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EARLY YEARS

Supporting Healthy Development

All parents and caregivers want their children to have a healthy, happy and prosperous life.  At the same time, parenting is one tough job! Fortunately, understanding how a child’s brain develops can help us all be better parents and caregivers.

While neurobiology and child development research guide our understanding of how children develop - and what can help them or hurt their development - you don’t have to be a brain scientist to build your child’s brain. 

Did you know you already have what it takes to support your child’s healthy development? You are the key ingredient to building a strong foundation for your child’s future learning, behavior, health and relationships.

Vroom is an organization that shares the science of early brain development in creative ways for grown-ups.

Watch this video on how we all have what it takes to be a brain builder!

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The early years: A period of brain-building

From before birth through age eight, children’s brains and bodies develop rapidly.

  • At birth, the average baby's brain is about a quarter of the size of the average adult brain.
  • By age 3, the brain grows to about 80% of adult size.
  • By age 5, it's 90% of its adult size.

Early experiences

Early experiences set the brain’s architecture, as each new skill builds on the ones that came before. That structure can be strong if early experiences are stimulating and positive, or it can be more fragile if they are not.

This development influences everything from children’s learning to their physical health to their trajectory in later life. Early learning happens wherever babies are—at home, at a park or a library or in child care led by qualified early childhood education professionals.

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Everyday ways you can help build your child’s brain

There are 6 things parents should know about the developing brain. 

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1. Experiences

build brain architecture. 

2. Serve and Return Interactions

with your child shape brain circuitry.

3. Thinking, Feeling and Relating Skills

are all developing in the earliest stages of life.

4. Toxic Stress

derails healthy development.

5. The Presence of Responsive Adults

at home & in the community builds strong brain architecture and lessens the impact of toxic stress.

6. Executive Function & Self-Regulation Skills

are critical to building a child’s resilience. These essential “Air Traffic Control” skills are built in relationships and in the places where children live, learn, and play. 

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1. Experiences Build Brain Architecture

Your child’s brain continues to grow in amazing ways long after birth.

The basic architecture of your baby’s brain is constructed through an ongoing process that begins before birth and continues into adulthood, until they are age 25 or 30.

From before birth through age eight, children’s brains and bodies develop rapidly.

In the first few years of life, more than 1 million new neural connections are formed every second in the brain.

Early experiences establish the architecture of the brain, especially in the earliest stages of life.

mom and daughter building blocks for ealry development

Building a Foundation

Like the construction of a home, the building process begins with laying the foundation, framing the rooms and wiring the electrical system in a predictable sequence.

Early experiences literally shape how the brain gets built, establishing either a sturdy or a fragile foundation for all the learning, health and behavior that follows.

Like building a house, everything is connected and what happens first forms a foundation for all that comes later.

  • A strong foundation in the early years increases the probability of positive outcomes.
  • A shaky foundation increases the odds of later difficulties.

Science tells us that getting things right early on builds the strongest foundation; but it is never “too late” to start building and strengthening your child’s brain!

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Vroom™ is a free tool to help you find ways you can help your child build their brain architecture. You can get examples of everyday things you can do to support healthy development throughout the early years. Sign up for Vroom Tips. 

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2. Serve and Return Interactions with Your Child Shape Brain Circuitry

Genes and experiences – both positive and negative – interact to shape the developing brain. 

A major factor in building a strong brain is the “serve and return” relationship between children and their caregivers – you, their parents and other caregivers in the family and community. Much like a game of tennis or volleyball, a young child “serves” a word or action, and the adult responds. 

This back-and-forth process builds a strong relationship between you and your child. It also helps your child develop important language, cognitive, social, and emotional skills and actively builds strong brain architecture.

Frederick County Strong Families

In Frederick County, the Strong Families initiative reminds families that we all have what it takes to “serve and return” with young children. 

Picking up on a child’s cues

Young children naturally reach out for interaction. This process starts in infancy – with facial expressions and babbling-- and continues throughout the early years.

When children develop in an environment of relationships that are richly responsive, with back-and-forth interactions, these brain-building experiences establish a sturdy architecture on which future learning is built.

If adults do not respond with the same kind of vocalizing and gesturing back to them-- or if the responses are unreliable or inappropriate - the brain’s architecture does not form as expected. This has negative implications for later learning and behavior.

Remember, you have what it takes. Watch this video to see just how sensitive babies are to social interaction. Babies are extremely responsive to learning healthy social interaction..

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Keep Learning

Learn about 5 easy steps for serve and return activities that foster brain-building in children. 

Courtesy: Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

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3. Thinking, Feeling and Relating Skills Begin to Develop Early in Life.

Just as a rope needs every strand to be strong and flexible, every child needs cognitive (thinking), emotional (feeling) and social (relating) capacities. Brain development is integrated. Kids cannot develop one capacity well if the other capacities are ignored. 

No matter how academically or verbally skilled your child might be, they cannot reach their full potential if they can’t cooperate with others or cope with negative emotions. Thinking, feeling and relationship skills and abilities are inseparably intertwined throughout life.

Skills are Intertwined

That’s why it’s just as important to build abilities like expressing feelings or taking turns as it is to help kids learn colors, shapes or letters. Early experiences wire the brain’s circuits for emotions, shaping children’s later mental health and well-being.

Together, cognitive, social and emotional skills comprise the foundation, the bricks and mortar, of human development. 

Brain science directs us away from debating which capacities children need most and toward the realization that they are all intertwined.  

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Keep Learning

Watch this video about how the child’s brain develops over time and how skills build upon each other. 

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4. Toxic stress derails healthy development.

Highly stressful experiences can harm children, even if they are too young to remember them.

Some stress is normal and good for children’s development. 

It’s okay for kids to feel nervous before the first day of school or before a performance. Everyday challenges let children and adolescents learn that they can do hard things.

Some types of stress – – like adverse childhood experiences –however, can disrupt a child’s development if trusted adults aren’t there to help kids cope.

Think of a child who is suddenly separated from a parent who dies, gets deployed or is detained. This is a highly stressful experience for the child –even if the child is an infant. If another trusted, nurturing adult is there to offer support, this traumatic experience will be difficult, but it won’t necessarily lead to long-term effects.

Without support, a severely stressful experience can cause a toxic stress response. This means that the child’s body goes on high alert and stays there. Stress hormones flood the body and brain.

If your child is experiencing toxic stress, it can:

  • Be hard for them to regulate their emotions.
  • Be hard for them to concentrate.
  • Make learning more challenging.
  • Make them feel anxious and on-guard even when they are safe.

In turn, this adversity can impact a child’s mental health. Learn how to help your child identify their emotions and handle other challenges in early development by listening to Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, California’s first Surgeon General. She talks about healing from toxic stress.

Toxic stress or chronic, unrelenting stress can cause both immediate and long-term problems with thinking, learning behavior and emotions.

It can also lead to physical health problems.

Courtesy: ACEs Aware

How we all can help with toxic stress

As a community, we all must do more to prevent ACEs from happening and intervene early to mitigate their impact. Maryland Essentials for Childhood (EFC) leads the effort with white papers like this one that promote a prosperous Maryland and a collaborative team of community-based partners. Learn more about those partners and the resources they provide the community.   

As families, health care providers, teachers, coaches, faith leaders, mentors, neighbors and friends, we can reduce the risk of toxic stress in children and teens by giving extra support and stability when they or their parents go through stressful life events.

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Also, we can help connect families to community supports in times of stress.

EFC partnered with 211 to bring you essential resources and support for families. Find child care, food, housing, parenting education, connect with other parents in your community and more. You can call 2-1-1 or search the EFC resource database.

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5. The Presence of Responsive Adults At Home and In the Community.

Responsive adults help children build strong brain architecture and lessen the impact of toxic stress.

As good quality materials help build a strong house, positive experiences during childhood help build strong brains

The key ingredient to strong brain architecture and healthy child development is safe, stable and nurturing relationships at home and in the community.

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Keep Learning

Watch this video from HOPE to learn how healthy outcomes come from positive experiences.

6. Building Executive Function & Self-Regulation Skills.

Executive function and self-regulation skills are critical to building a child’s resilience.  

In the brain, the ability to hold onto and work with information, focus thinking, filter distractions and switch gears is like an air traffic control system to manage the arrivals and departures of dozens of planes on multiple runways. 

 

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Important Skills

Scientists refer to these capabilities as executive function and self-regulation—a set of skills that relies on three types of brain function: 

  • working memory
  • mental flexibility
  • self-control

These important skills include things like paying attention, remembering, organizing, planning ahead, prioritizing tasks, time management, self-control, flexibility, and perseverance.

Children are not born with these skills; they are born with the ability to develop them. 

Kids playing with airplanes at airport

For example, children are born with the capacity to learn to control impulses, focus attention and retain information in memory, but their experiences as early as the first year of life lay a foundation for how well these and other executive function skills develop.

These skills begin to develop in early childhood and mature through early adulthood. 

These essential “Air Traffic Control” skills are built in relationships and in the places where children live, learn and play. 

The quality of adult interactions and experiences with children in our families and communities either strengthen or undermine these budding executive functions and self-regulation skills.

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For Age-specific activities to develop strong executive function skills, download this resource from the Center on the Developing Child. 

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5 Tips to Build Strong Brains

Understanding how children’s brains develop can help us all be better parents and caregivers. There are simple things you can do to make a difference.

EFC believes that all children, youth and their families should have safe, stable and nurturing relationships and environments. We encourage you to join us!

Try these 5 tips this month to build strong brains.

  • Provide your child love and attention.
  • Increase positive childhood experiences – like helping them feel safe and protected at home and including them in family and community traditions. 
  • Make everyday moments – like laundry, grocery shopping, meals—into brain-building moments. Sign up for the Vroom Brain Building app on Apple or Google Play.
  • Be conscious to create a safe, calm, and loving home that is free from toxic stress and doesn’t activate your child’s fight, flight and freeze response.
  • Model self-regulation, the ability to calm oneself. Children learn this by observing and imitating you.