Developing Your Child's Brain and Mind

A child’s early years are very important to how he develops later in life. Besides nutrition and mind stimulating activities, basic parenting skills with full of loving and caring, promote a healthy brain growth. It is important to make time for personal interaction to create the best environment for developing brains. Your child depends on you for development and survival and how you help him infl uences his growing brain and mind.

Brain activities and development
It is important to know the basic activities of brain so that you are better able to help stimulate your child’s brain functions. Stimulating your child’s brain is a complex process and needs to be done with utmost care. Knowledge of this process is important for you to help develop your child’s brain functions. Some core principles that form the basis of brain development are:

1. Your child's brain can perform several functions at the same time.
2. Learning is not only a life-long process but it is both a physical and mental activity.
3. Learning takes place because your child wants to learn and is willing to learn. Severe stress can get in the way of learning as it reduces the will and challenge to learn.
4. The brain has the capacity to store primary information in different forms in different places within the brain which your child can easily retrieve using the complex network of nerve cells.
5. Your child’s emotional stability is crucial to carrying out basic functions like attention span, memory and memory recall.

Nutrition to support brain development

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Skipping breakfast is not at all encouraged because it can be detrimental to your child’s health. It has been known that skipping breakfast can affect memory and attention span, cause lapses in concentration and lower academic performance. Your child will have reduced levels of body energy, less enthusiasm and overall poor brain development.

Children who have breakfast demonstrate superior cognitive abilities and spatial memory, enhanced logical abilities and the ability to learn and understand, and improved comprehension and understanding of issues.

A diet rich in DHA helps your child achieve optimal brain development and performance. The right type of nutrients like Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids, green leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds increase the production of phospholipids, fatty acid molecules that lead to the development of the brain’s messaging network.

Mum’s role and early bonding

The first three years of a child’s life experiences the most rapid brain development. The child’s brain cells make millions of connections and if they are not used, these cells are eliminated. Healthy connections that are encouraged by parents’ ability to bond with their child need to be actively and regularly made. Otherwise the brain cells will be naturally ‘pruned’ as the brain is use-dependent. Mothers are cast into a more natural role of taking a bigger portion of this responsibility. Every interaction between mother and child – everyday routines such as holding, singing, laughing and playing all help to shape the biology of a child’s brain and express the child’s underlying genetic gifts. A nurturing relationship to form a primary attachment creates the foundation for self-confi dence, the ability to learn new things, and the capacity for getting along with other people.

Ensure enough sleep

Mums need to make sure her child gets the required amount of rest by sleeping. Sleep is essential for memory enhancement, better academic performance in subjects like math and arts. Inadequate sleep causes tiredness and lethargy which affects learning and even emotions and behaviour.

Achieving a balance

A young child does not need stimulation every second of the day. There is no need to compensate for the lack of contact time by indulging in high-tech toys and learning devices. There will be idle- time in a child’s life which is perfectly normal. Filling every moment of your child’s life with lessons on learning new skills is not the answer as this will have a negative impact on brain development. In fact an overcrowded schedule too early can cause stress in your child. On the other hand, a too relaxed approach leaving your child to his or her own devices is also not healthy. An organization that promotes healthy childhood development believes mums can help by simply maximising on everyday moments in a child’s daily life which create opportunities for interaction and bonding. Enjoy the moments that give your child joy.

Providing a community exposure

You need to prepare your child for a larger context of life. Your child needs to build relationships with those around him starting with play and pre-school as well as make smart choices on his own. You need to help your child widen his circle of interaction beyond the immediate loving family for long-term health and intelligence. Widen his circle of community relationships by including caring relatives and friends his age. A stable home and an extended stable community prepares your child for the time when you need to leave him alone with teachers and care-givers. Both internal and external infl uences and experiences are a child’s assets that contribute to sound development. External assets are positive experiences that a child gets from the people around him. Internal assets are qualities a child must develop within himself. Individuals in the extended community need to do simple things such as smiling, noticing a child, knowing a child by name shows they are involved in the child’s life.

Creating an enriched environment

You will see your child develop preliminary skills, refi ne them, and then build on them to achieve more advanced skills in their movement, memory, and other functions. The more your child uses his or her brain, the more it grows. You can enrich your child’s environment and encourage him or her to explore it including allowing your child to make mistakes as mistakes are a great opportunity for learning.

Parents can encourage their children to explore the physical world around them and the possibilities of the mental worlds inside their heads.

Don’t ban passive TV watching, but try to minimize it. Discuss the programs, the work that goes on to create them, and the choice to watch TV. Provide alternatives like books and games as well.

Get outdoors and exercise. This is the best way for you to encourage your child to do the same. The brain benefi ts from improved blood fl ow and oxygen; the spirit benefi ts as well.

Read aloud

Reading and sharing stories encourages your child to think about what’s coming next, or about the issues and choices the books portray. When you discuss situations in the story, you are teaching your child problem-solving skills as well as preparing him for decision-making.

Creative play

Playtime helps your children in learning core academic skills and abilities which are crucial for reading, comprehending writing, phonetics and problem solving. Organise creative games and activities for your child to encourage development of spatial and logical thinking, hand-eye coordination, an imaginative and inquisitive mind.

Encourage imagination and exploration. Make-believe games are better than playing with toys that don’t stimulate the senses. The educational value of a toy is determined by what a child does with it, not by its expense or the research behind it. Playing number games encourages openness to math lessons later on.

Extra-curricular activities

Introduce your child to as much culture and the arts as time permits. Music, painting and studying a foreign language are three highly recommended activities that are good for your child’s brain development. Study of a foreign language is another activity that provides an opportunity to develop cultural relationship. Your child will cultivate his spatial thinking, reasoning and problem-solving skills besides having opportunities to develop cultural awareness. Parents can easily infl uence their child’s brain power but it takes a lot of preparation and hard work not to mention time needed to organise and manage their child’s activities besides spending time with them on all these and more. However, as a parent, it is important to remember that each child is unique and will develop at his or her own pace.