the child’s brain “from the cradle”.

By the way, John Medina is very skeptical about “music for the belly,” lectures on quantum physics and showing advanced educational videos to a baby on a screen the size of half a wall. He insists on the thesis “for everything there is a time” and appeals to common sense and a sense of proportion. Medina says a box of crayons, an engaged, cheerful parent and a couple of hours will do much more for a baby's brain development, and the effects will be much more permanent. Like in this video:

Today, advanced marketers have created and successfully cultivated a real fashion for early development: any store offers children ingenious toys and devices, rugs, even gadgets. All kinds of developmental courses and trainings for mothers with babies are very popular. The baby is literally overloaded with information that he doesn’t really need at this age. Experts say that long-tested cards, simple balls and cubes, and dynamic gymnastics are quite sufficient. Try to communicate a lot and often to stimulate the development of speech functions.

Best advice for moms and dads: Read fairy tales to your baby: tens of generations of our ancestors could not have been wrong!

An interesting technique by Makoto Shichida

A professor from Japan is convinced that efforts should be directed towards development right hemisphere baby, because it is known that the right hemisphere is responsible for creativity and creative thinking. A child with a well-developed right hemisphere learns to remember a large amount of information, and his ability to learn foreign languages increases.

The Japanese scientist’s method is based on the following statements (sometimes controversial):

All children are initially geniuses, that is, endowed with unlimited potential for mental development.
Only constant and systematic training with the baby will bring the desired result.
Repeated repetition for the purpose of memorization is not a very good method, as it promotes the development of the left hemisphere rather than the right.
Proper brain development requires simultaneous stimulation of all five senses.

Children say!
-Daughter, why are you so vindictive?
- I don’t know, mom, but our dad is kind!

For classes, special cards are used, they encourage the child to imagine and fantasize, and there are special games. Finding a technique is easy: there is quite a lot of information on the Internet. Perhaps the formation of visual memory is of paramount importance for children in Japan or China: after all, this ability is critical for mastering hieroglyphic writing. In other languages, like Russian, there is more internal logic and grammar than visual images. Nevertheless, the technique is interesting!

5 Social Factors That Poorly Affect Brain Development in Children

How big is the influence of the environment on a child's brain development? Although such a study was carried out by scientists from Harvard, it is quite universal and quite applicable to our Russian realities. Here are 5 factors that inhibit brain development:

Family poverty, inability to provide themselves with basic necessities, poor quality food.
Parents are poorly educated, their interests and social needs are primitive. Mainly concerns the mother, who spends much more time with the baby than the father.
Single-parent family.
A parent or even both suffer from mental disorders.
Adult family members are indifferent to the child, communication is reduced to “so as not to interfere,” they play little and talk little with children. In dysfunctional families, the emotional situation is often very stressful.

Any one of these factors is bad on its own, but a combination of several creates a cumulative effect. The result is a delay in the development of the child’s brain with irreversible consequences, poor vocabulary, empathy, inability to express one’s thoughts, and a general lag in mental development.

Plan your pregnancy: the child should be desired and loved, favorable conditions should be created for him to live a full life.
Study and learn new things about your baby’s age, try to persistently apply knowledge in practice.
During pregnancy and breastfeeding, a mother needs a complete and balanced diet, rich in vitamins for development and polyunsaturated fatty acids, macro- and microelements. The relationship between the quality of mother's milk and the process of brain formation in infants has long been established.
Stress, fear and uncertainty are the worst enemies that prevent a baby from analyzing the environment and recognizing the correct response to their actions.
Try to accept all children’s feelings and emotions, even if you don’t like them, and devote maximum time to communication and playing with your child.
Movement is a powerful stimulator of the development of interhemispheric connections: oddly enough, physical activity greatly contributes to learning and the development of thinking abilities in the early period of life. Even “brain gymnastics” has been developed, but it is more suitable for children after 2-3 years.

Delayed brain development in infants often lies on the conscience of negligent parents, who are ready to attribute the result of their laziness to “bad heredity” and claim that “they will teach you at school.” You don’t need to set your goal to raise a prodigy and a genius, you just need to conscientiously fulfill your parental duty, create an optimal developmental and stimulating environment for the baby, and you will definitely succeed.

A useful video for moms, from which you will learn amazing things!

No knowledge about the properties of the central nervous system makes it possible to see the processes occurring in the brain of a newly born baby. At the moment when mother and baby meet their gaze for the first time, a connection is formed between the neuron in the child’s retina and the neuron in the cerebral cortex that is responsible for visual function. The connection of neurons is like a flash, and as a result, the mother’s face is forever imprinted in the child’s memory. We cannot observe such transformations, but it is important to understand that this process of growth, development, and the creation of new communication nodes will continue for many years, providing the little person with the ability to feel and think, remember and learn to do everything that he has never done before.

A child's brain needs to be developed

Only recent studies have convinced scientists that full-fledged brain activity is determined not by the innate characteristics of the child, but by the impressions, knowledge, and experience that the baby receives after birth. The formation of the main complex neural circuits, on which the baby’s future abilities depend, occurs precisely during the period of active growth. Parents should know how to develop their child’s mental abilities in order to promptly and correctly begin the process of learning various skills and stimulate the child’s cognitive interest. Exercises for the development of a child’s brain are necessary, because without them it is impossible to create synapses (neural nodes). Just as a memorized poem, if not repeated from time to time, can be forgotten after some time, synapses that have not found use weaken, and over time cannot be restored at all. A lot of energy is spent on the activity of the brain of a child under 10 years of age - much more than is needed for the functioning of the brain of an adult. With such activity, children’s brain exercises should be performed as often as possible. For this purpose, it is better to use ordinary life situations and include teaching moments in the game, since simply presented information will never be perceived by the child as deeply as presented in the context of experienced emotions.

What exercises to use?

Since the human brain consists of two hemispheres and functions most effectively when both halves of the organ work synchronously, the main task of education is the development of the brain hemispheres in children. There are many exercises for developing a child's brain. Here are some of them:

Visualization (playing with imagination). During such an activity, the baby can create certain pictures, scenes in his mind, change the color of objects, their shape. In general, there are no limits to the use of imagination.
Ear - nose. Children really like this game. It is necessary for the baby to hold the tip of his nose with his left hand and place his right hand on his left ear. Then you need to clap your hands and quickly change the position of your hands to the opposite (now your right hand is holding your nose, and your left hand should be on your right ear).
Ring. This is a finger exercise that has a positive effect on fine motor skills of the hands and at the same time activates the corresponding centers in the cerebral cortex. You need to take turns connecting the thumb with the index finger, then with the middle, ring and, finally, with the little finger. First, you can do the exercise with one hand, then with the other, and then with both hands at the same time and try to move your fingers as quickly as possible.
Mirror drawing. The exercise is performed with both hands - you need to simultaneously draw symmetrical signs, pictures, letters. During drawing, the work of the hemispheres is harmonized, and the efficiency of mental activity significantly increases.

Soroban method

There is a technique that combines various exercises that are useful for developing children's thinking. It allows you to reveal the potential of children's intellectual abilities and talents, in addition, it is one of the best ways to teach a child to quickly count in his head. The Soroban method came to us from Japan, a country that is recognized as one of the most intellectually developed in the world. Mental arithmetic training is based on working with Japanese abacus abacus. Why do we draw a parallel between the Soroban method and special developmental exercises?

Using two hands. Kids perform calculations on the abacus with both hands at once, which allows not only to develop each hemisphere, but also to optimize their interaction.
Visualization. Gradually, the real counting instrument is replaced by its invisible counterpart in the children's imagination. Children imagine numerical examples not in the form of digital signs, but in the form of images with a certain position of the knuckles on an imaginary abacus.
Fingertips. The fingers are used even when the child begins to count in his head. With their help, the baby moves invisible counting dominoes.
The ability to control your brain. Children who master mental arithmetic at the Soroban school can simultaneously perform mathematical exercises in their minds, perform actions with their fingers and use their creative abilities (draw, read poetry with expression).

Regular, properly organized classes develop creative and logical thinking, cognitive abilities, and communication skills. Children develop phenomenal memory, observation, mental flexibility, the ability to concentrate, analyze and evaluate, draw conclusions, and make decisions quickly. With such data it is easy to learn and achieve your goals. The child's brain is ready to develop, but we must help it with this, since the loss of even the smallest share of abilities becomes an irrevocable loss for intelligence.

We all experience strong emotions from time to time, but adults cope with them better than children. Why? It's all about the structure of the brain: its parts responsible for self-control mature only by the age of 25. So, are parents doomed to watch children's quarrels and other bad behavior all this time? Let's understand the structure of the child's brain.

The story of a quarrel

One afternoon, Jill heard screams and noise coming from her six-year-old son Grant's bedroom. Four-year-old Gracie found her brother's treasure trove and took his "rarest crystal", which she later lost. Jill arrived just as Gracie said in her snarkiest voice, “It’s just a stupid rock and I’m glad I lost it!”

Jill looked at her son: clenched fists, red face. You've probably experienced moments like this when your child is on edge and the situation threatens to turn ugly. However, it is still possible to stop and turn towards a reasonable and peaceful solution. The situation entirely depends on whether your dear baby can control his impulses. Calm your strong emotions. Make the right decision.

In this case, Jill immediately saw signs of a brewing storm: Grant was losing control and had no intention of making a smart decision. She saw the rage in his eyes and heard the barbarian roar begin to bubble in his throat. Luckily, Jill intercepted Grant before he reached Gracie. She grabbed him and held him while his fists and kicks shook the air wildly. All this time Grant was screaming. When he finally stopped struggling, Jill let him go. Through his tears, he looked at his sister, who actually adored and idolized him, and said coldly: “You are the worst sister in the world.”

This final verbal torpedo hit its target and brought Gracie to tears of despair, just as Grant had hoped. However, Jill was glad that she was there, otherwise her son would have caused his sister physical, not just emotional pain. The question Jill asked her husband Dan is one we often hear from other parents: I can't be with my kids every second. How can I teach them to do the right thing and control themselves if I'm not there?

One of the most important skills we can teach our children is to make smart decisions in high-pressure situations like the one described above. They need to stop before acting, consider possible consequences, think about the feelings of others, and make moral and ethical judgments.

Why do some situations make us pat our child on the back, while others make us throw our hands up in the air? There are some pretty good reasons for all of this, based on what's going on in the top and bottom parts of their brain.

Comment on the article "Child's bad behavior: it's all about the unfinished brain!"

The most important thing is to really learn to understand your child and provide him with the necessary psychological assistance in a given situation in a timely manner. A very important article for mothers)))

25.06.2014 21:07:59,

Thank you. A very useful article, it gives knowledge about the mechanism of a child’s behavior and suggests how to properly respond to aggressive and capricious behavior.

06/24/2014 19:07:51, VALENTINA

Total 2 messages .