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Stages of Brain Development from Birth to 6 Years Old (and How You Can Help!)
While we are not able to offer an exact brain development timeline, we will do our best to give you an idea of the different stages of brain development during early childhood.
When your little one arrives, a lot of work and growth has already been done. However, there’s still a lot more growing to do. At birth, your child already has almost all of the neurons they’ll need for the rest of their lives, even though their brains are only 25% the size of an adult brain.
Because your baby is rapidly creating and pruning out synapses, this is a critical period for learning things.
You’re probably familiar with the “soft spot” on a baby’s head. These soft spots are called fontanelles, and they exist because your child’s skull is not fully fused at birth. This serves the dual purpose of helping the head fit through the birth canal and allowing room for the brain to grow quickly during early childhood. At just three years old, your child’s brain will be about 80% the size of an adult brain.
Early in your child’s life, they will start to form synapses at a faster rate than at any other time of life. They’re actually producing many more than they need, and not all of them will make it to adulthood. This allows them to learn things more quickly than adults do.
Anyone with kids knows that they come with their own personalities, but brain development can also be heavily influenced by external things. What we understand about nature vs. nurture is that the genes fuel this mass synapse formation, while the the environment fine tunes the brain and helps it make decisions about which pathways to keep and which to get rid of. The more often a synapse is used, or the more often a skill or idea is practiced or heard, the stronger that synapse gets. This means that things that are used often, like language, and walking, stay ingrained in a child’s brain, while things that are neglected disappear. This process also happens in adult’s brains, but at a much slower rate.
Because your baby is rapidly creating and pruning out synapses, this is a critical period for learning things. It also means that without practice, certain skills will disappear. If you want to create lasting skills in your child (like a second language) it’s imperative that their exposure and practice is constant. Children’s “flexible” brains provide a unique opportunity to create a solid foundation on which to build for the rest of their lives.
What’s Growing?
A lot is going on in that little head! Here are a few interesting things to know about your baby’s brain development right now.
Visual Cortex
At birth, your little one can’t see very well. Baby vision is fuzzy and they can only recognize a few colors. But through the first six months, cells in their brain will specialize to make up the visual cortex, neurons will lengthen and axons will become myelinated. Along with physical improvement in their eyes, they’ll be able to see things more clearly by three months. At six months, rapid improvement brings depth perception and focus to your little one’s repertoire, and they can see nearly as well as an adult.
While they can’t see a whole lot in the beginning, they recognize bright colors, interesting and dramatic patterns, and human faces during early brain development. Engage their developing sense of sight by looking into their eyes, making funny facial expressions, and exposing them to different objects and patterns.
Cerebellum
During baby’s first year, their cerebellum triples in size, allowing for rapid development of their motor skills. Your child will quickly progress from rolling over, to crawling, and then to taking their first steps. Encourage them to use their arms and legs while you play with them, and allow them the space and time to practice their new skills. For more information about these baby milestones, you can read more in our fine motor skills and gross motor skills articles, which include fine motor activities and gross motor activities.
Myellination
Myelination of nerve cells allows for faster transfer of electrical signals, meaning baby’s brain can receive and transmit messages faster, and deal with multiple signals more effectively. Myelination is incomplete in many parts of the brain after birth, but rapidly develops during the first year of childhood. This explains why older children have an easier time processing and reacting to input than young infants, and can determine what kind of activities are age appropriate activities for infants.
How to Create an Enriched Environment for Brain Development
So now that we know how important environment is for your child’s early brain development, we can discuss how to promote optimal brain development through environment. Here are a few things you can do to help encourage good brain development in your little one.
Social Interaction
Humans are social creatures, so it’s not surprising that social behavior has a profound effect on our brains and is important to child development. Social activities where a child is actively engaged by their parents or other children help encourage healthy brain development and social skills and are one of the most effective ways your little one learns. Talking to your little one directly not only encourages growth in the language center of their brain, but it also helps them become a better learner through making and strengthening connections in their brains.
Pre-Kindergarten Programs
Whether or not to enroll children in a pre-kindergarten program (also known as Pre-K or sometimes even PK) is a tough decision for many parents. While it’s a very personal choice and there are many factors that go into the decision, research compiled by Urban Child Instituteshows that children enrolled in pre-kindergarten class have improved cognitive skills, decreased risk of developmental delays, and improved kindergarten readiness.
Diet
Although the brain’s relationship with food is complex, it is clear that proper nutrition during early childhood is an important part of proper brain development. Our brains require immense amounts of energy and nutrients in order to develop and run properly, and at no time is this more important than during the rapid development period of early childhood. A diverse, healthy diet full of things like irons, proteins, vitamins and minerals helps leave lasting effects on your child’s brain.
Proper nutrition during early childhood is an important part of proper brain development.
If your newborn baby is being breastfed, you’ll want to use a vitamin D supplement to avoid vitamin D insufficiency. This is because breastmilk does not contain adequate concentrations of this vitamin and because babies usually experience a lack of sunshine in their early life. Try to maintain proper nutrition while breastfeeding, slightly inadequate nutrition will likely affect you more than your baby, your body is prioritizing the nutrition content of your milk. Some great foods to serve your toddler to help provide them with baby brain building blocks are eggs (for protein), leafy greens (for vitamins), and fish (for Omega-3 fatty acids).
Physical Activity
The health of the brain is tied to the health of the rest of the body, and vice versa. Studies suggest that exercise in early childhood can improve cognitive function and even contribute to a bigger hippocampus. You can exercise with baby from a young age with activities like tummy time, which also help him develop muscle strength in his stomach and neck muscles and improve head control. You can encourage a more active lifestyle in children by getting them involved in sports and other play activities that they’ll enjoy. Fun summer activities and fun outdoor activities are great places to start.
Novel Experiences
A creative environment where children are exposed to a variety of new ideas, objects, and experiences helps them develop healthy, curious baby brains. In animal studies, the effect of a more experience rich environment was most prominent when the subjects were exposed earlier in life. Interactive experiences that are appropriate for a child’s age are most effective and enriching.
Avoiding Toxic Stress and Developing Positive Relationships
Toxic stress constantly triggers the stress response in a child. Stress, is a natural part of our biology that allows us to respond quickly to potential dangers, but when the stress response is engaged constantly, it starts to damage the mind and body. Toxic early life stress is triggered by things like family poverty, exposure to violence and neglect and can become truly toxic when the child does not have recourse and strong, comforting family bonds.
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