The Vital Necessity of Helping
How important are the early years of a child’s life as they apply to accelerated learning abilities?
Researchers have proved what the majority of mothers spent years feeling instinctively; that is, that approximately fifty percent of each child’s ability to learn is developed in about the first four years of his or her life. How scary is that? Well, then, try to digest the idea that another thirty percent of that same ability to learn is developed before the child turns eight! That is really something else, isn’t it? Of course, this does not mean that the child acquires fifty percent of his or her entire store of knowledge or wisdom or something like that before his or her fourth birthday; that comes as a prolonged session of learning over his or her entire life. Rather, this simply means that in those first four all-importance years, the child will begin to develop the principal pathways of understanding and learning in his or her brain. Most everything that children learn for the rest of their lives will be based on the successful development of those pathways in those first four years, and all later development, learning and acquisition of knowledge will grow from that early core.
Development, as far as scientists can ascertain, is phenomenally rapid in the first few years and then tapers off dramatically, reaching a sort of plateau or “halfway point” before the child’s fifth birthday. There are some subtle distinctions between the development of male and female babies, but for the large part this development of intelligence holds true for all infants; so too did the manifestation of other traits. For example, approximately half of the aggressiveness displayed by young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty is already present in the child by the age of three. The same could be said for half of the docility displayed by females; this had been developed by age four. Therefore, the significance of these findings holds its greatest measure in meaning that the target period for prime development of human intelligence in general is before the children even enter the educational system at all.
What can parents do to promote accelerated learning in their preschool children?
One of the greatest mistakes parents make when realizing the impact that their early intervention can have on their children’s later success and development is to turn the child’s entire environment into a sort of infant schoolroom. This is quite the wrong approach to take, since children at that age learn the majority of things by doing, exploring, experiencing and simply being, rather than by being instructed by an authority figure. The key thing for infant development, then, is to turn ordinary play experiences into opportunities to experience learn new things, all the while making sure that the learning stays fun and stimulating for both parties.
As a matter of fact, many of the behaviors that “good” parents take for granted as simple routine are really some of the best early accelerated learning tools available; these are not even traditional academic behaviors such as playing with an abacus or separating colors or counting blocks, either (although all of these are certainly beneficial in their own way). Rather, simple traditional interactions such as rocking a baby have proven to be some of the most beneficial to regular brain development and growth. The action stimulates a system in the baby’s head that is closely linked to coordination and balance motion, then, as well as simple stimulation such as speaking, reading and interacting with a baby can be some of the most beneficial contributors to later acceleration in the child are learning.
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