Interactions help shape children’s developing brains.
Family has a extremely important ongoing influence in a child’s developing brain and each child’s community helps to shape it too. Being a part of positive early learning experiences gives each child optimal brain development.
Each newly acquired skill helps in the sequential development of the next, so achieving complex and higher order skills is best supported by a good foundation.
Caring and Positive relationships are important to promote resilience for babies and children. Stress is a normal part of children’s environments and when buffered by stable and supporting relationships, it can help develop positive and adaptative coping skills.
Excessive or long lasting stress can have a negative impact on brain development. As long lasting stress in the Early Years can damage the brain, intervening in situations where ongoing stress is likely as early as possible is critical in achieving the best possible outcomes for the children.
Brain Development in it stages includes:
0-3 years A rapid period of brain development which can be fostered by relationships with caregivers, and supported by optimal community environments for families and children. Brain development is vulnerable to toxic stress (depending on length and number of stressors for the child)
By School Age ,Children build on the solid foundation for the first five years. It is more difficult for children to take advantage of the learning environment to schools if: they have not had optimal home environment, there is restricted access to quality early childhood services, they have experienced a poor quality community environment.
Adolescence; Brain development prioritizes the connections used most often, resulting in the ‘pruning’ of the brain networks or circuits.
As children enter this period, more intensive resources are required if children have missed the opportunities for optimal caregiving and environments in the preceding years.
The brain is programmed for events and experiences to happen at particular times for the best wiring and brain development.
For example, language development depends on adequate hearing and if hearing loss isn’t diagnosed and the brain can’t receive the sounds that lead to language development, the language parts of the brain begin to ‘close up’.
The quality of a child’s earliest environments and the availability of appropriate experiences at the right stages of development are crucial to brain development and the foundation for learning later in life.