Getting an early start after birth
According to a study published in the magazine JAMA Neurology last year, the human brain grows most rapidly just after birth and reaches half its adult size within the first three months. The areas of the brain involved in movement develop at the fastest pace, while those associated with memory grow more slowly. The most rapid changes occur immediately after birth - newborn brains grow at an average rate of 1% a day, slowing to 0.4% per day by the end of the first three months.
If you want to read more about this there is a link at the end of the book. here
According to "Ask Dr Sears", these and other insights into how a baby’s brain grows shows that parents can have a profound effect on how smart their child later becomes.
The brain grows primarily through the growth of new nerve cells, called neurons. These resemble miles of tangled electrical wire and when the child is born much of this "wiring" is unconnected. During the first year, these neurons grow larger, learn to work better, and connect with each other to make circuits, which enable the baby to think and do more things. If you want to read more this there is a link at the end of the book. here
During the early months it might seem that your baby does nothing much while they are awake, but drink milk, later eating some soft foods, cry a bit and make a horrible mess of its nappies. But the fact that its brain is growing so quickly means there is a lot more going on, and the opportunity for you to create a life-long lasting bond with your child probably starts not long after day one.
The most important things you can do during this period is to have a lot of physical contact with them in the form of carrying them around and cuddling them, and to do whatever you can to introduce them to as many different things that will stimulate their brains. Spend time with them, get to know them and let them start to get to know you. Take them for a walk in a pram. Carry them around and show them things. Talk to them as if they can understand you; this is how we all learn to talk. Play with them as much as you can, and when you can't do that any more, leave them with a toy to play with.
There is a link to a great article about the milestones in a baby's early life at the end of the book. They make the comment several times that "you cannot spoil your baby". I believe that to be true. You cannot give them too much love and affection, and the more of your time you can give them the better.
One of the great pities in life is that a lot of important things in your life seem to occur all around the same time. Many people become parents at around the same time that their careers are just starting to kick off, or when they have achieved important positions in work that demand a lot of their time.
I chose to spend as much time as I could with my children when they were young and growing up. I could do this because I was running my own business from home, programming computers for industrial control applications. There is no doubt that the business I was running suffered as a result, but my priorities were set. I sometimes had to compensate for time spent with my children by working very late into the night after they had gone to bed.
If you believe that the time you are spending with your children could have a significant impact on how happy and maybe how successful they will be later in their lives, how can you not make this decision?
Your child is not going to be able to understand much in the way of discussions about personality, or discussions about life, during the first seven years of their lives. So be patient with what you want to teach them. The most important thing you can do during the early years, and for the rest of their lives for that matter, is to love them and let them know that they are loved.
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