How to develop brain of child

Early Brain Development and Health

The early years of a child’s life are very important for later health and development. One of the main reasons is how fast the brain grows starting before birth and continuing into early childhood. Although the brain continues to develop and change into adulthood, the first 8 years can build a foundation for future learning, health and life success.

How well a brain develops depends on many factors in addition to genes, such as:

Proper nutrition starting in pregnancy
Exposure to toxins or infections
The child’s experiences with other people and the world

Nurturing and responsive care for the child’s body and mind is the key to supporting healthy brain development. Positive or negative experiences can add up to shape a child’s development and can have lifelong effects. To nurture their child’s body and mind, parents and caregivers need support and the right resources. The right care for children, starting before birth and continuing through childhood, ensures that the child’s brain grows well and reaches its full potential. CDC is working to protect children so that their brains have a healthy start.

The importance of early childhood experiences for brain development

Children are born ready to learn, and have many skills to learn over many years. They depend on parents, family members, and other caregivers as their first teachers to develop the right skills to become independent and lead healthy and successful lives. How the brain grows is strongly affected by the child’s experiences with other people and the world. Nurturing care for the mind is critical for brain growth. Children grow and learn best in a safe environment where they are protected from neglect and from extreme or chronic stress with plenty of opportunities to play and explore.

Parents and other caregivers can support healthy brain growth by speaking to, playing with, and caring for their child. Children learn best when parents take turns when talking and playing, and build on their child’s skills and interests. Nurturing a child by understanding their needs and responding sensitively helps to protect children’s brains from stress. Speaking with children and exposing them to books, stories, and songs helps strengthen children’s language and communication, which puts them on a path towards learning and succeeding in school.

Exposure to stress and trauma can have long-term negative consequences for the child’s brain, whereas talking, reading, and playing can stimulate brain growth. Ensuring that parents, caregivers, and early childhood care providers have the resources and skills to provide safe, stable, nurturing, and stimulating care is an important public health goal.

When children are at risk, tracking children’s development and making sure they reach developmental milestones can help ensure that any problems are detected early and children can receive the intervention they may need.

Learn more about supporting early childhood experiences:

Tracking developmental milestones
Preventing abuse and neglect
Positive parenting tips
Healthy childcare

A healthy start for the brain

To learn and grow appropriately, a baby’s brain has to be healthy and protected from diseases and other risks. Promoting the development of a healthy brain can start even before pregnancy. For example, a healthy diet and the right nutrients like sufficient folic acid will promote a healthy pregnancy and a healthy nervous system in the growing baby. Vaccinations can protect pregnant women from infections that can harm the brain of the unborn baby.

During pregnancy, the brain can be affected by many types of risks, such as by infectious diseases like Cytomegalovirus or Zika virus, by exposure to toxins, including from smoking or alcohol, or when pregnant mothers experience stress, trauma, or mental health conditions like depression. Regular health care during pregnancy can help prevent complications, including premature birth, which can affect the baby’s brain. Newborn screening can detect conditions that are potentially dangerous to the child’s brain, like phenylketonuria (PKU).

Healthy brain growth in infancy continues to depend on the right care and nutrition. Because children’s brains are still growing, they are especially vulnerable to traumatic head injuries, infections, or toxins, such as lead. Childhood vaccines, such as the measles vaccine, can protect children from dangerous complications like swelling of the brain. Ensuring that parents and caregivers have access to healthy foods and places to live and play that are healthy and safe for their child can help them provide more nurturing care.

Learn more about the recommended care:

Before pregnancy
During pregnancy
Around birth
During infancy
During early childhood

What does CDC do to support early brain health?

CDC is committed to supporting early brain health through evidence-based programs and partnerships within communities. Below are just a few examples of CDC programs that support early brain health:

Learn the Signs. Act Early
Legacy for Children^TM
Early Hearing Detection and Intervention
Essentials for Childhood
Concussion Prevention
Lead Prevention
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Prevention
Childhood Immunization
Treating for Two
Preconception Care
Infant and Toddler Nutrition
Addressing Health Disparities in Early Childhood

7 Ways to Improve A Child's Brain

By The Healthline Editorial Team on October 8, 2018

Parents don’t need to shell out a ton of money to help with their child’s brain development.

Share on PinterestSimple actions can help parents bond with their children. Getty Images

You don’t need a formal class — or even money — to improve your baby’s brain development.

For parents who can’t or don’t want to participate in their local mommy-and-me classes, there are simple ways to interact with a child and help them developmentally.

If you’re looking for a few ideas to try with your infant, here are seven easy actions parents can take.

“One easy-to-do activity that is easily embedded during most routines is sticking your tongue out,” said Elizabeth Criswell, an early childhood curriculum developer at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development. “You can model sticking your tongue out at different angles during diaper changes or play time and allow space and time for your baby to do it back to you.”

The gesture is a helpful way to encourage children around the 3-month mark to practice tongue control, which can help with eating and speech development. It also enables parents to begin communicating with their infants.

Tummy time is valuable for babies up through 6 months, not only to develop physical strength and coordination but as a great way to interact. Lie next to the baby or face them.

Share stories and let baby look in the mirror, or bring in toys to play with, said Rebecca Parlakian, senior director of programs at Zero to Three. The organization produces early childhood development materials and advocates for early learning.

Gather scraps of fabrics that have different textures and let baby explore them while you supervise. The scraps should be at least six inches by six inches long. Describe the fabrics to your child, as they are learning through their senses.

Exposing them to rich descriptive language now helps them develop a strong vocabulary later on, too, Parlakian added.

Toddlers between 2 and 3 years old will love sorting various items around the house into piles of “big” and “little” items.

The game teaches children the words and concepts of big and little, helps them think about size, and supports early math skills, like the early stages of understanding measurement, Parlakian explained.

Babies develop millions of neural pathways each day that are used throughout their lives to receive information, and music helps stimulate them.

The pathways help a child with language, cognitive, social, and emotional development, said Brenda Berdugo Limaldi, a Music Together instructor from New Jersey. She advises parents to expose the baby to different types of music that vary in tone and meter.

When you sing, make sure to hold the baby close and exaggerate your mouth’s movements — especially when singing songs without words. Also, validate the baby’s responses by imitating him or her, as the positive reinforcement encourages more spontaneous sound and movement activity, which is how your baby learns.

Be sure to play fast and slow songs, sing loudly and softly, and use high and low notes. Rock and bounce to the beat of a song, too, Berdugo Limaldi said.

This game helps babies develop object permanence, which means they know an object exists even if they can’t see it. Both Berdugo Limaldi and Parlakian recommended it. A good age to start is when the baby is about 9 months old, though infants can enjoy it at a younger age as well.

Interacting with baby seems to be the key to cultivating positive brain development.

“The real value of playtime with children is that it helps them master their first and important task of the early years: building a strong relationship with their parents,” Parlakian said. “It’s this strong, secure bond that children take with them as a model of relationships all their lives, and helps them build friendships, cooperate with others, work on a team, and establish strong romantic relationships much later on.”

“While these activities are all free and can be easy to fit into your everyday routine, the value of parent-child play is immense. These moments give children opportunities to practice and, over time, master the critical cognitive, communication, and social-emotional skills they need to succeed in school and life,” she added.

Development of mental abilities | Multnomah County Library

Books, kids and the brain! Blimey!

Babies learn from birth. The science of brain development tells us that the first three years of life are very important for the formation of the brain of a small child. During the first year of life, brain size more than doubles. At age three, a child's brain is twice as active as an adult's. During this time, the brain prepares the foundation for a lifetime of learning and future academic success.

Parents, grandparents and caregivers play an important role. They can have a huge impact at this early stage of brain development. Newborns and young children learn best through warm and sensitive parenting. When you hold a small child in your arms, talk to him or read to him, connections are formed in his brain. The brain of a healthy child will eventually form trillions of such connections! Scientists also tell us that stimulating the brain of a newborn or young child can be done through simple actions: singing simple songs, talking and the colors and textures they see in the grocery store, reading daily while the child is sitting in your arms. Simple steps with amazing results.

A new vision of child brain development.

Brain research is complex, but the basic idea is simple: babies learn from birth! The latest discoveries in the field of neuroscience over the past few years are giving us a whole new understanding of how the brain develops. This research has been facilitated by the development of sophisticated brain imaging systems such as PET scans.

The structure of the brain is not determined genetically.

How the brain develops depends on the complex interplay between the genes you were born with and the experience you had. There has been clear evidence that activity, experience, attachment, and stimulation determine brain structure.

Early experiences affect the way the brain works.

Incredibly, a baby's brain is largely unformed at birth. Most of its 100 billion neurons are not yet connected in the network. Some neurons are programmed to perform specific functions, such as breathing and heart work, but for most, the tasks have not yet been determined, and they are waiting for experience in the environment to determine their function. Connections are created by sensory experience: seeing, smelling, touching, and especially tasting, which stimulates the growth of neural connections. The formation and consolidation of these connections is the main task of brain development at the initial stage. By the age of 3, a child's brain is twice as active as an adult's - and remains so for the first ten years of life. The child's brain forms twice as many synapses (connections) as the child actually needs. If these synapses are used regularly in a child's daily life, they will become fixed. If they are not used regularly, they will be removed. Thus, experience plays a critical role in shaping the structure of a child's brain. Activity levels drop naturally during adolescence as the brain "removes" unused connections like weeds.

Brain development is non-linear; there is the best time to acquire different kinds of skills and knowledge.

The human brain has an incredible ability to change, but time is a critical factor. Although learning continues throughout life, there is a “best time” for optimal development. Negative experiences or lack of proper stimulation at certain points in life have more serious and long-term consequences. This ability of the brain to change depending on the environment is called “neuroplasticity” of the brain.

Interactions at an early age have a decisive influence on the nature and extent of adult abilities.

Children learn in the context of relationships that are important to them. Care and nurture at an early age has a decisive, long-term impact on how a person develops, on his ability to learn and his ability to control his emotions. Early attachment research confirms that warm, empathetic care is essential for healthy brain development.

Preparing for school: how to develop a child's brain

Man is a unique being in nature. From a small tadpole released into a pond, a full-fledged frog grows and lives its own frog life. From an acorn planted many kilometers from other oaks, a large tree still grows. But if we do this to a child, he will never learn to walk, let alone learn to speak, think, feel, love. We are the most dependent beings on our parents.

Children are born with a relatively undeveloped brain, and its size increases with time. However, the children's brain is not a fungus, it cannot develop by simply increasing in size. A child's brain reacts to everything and develops accordingly. Therefore, it is so important to set the right “program” for development, to provide the baby with the appropriate experience at the right time.

The laying of the "programs" necessary for the successful education of a child in school begins long before he enters an educational institution. And this is not only and not so much writing, counting and reading. The goal of preschool childhood is to create those basic systems, those mental structures on which education will subsequently be built. If some of these basic systems are not fully and adequately formed, then at some point in learning there will be a "failure". And so neuropsychologists understand school preparation not as a process of teaching a child to write, read, count, etc., but as a process of final formation and consolidation of basic systems, and these are: spatial representations, sound reproduction, sound perception, visual perception, programming and control, and etc. If the child has everything in order with these basic processes, then schooling for him will not present any difficulties. Here are some simple exercises that influence the process of forming basic structures:

1. Physical exercise, aerobic exercise, various sports. With physical exercise, brain function and blood circulation improve. Additional blood flow to the brain increases the number of neurons and the rate of cell reproduction in the hippocampus. Children who exercise regularly are better at absorbing information.

2. Finger gymnastics or kinesiology exercises. These exercises activate and synchronize the work of the hemispheres of the child's brain, improve cognitive processes - memory, thinking, attention; develop fine motor skills of the hands, which will further facilitate the process of reading and writing. After all, the developmental work of the child is directed from movements to thinking. That is, the improvement of intellectual processes must begin with the development of finger and body movements.

3. Intelligent loading (unloading). It is necessary to balance intellectual loads. A large number of loads is an additional amount of energy expenditure that depletes the brain of a child. The brain under certain conditions can consume up to 25% of the energy of the whole body, so you can "reach" to nervous exhaustion. The child definitely needs rest, especially in the summer period - before entering school. Do not rush to take your child abroad, where there is a lot of sun. This type of holiday, especially before September 1, can be perceived as unnecessary stress.

4. Breathing exercises. The cerebral cortex influences respiratory movements for voluntary breath holding by changing the rhythm and depth of breathing. Inhalation and exhalation affect the state of the cerebral cortex in different ways. Inhalation - a slight shift towards excitation, exhalation - a shift towards inhibition, i.e. a calming factor. Breathing exercises are methods of increasing the efficiency and relaxation of the child. Long-term breathing exercises improve the activity of all body systems.

The lower and higher floors of any mental function must be balanced, otherwise the gap between them will deepen, if only due to the fact that the extremely developed higher mental structures, due to their energy intensity, will rob the lower ones, further aggravating their relative lack of independence. Together, these circumstances will inevitably lead to a breakdown.

Scientists have been studying the brain for hundreds of years. However, only in the last few decades have they been able to make amazing discoveries that have helped to understand the causes of mental states, differences in emotional and intellectual development and bring us closer to solving the most difficult task - how to raise a good and happy person.

With the help of modern technology, we can compare the brain of one person with the brain of another, determine when something is happening or going wrong. Today, we basically know how the human brain develops and what are the best conditions for raising a full-fledged personality.