Brain development begins right after a child is born. Within the first five years after the birth of a child, a high brain development rate takes place as compared to what the child will ever experience for the rest of his/her lifetime. The positive or negative experiences of the child's early life will contribute to shaping how one's brain will develop. At the time when a child is born, the average size of the child’s brain is usually about a quarter of an adult’s brain size. It keeps on growing on for the rest of the next five years. By the age of 5 years, the brain will nearly be fully grown. The brain is the major part that controls the activities of the human body. As at birth, a child is expected to have all brain cells that they will have for their entire lives.
However, what makes the brain function appropriately is the interrelation betwixt the brain cells. This is the significant new factor that I have learned from this article, and thus, it is the one that will form a basis of interest. From this, we learn that brain inter-connection is what makes us be able to move, communicate, think, and also execute commands for other functions. In simple terms, brain interrelations are what makes us be able to perform any of our days to day duties. The early stages are usually vital information of these inter-connections. Between the period of birth and five years after birth, a minimum of a million brain cell connections is made each second, more than the amount made at any different period in life. Each part of the brain is made up of its unique function. However, these parts all grow at distinct rates. With the developing brain cells, a child will eventually be able to talk, move, and even reason in various ways. As a result, early ages are very crucial in a child's brain development. They enable the brain to develop inter-connections that will make the child healthy and be a normal-thinking and strong adult.
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Initially, I never knew how brain connections are made. From the very point after birth, a child starts to develop brain interrelation via day to day experiences. These interrelations are made via positive encounters in the surrounding of the child's early life. Also, they are built upon a child's sense, which they use to familiarize themselves with the environment. As a result, the day to day encounters of a child at an early age will determine the brain interrelations that will be built and which one of them will last for the child's entire life. Therefore, what makes a difference in these is more so the quality of concern and encounters that they get while still at an early age. It is essential to emphasize caring and giving children the best encounters in early ages so that they may have healthy and strong adulthood mentally. A child's relations with grown-ups in their early lives are essentials as they carry a lot of effectiveness on early brain development. A child who has been raised by a loving, responsible, and caring parent will, in most cases, in his/her adulthood be a responsible and also caring person. It is vital to enlighten all child care providers, teachers, and parents on the importance of exposing children to a positive environment and giving them the best care so that they may have healthy adulthoods. Based on past body knowledge on psychology, I was never aware of the impact that the environment possesses on a child's brain development. All I believed was that the only thing that counted was the genetic, biochemical makeup that links up a mother and child. In which, I used to think that the way a mother thinks is the same way that her child will most likely think also when he/she grows up. However, this has been relevant as it has brought light on the understanding of prenatal and postnatal development. This is whereby prenatal development is steered by genetic processes that are most sensitive to the biochemical makeup of a mother's body but under genetic control (Tierney & Nelson, 2009) . Besides, postnatal development is where now the environment comes in and takes charge of a child’s brain development. In this case, besides promoting development, it takes charge of the interrelations betwixt genetics, thus, contributing to most of the development’s yields.
Conclusively, knowledge from this article is going to have a great impact when it comes to future considerations. Now that it is clear that the environment plays the most vital role in brain development, I would recommend that parents, teachers, caretakers, and the society at large ensure that their children are brought up under proper environmental conditions. This will be for the child's benefit and also for the benefit of the family as it will be a form of nurturing the child to be a dependable adult in the future. However, researchers have argued that development has always been a simultaneous structural process that involves brain connectivity from childhood to adulthood. For instance, for a child to develop communication, sensory and perceptual development will have to take place. This will connect between what the child hears in his/her environment, and thus, with time, the brain will respond to it to a point where the child will start mentioning some specific words. This will continue until the time when the child will have fully developed communication. Therefore, this shows that the language of a child will depend on the environment that the child is exposed to in his/her first five years after birth. Hence, if a person wants his/her child to have certain features, he/she should nurture the child from an environment that will enable the child to have the specified features. And this should take place immediately from the time a child is born.
Reference
Tierney, A. L., & Nelson, C. A., 3rd (2009). Brain Development and the Role of Experience in the Early Years. Zero to Three , 30 (2), 9–13.
