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Your Child's MindTrusting God's Design to Guide Your Child's Development |
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A newborn baby is born with billions of nerve cells (neurons) and a nearly unlimited potential for connections between those nerve cells. What we now know about the development of these neural connections (neural networks) is the basis for this web-based education for parents. Children begin the process of brain development with nerve cells that have very sparse branches. During the first 7-8 years of life the dendrites (branches) of the nerve cells proliferate. Making new neural connections is the basis of learning. During these years children make more than twice the number of neural connections than they will need as an adult. Then, around age eight, these neural networks start to prune. The networks that are used the most frequently are preserved. Those networks that are not used and stimulated are pruned and die off. PET scan studies demonstrate that the brain achieves its adult configuration around age 20-24. It becomes obvious to us as parents, that we need to teach our children what we feel is important during these years when the brain is wiring up. We need to provide safe learning environments for the developing brain in our children and we need to protect their brain from negative influences. Does it make more sense now as you re-read Deuteronomy 6:5-8 that the redundancy in the message is really the urgency of the message? The learning that we feel is important needs to be emphasized over and over during early brain development. God designed these miraculous brains. That is why He instructs us to, "Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates." It will be the content of our hearts as parents that will determine what our mouths will choose to teach. And, it will be the content of our hearts that will determine the commitment we feel toward teaching that information over and over again from fresh perspectives. This tremendous opportunity for neural network development in the early years prompts us as parents to focus on enrichment during this time. Dr. Marian Diamond, in her book Magic Trees of the Mind, encourages us to consider what enrichment during these years really means. She asserts, "While millions of children are already getting fine educations and a range of stimulating free-time activities, the typical American child does not experience an enriched environment. He or she watches three to four hours of television each day while in preschool and grade school. Is rather sedentary. Doesn't read very well. Doesn't particularly like school. Doesn't do much homework. Doesn't have many hobbies. Eats a less-than-optimal diet. Drops out of sports by ninth or tenth grade. Experiments in high school with alcohol and drugs that can potentially stunt brain development. Listens to rock or rap music from two to six hours per day as a teenager. Spends far more time dating and earning pocket money than studying, volunteering, or engaging in new and challenging activities. And overall, grows up with a disenchanted mind that never reaches its fullest potential - or even comes close." What are the effects of our American culture that heavily relies on a lighted screen to amuse and entertain the developing brains of our children? Let's move into the next section on the effects of TV and media and look more clearly at our choices about what goes into the developing brain. And, let's be willing as parents to scrutinize our media choices in light of Deuteronomy 6:5-8. |
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