Children’s brain development can be affected due to disturbances in the environment in which they are growing. As such parents must avoid doing things that can hamper their brain development. Here are few things that can hamper child’s brain development.Most of the brain development of a child takes place in the early formative years. There are two major groups of factors that affect brain development and they can be attributed to either the environment or human
behaviour. Knowing about the things that can hamper child’s brain development can help you as a parent from preventing these factors from affecting your child. There is a lot you can do as a parent to ensure that the formative and extremely crucial years of your child remains free from negative influences.
Lack of Environment Stimulus
Most parents may not be aware of the fact that a newborn baby has more than 90% of the
brain cells that are found in an adult but the brain connections are yet to be made. Circuits between different cells in the brains are developed in the first 3 years and this is when the rate of forming new connections is 700 new neural connections. Lack of a responsive environment where responses and stimulus are not provided will slow down the rate of forming these connections and neural development will be affected. It is very important for parents to respond to their baby’s gurgles, coos and baby talk.
Lack of Display of Parental Affection
Lack of the physical sensations of being held, hugged, rocked and kissed can literally stagnate the growth path of an infant. Several experiments in the past have shown that children who received little or poor physical affection from parents did not show appropriate behaviour patterns in adulthood and exhibited Lack of
emotional intelligence. Parents need to be very particular about demonstrating physical affection to their kids as this is a major factor in the brain and cognitive development of the child.
Lack of Education of Parents
Child researchers have collated evidence to show that children of highly educated parents grow up to be intelligent and articulate in most cases than children with parents of poor education levels. The reason is attributed to the fact that such children are exposed to more number of words, video and audio stimuli and knowledge sharing via their parents. Providing extensive descriptions to children and showing them appropriate written and verbal content is a great way of urging on their
brain development.
Lack of Breastfeeding
One of the earliest and safest and surest ways of ensuring good brain development in infants is to incorporate breast feeding in the daily schedule. Mothers who regularly breast feed their children not only ensure proper nutrition and nourishment but also urge on the process of brain development. The act of breast feeding is a strong sign of physical affection which children recognize and the milk contains many ingredients which stimulate the brain development process.
Violence
There is nothing that can harm a child’s brain development more than the presence or demonstration of
violence in the environment. Physical and verbal abuse harms the psychology of children and sends their brains in a defensive and panic mode. The functions of learning new things from the environment automatically ceases as the child becomes only concerned with gaining protection from the violence. Parents who demonstrate violence in front on children need counselling and psychiatric intervention at the earliest.
As kids are very sensitive and perceptive the disturbances in the environment affects their brain development in a very negative way. Therefore it is very essential for parents to build cheerful environment at home in order to positively influence their brain development.
How is child’s brain development hampered? What can parents do to avoid hampering child brain development? How can parents provide positive stimulation to child’s brain? Discuss here