Prism Mother Earth It s Never Too Late to Start Again

CHAPTER ONE

The Myth of the First Iii Years
A New Understanding of Early Encephalon Development and Lifelong Learning
Past JOHN T. BRUER
Free Press

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Through The Prism of the First Three Years

0ne afternoon in early on fall of 1996, the phone on my desk rang. The call was from a journalist who was writing an article for a national parenting mag. She was doing a story for her readers based on the and then recently released Carnegie Corporation report Years of Promise. She told me that I was on the media listing for the study — a list of interested or knowledgeable people, sent out in the study'southward printing kit, who would be willing to speak to journalists. My proper noun appeared on the list considering for the previous decade I had been funding and writing about applications of modern psychology to didactics and school reform.

She asked me, "Based on neuroscience, what can we tell parents about choosing a preschool for their children?" When I answered, "Based on neuroscience, admittedly nothing," I heard a gasp on the other terminate of the line. The journalist politely suggested that I must have been living under a rock for the past four years. She told me that at that place was a wealth of new neuroscience out there that suggested otherwise.

I did not call up I had been living nether a rock. And I did not offer my respond casually. For the four previous years, forth with well-nigh everyone else, I had been hearing murmurs well-nigh how new breakthroughs in neuroscience — our new, emerging understanding of how the brain worked and developed — were near to revolutionize how we call up nearly children, childcare, and parenting. I had read the occasional articles, features, and editorials that had been published in major American newspapers. The headlines did get one's attention: "To Shape a Life, We Must Begin Earlier a Child is iii," "Building a Ameliorate Brain: A Child'due south First Three Years Provide Parents Once-in-Lifetime Opportunity to Dramatically Increase Intelligence," and "Youngest Kids Need Help, U.S. Told: Federal Authorities Urged to Focus on Their 1st Three Years." The manufactures under the headlines said that new brain research could at present tell us how and when to build better brains in our children. The first 3 years — the years from birth to 3 — we were told, are the critical years for building better brains.

In early 1996, I read Sharon Begley's Feb 19 Newsweek article, "Your Child's Encephalon." Although I was glad to see that encephalon science was getting cover-story attention, some of the claims and statements in the article, especially those offered by childcare advocates who were not brain scientists, seemed farfetched. But that is not unusual in popular articles about science and research.

In spring 1996, because I was on the media list, I saw an accelerate copy of the same Carnegie Corporation report, Years of Promise, which briefly touched on what the new brain science might mean for educational practice. The report's discussion of the brain scientific discipline was and then fleeting that I dismissed the neuroscience as rhetorical window dressing to increment interest in educational policy and reform. Near that time, during a visit to the MacArthur Foundation, I read an editorial in the Chicago Tribune titled "The IQ Gap Begins at Birth for the Poor." In this piece, as in others I was now collecting in my file cabinet, the writer claimed that applying the new encephalon science offered "the quickest, kindest, most promising manner to interruption" the bike of poverty and ignorance among the nation'south poor and to "raise the IQs of low-scoring children (who are unduly blackness)...."

However, the more than I read, the more puzzled I became. For the previous eighteen years, at iii private foundations, I had been following research and awarding grants in pedagogy, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. All during that fourth dimension, I was wondering when I would begin to run across credible research that linked brain science with problems and problems in kid development and education. I was puzzled because, despite what the headlines proclaimed and the articles stated, I had non yet seen whatsoever such research.

In belatedly spring 1996, I had received an invitation to attend a July workshop in Denver, Colorado, sponsored by the Education Commission of u.s. and the Charles A. Dana Foundation. The workshop's championship was "Bridging the Gap Betwixt Neuroscience and Educational activity." Based on the reputations of the sponsoring organizations, I thought that the workshop would offer an platonic opportunity for me to learn about the new brain research and its implications. Unfortunately, I had a scheduling conflict and could not go, but my colleague, Dr. Susan Fitzpatrick, a neuroscientist, attended in my place.

When she returned from Denver and briefed me about the meeting, I had expected to hear about new research linking brain development, kid development, and education. Instead, she began her briefing with a one-word description of the workshop: "Bizarre." She told me, and my subsequent reading of the workshop written report confirmed, that there was little neuroscience presented in Denver and certainly none that I had non previously known about. There were, however, Susan told me, wide-ranging policy discussions, bordering on the nonsensical, in which early on babyhood advocates appealed to what might be most charitably described as a "folk" understanding of brain evolution to back up their favorite policy recommendations. Reflecting on the Denver coming together and its report, information technology seemed as if there was, in fact, no new encephalon science involved in the policy and media discussions of kid development. What seemed to be happening was that selected pieces of rather old brain scientific discipline were being used, and often misinterpreted, to support preexisting views about child development and early childhood policy.

Thus, my response to the journalist's call reflected my confidence, based on what I had read and heard upwardly to that betoken, that there was no new brain science that could tell parents annihilation about choosing a preschool. Her call, nonetheless, did alter how I thought about the issue. If claims about brain science were bars to rhetorical flourishes in policy documents similar Years of Promise or to the editorial folio of the Chicago Tribune, it was probably relatively harmless. It might even draw attention to some important issues that policymakers and newspaper readers might otherwise ignore. Yet, it struck me as a very dissimilar matter if people were taking the brain science seriously every bit a basis for policy and legislation and if parents were request what the new brain science meant for raising their children and choosing schools. Following that phone call, I was no longer comfy being merely puzzled or bemused most what I read in the newspapers. I wanted to understand what was going on and to consider more advisedly what the brain scientific discipline might really mean for children, parents, and policy.

The White Firm Conference

My job every bit a foundation officer responsible for funding inquiry in listen, encephalon, and teaching, plus some strategic messages from colleagues, earned me an invitation to the April 17, 1997, White House Conference on Early Childhood Development and Learning: What New Inquiry on the Brain Tells Us About Our Youngest Children. For those interested in children and education, the briefing was an exciting development. It promised to focus the nation'south interest, fifty-fifty if but for a few days, on science, children, and related, highly significant social issues. What better occasion could at that place exist to understand the growing enthusiasm for what encephalon science meant for parenting and policy?

Mrs. Clinton opened the conference. She emphasized the significance of our new agreement of the brain. Brain science confirms what parents have instinctively known, "that the vocal a begetter sings to his child in the forenoon, or a story that a female parent reads to her kid before bed, aid lay the foundation for a kid's life, in turn, for our nation's future." Dissimilar fifteen years ago, when we thought babies' brains were virtually complete at birth, she told us, nosotros now know brains are a piece of work in progress. This means, Mrs. Clinton said, that everything we do with a child has some kind of potential concrete influence on that speedily forming brain. Children's primeval experiences decide how their brains are wired. The first 3 years are critically of import because so much is happening in the infant's encephalon. "These experiences," Mrs. Clinton said, "can determine whether children will grow up to be peaceful or trigger-happy citizens, focused or undisciplined workers, attentive or detached parents themselves." She did circumspection that the early years are not the simply years that affair and that brain science besides tells us that some parts of the encephalon, in her words the "neurological circuitry for many emotions," remain a work in progress until children are at least 15 years sometime.

Mrs. Clinton introduced the president, who outlined several initiatives that his administration was undertaking on behalf of mothers, families, and the nation'south youngest citizens. The president in plough introduced the chairman for the morn session, Dr. David A. Hamburg, and so president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Information technology was Hamburg who three years earlier had initially chosen attention to the "quiet crisis" afflicting young children, a crisis addressed in the Carnegie Corporation's written report Starting Points. That report, in Hamburg's words, "focused on the strong evidence from research on encephalon and beliefs evolution, indicating the long term effects of early experience." Starting Points, he said, also noted the wide gap between scientific research and public knowledge, between what we know and what we are doing with that knowledge. The White Business firm Briefing represented a major step in an attempt to close that gap.

Dr. Donald Cohen, director of the Yale Child Study Eye, spoke next. The Yale Center has been a leader in the areas of early childhood research and education. Mrs. Clinton had worked with the Child Study Center while she was a police force student at Yale. In his talk, Cohen also mentioned that, while at Yale, both he and Mrs. Clinton had been students of Sally Provence, one of the pioneers in the report of early babyhood deprivation. He proceeded to speak about the effects of early feel on children'south behavior and development, stressing parents' agile role in brain development and the importance of social and emotional relations in child evolution: "When parents and caregivers take care of a child they're doing a lot more than but feeding or bathing or comforting. They're helping the child'due south brain to develop, shaping his temperament and teaching the child about the world." These early experiences are enduring because they lay down the pattern for all future evolution. The correct experiences enable the child to use "his intellectual potential to its limits." Although, he cautioned, we should never write children off, it can exist difficult to change long-lasting, maladaptive patterns later in life.

Oddly, only 1 neuroscientist spoke at the White Firm Briefing, Dr. Carla Shatz of the Academy of California at Berkeley. She spoke for eight minutes (as did most of the other experts). Drawing on her own studies of the visual system, she summarized what neuroscientists know about early on encephalon evolution. She explained that there are two major periods in brain development. During the first menstruation, which starts before nascency, the brain's gross wiring is laid out under genetic command. It is as if the brain were laying out the major trunk lines of a telephone arrangement. Then, also prior to birth, a second phase begins. Spontaneous encephalon activeness — neural firing that is not caused past sensory stimulation — starts. One can think of it, she explained, as "autodialing" among telephones. This activity among the brain'southward neural cells begins to construct its fine wiring. Following birth, sensory experience takes the place of the spontaneous, automatic dialing to complete the wiring procedure. During the fine-wiring phase, the neural connections, or synapses, that are used become permanent and the others wither abroad. Neuroscientists believe, Shatz explained, that relying on neural action for fine-tuning results in brains that are more circuitous and sensitive than if they were hard-wired at nascency. This complexity and sensitivity has survival value. Equally Shatz said, "If afterwards all, things were just hard-wired — if everything in the brain were just strictly programmed genetically past molecules that wired everything upwardly, A to B, C to D, and so on — then nosotros wouldn't exist nearly equally adaptable as we are as organisms."

She also summarized a classic piece of neuroscientific research that figures prominently in the early babyhood literature. Adults who suffer from cataracts for extended periods, say v years, can have surgery to ready the damaged eye's optics. The surgery restores adults' vision. Still, children built-in with cataracts, if operated on at age 5 years, remain blind in the afflicted centre. Five years of abnormal visual feel early in life has unlike and more serious consequences than five years of abnormal visual experience late in life. David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, who won the Nobel Prize in 1981, developed animal models, using cats and monkeys, in an attempt to figure out why adults and young children fare so differently following surgical treatment for cataracts. They plant, among other things, that if kittens were deprived of visual input to 1 heart early in evolution, the kittens remained permanently blind in that eye. It is this inquiry, Shatz said, that underscores the importance of early experience for brain development. Brain science tells us, she concluded, that at that place are "early on periods of development, windows of opportunity or disquisitional periods, every bit scientists phone call them, during which time feel is essential for brain wiring." Shatz's brilliant, highly accessible presentation was the only brain science presented at the White House Conference.

Dr. Patricia Kuhl, from the Academy of Washington, spoke about her work on infants' speech perception. Babies are born with the power to discriminate the sounds found in all human languages, Kuhl told us. In her inquiry, she has found that by six months of historic period infants accept already focused on the particular sounds that their native language uses. Simply listening to adult speech alters infants' perceptual systems. This early on perceptual learning makes the infant responsive to its linguistic environment but too renders the babe vulnerable, almost earnest, to that environment. She emphasized how important it is for parents to be sure that their infants can hear, see, and process stimuli present in the environment. She carefully noted that research cannot yet tell us how much talking it takes — xxx minutes a twenty-four hours or ii hours a 24-hour interval — to support this kind of evolution and learning. She discouraged parents from trying to advance the normal course of language evolution: "We don't recommend wink cards to effort to teach words to 3-monthers." She advised doing what comes naturally: "Nature has provided a perfect fit betwixt the parents' desire to communicate with the child and the child'south ability to soak this data up." Kuhl's presentation marked the stop of the scientific presentations at the briefing.

The balance of the White House presentations addressed policy issues. All these presentations had a similar construction. If the experts mentioned brain science at all, and more than than a few did non, it was early in their allotted eight minutes. They invoked the new encephalon scientific discipline to give a prefatory, high-level justification for better prenatal, postpartum, and pediatric intendance; family planning; welfare reform; parent education; and loftier-quality day care and early babyhood teaching.

Toward the end of the afternoon session, Rob Reiner spoke in his capacity as founder of the Rob Reiner Foundation and mastermind of the I Am Your Kid entrada. I Am Your Child is a national public educational activity campaign on early child development. Reiner spoke for effectually forty minutes on his efforts to educate the public about the far-reaching implications of the new brain science. He described his part equally creating the public will to get the country to change how we call up and "to await through the prism of zero to three in terms of problem solving at every level of social club." According to Reiner, "If nosotros want to have a real significant impact, not but on children's success in school and after on in life, salubrious relationships, simply also an bear on on reduction in criminal offense, teen pregnancy, drug corruption, child abuse, welfare, homelessness, and a variety of other social ills, nosotros are going to take to address the first three years of life. At that place is no getting around it. All roads atomic number 82 to Rome."

At the day's end, I left the East Room and caught a cab to National Drome, no less puzzled almost the relevance of brain science to early childhood than when I had arrived.

I remained puzzled considering at the conference I heard numerous wide-ranging policy recommendations based on the new brain science. Yet, I had heard relatively piddling brain research, none of which I could comfortably describe as new, and none that provided a clear link between bullheaded kittens and welfare reform. In fairness, and as David Hamburg had said, in a ane-day conference just a limited and highly selected body of material could be presented. Nonetheless, as I rode to the airport, my initial impression was that the simply substantive link between Carla Shatz'southward morning presentation and Reiner's afternoon talk had been lunch with Mrs. Clinton.

Could it be true, as Reiner suggested, that if we understood the new brain science and acted on it we could solve social problems ranging from babe mortality to unemployment to depression intelligence to urban violence? Could it be true, every bit he said, that what we know about brain development during the kickoff 3 years of life was "the cardinal to problem solving at every level of society?"

Based on what I had heard at the conference, my answer to both questions was "Highly unlikely." There were likewise many gaping holes, breathtaking leaps of faith, and monumental extrapolations in the arguments the participants made in their effort to link bug like teenage pregnancy, drug addiction, and homelessness with brain scientific discipline.

Of grade, one possibility was that a gifted, enthusiastic spokesman like Reiner might have used the occasion of a White House conference to get the message out forcefully and dramatically, engaging in a touch of hyperbole along the way.

Further post-White Business firm reading suggested otherwise. Reiner'south enthusiasm about the critical, broad-ranging implications of brain development during the first three years was not confined to his White House remarks. Information technology was also the central message in his national awareness campaign. In launching I Am Your Child, Reiner said, "A child born today volition be 3 years old as nosotros enter the new millennium. We know that these years final forever — they directly impact the adult that the kid will become. As a country, we need to focus attention on these critical years so that our children truly reach their potential and to ensure that they grow to be healthy adults."

On July 21, 1998, as the encephalon and early childhood bulletin moved from the White Firm to levels of local authorities, Reiner addressed the National Association of Counties. He told them, "Whether or not a child becomes a toxic or non-toxic member of gild is largely determined past what happens to the child in terms of his experiences with his parents and principal caregivers in those beginning three years."

Where did these ideas about brain and early childhood come from?

The Iii Neurobiological Strands

Although Reiner is a superb spokesman for the campaign, neither the bulletin nor the science that supposedly supports information technology is his creation. The source of the message and the science are two prominent policy documents, Starting Points and Rethinking the Encephalon. On numerous occasions, Reiner has cited Starting Points as the document that substantiated many of his beliefs nearly early childhood and that provided the impetus for him to move forward with the I Am Your Child entrada.

Starting Points has a structure exactly similar the White House Conference. The report's word of brain science is confined to only 2 pages that appear early in the 132-page report, in a section entitled "The Disquisitional Importance of the First Three Years." These few paragraphs on the brain, which cite three enquiry papers and an unpublished oral communication, serve equally a short prelude to the more extensive presentation of social and behavioral science and the word of policy issues.

Rethinking the Brain, released in conjunction with the White House Conference, extends and elaborates the brain science assumed to be fundamental to a scientific discipline of early on childhood. Rethinking addresses a professional audition and attempts to explain how the new brain science establishes the critical importance of the early years of life. Rethinking was written to summarize the research that was to be the scientific foundation for I Am Your Child.

Three recurrent neuroscientific themes or strands run through these documents, as they do through most of the popular literature on the brain and early kid development. These three strands pick out meaning, but not particularly new, findings from the field of developmental neurobiology — the scientific discipline of brain development — as the ground for rethinking the relation betwixt encephalon scientific discipline and child development.

Offset, brain scientists take known for over two decades that the brain grows and changes during the early months and years following birth. Over the by twenty-five years, in a variety of species, neuroscientists have observed that starting shortly before or afterward nativity (depending on the species), the encephalon is the site of a fit of "biological exuberance." Babe brains produce trillions more synapses — the connections betwixt nerve cells — than are found in mature, adult brains. As Rethinking put it, the 2-year-old's brain has nearly twice as many synapses equally her pediatrician's. During this early developmental catamenia, brain connections grade at a rate that far exceeds the rate at which connections are lost. In humans, this fit of exuberance — the period when synapse formation outstrips synapse elimination — seems to exist confined to the commencement iii years of life. Rethinking accordingly cites the enquiry of Pasko Rakic at Yale University and Peter Huttenlocher at the Academy of Chicago as prove for this developmental phenomenon.

The second neurobiological strand is the one Carla Shatz spoke almost at the White House Briefing. Neuroscientists know that there are critical periods in encephalon development. At that place are times during which the encephalon requires certain kinds of stimulation if it is to develop usually. Disquisitional periods, then, are time windows during development, when, given the right kinds of stimuli, normal encephalon circuitry develops. The wrong kind or total lack of stimulation during these periods results in aberrant brain development. In one case the windows shut, the opportunity to wire certain kinds of neural pathways, if non totally eliminated, diminishes substantially. The evolution of the visual system is everyone's favorite case of a critical period. The birth-to-3 literature cites the work of David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel and their blind kittens in discussions of disquisitional periods.

The tertiary neurobiological strand that figures prominently in the brain and early childhood literature is that of enriched, or complex, environments. Fauna studies over the past four decades, mostly on rats, have constitute that animals raised in complex, enriched environments have more synapses in certain parts of their brains than animals raised under more than ascetic conditions. The birth-to-3 literature extrapolates this rodent finding to man infants. Some of the best enquiry on the furnishings of rearing conditions on rodent brains is that of William Greenough and his colleagues at the University of Illinois.

Encephalon and early babyhood manufactures, including Starting Points and Rethinking the Brain, weave these iii strands together to formulate an statement that the first three years of life are uniquely of import for optimal brain development. This argument is intended to support Reiner'south assertion nearly the fundamental importance of looking through the prism of birth to iii if we are to empathise and solve problems at every level of society.

About only stated, the argument is this: During the commencement three years of life in humans, in that location is a period of rapid synapse germination that connects nerve cells into functioning circuits. This time of rapid synapse formation is the disquisitional menses in brain development. Although the brain continues to develop later on this time, it does and then by losing or eliminating synapses, not by forming new ones. Information technology is during this critical period when enriched environments and increased stimulation can have the greatest effect on brain development. Thus, the first three years provide policymakers, caregivers, and parents a unique, biologically delimited window of opportunity, during which the right experiences and early on childhood programs can help children build better brains.

Enthusiasts for this argument will, no doubt, accuse me of vastly oversimplifying their position. And I accept, a chip, although you can find a statement of the statement about identical to the one to a higher place in Starting Smart: How Early on Experiences Affect Brain Development, a document presented on the Ounce of Prevention Fund Web site. For now, I would respond to this charge by pointing out that in the following chapters nosotros volition examine the statement and its bounds much more fully and carefully as we try to sympathize what neuroscience does say and what its implications might be for kid development. I would besides answer that, although the argument's champions might on occasion nowadays more sophisticated, elaborated, and qualified versions, my simple, unvarnished argument captures the bulletin that nonexpert parents, caregivers, and educators accept taken away from the brain and early childhood literature.

The Hope of Encephalon-Based Policy, Didactics, and Parenting

For those who accept this three-stranded argument, looking through the prism of birth to 3 offers a vision no less global and far-reaching than the 1 Reiner articulated at the White House.

According to Starting Points, once we appreciate what encephalon science tells us well-nigh the critical importance of the first 3 years of life, information technology becomes evident that we should invest in better family planning, parenting education, and pre- and postnatal health services. We should guarantee high-quality childcare choices for all parents and use federal funds, if necessary, to assure that all parents have access to high-quality childcare. We should strengthen the Family and Medical Exit Deed to provide several months, if not an entire year, of paid work leave for new mothers. We should improve salary and benefits for childcare workers, provide dwelling-visiting services for first-time mothers, aggrandize baby nutrition programs, have steps to reduce injuries to young children, and enact legislation to control firearms. Why? Considering all of these things, and no doubt numerous others we could think of, take an bear on on children's brains during the first three critical years.

If the first three years are so critically important, so as Time mag reported, "There is an urgent need...for preschool programs to boost the brain power of youngsters built-in into impoverished rural and inner-metropolis households." Why? Because, as some early babyhood advocates argue, impoverished parents, preoccupied with the daily struggle to provide bones necessities for their children, may non have the resources, information, or time they need to provide stimulating experiences that foster brain growth. Following this argument, i solution would exist more and amend programs like Caput Get-go.

Boosting brainpower in disadvantaged children was ane of Head Start's main, original objectives. A perennial criticism of Head Start has been that any cerebral gains its participants brand, equally measured past improved IQ scores, fade over the years and disappear. But, Head Kickoff advocates argue, the new brain science offers a defense force of the program and an explanation for why the early gains fade. Children enter Caput First at age 3, after the critical first three years of brain development are over. Thus, the Head Start experiences occur too belatedly in life to fundamentally and permanently rewire children's brains. Therefore, the brain-based policy solution is to provide programs like Head Commencement for children during the showtime 3 disquisitional years, when their brains can be fundamentally and permanently rewired. The science of early brain development, in this way, provides not simply a set defense of an existing programme, but an argument for an expanded one. Congress no dubiousness considered this statement favorably when in 1994 they created Early Head Showtime equally part of the Head Start reauthorization package. Early Head Start provides pedagogy and childcare on the Head Beginning model to children from birth to age iii.

Viewed through the prism of nascency to 3, bad early childhood experiences — particularly, it seems, amidst the nation's inner-city poor — cause permanent and detrimental brain changes. These brain-damaged individuals have a lifelong propensity for violence and criminal behavior. In Inside the Brain, science writer Ron Kotulak explained, "The offset three years of a child'southward life are critically of import to brain development. Unfortunately, for a growing number of children, the menstruation from birth to age three has get a mental wasteland that can sustain only the gnarled roots of vehement behavior. Guild needs to focus on this flow if information technology is to practice something about the increasing rates of fierce and criminal acts."

If nosotros understood the new brain science, he goes on, we would also empathise that children built-in to mothers without a high school teaching, 22 percent of all births in the United States, are at special risk. Kotulak explains why: "These women oft exercise not know how to promote stimulation — talk, toys, physical activity — to their infants, which can pb to stunting of the brain during the crucial beginning three years of life."

An editorial in the Chicago Tribune expanded on the theme that also few synapses beget too few synapses: "In the first year, the communications network within the brain develops at a breathtaking pace. Just if the neural synapses, the bridges of that communications network, aren't exercised, they wither. That withering impoverishes the heed and, ultimately, nourishes the cycle of poverty." Impoverished minds result in impoverished citizens. Besides few synapses, and our unwillingness to do something virtually information technology, explain why our citizens have behavioral problems, neglect in school, are unable to a hold a job, and tend to engage in fierce behavior. Too few synapses in the parents — a effect of their ain impoverished childhoods — further diminishes the brainpower of their offspring.

To apply brain science to solve social problems like these would, of grade, require that nosotros have land institutions to assure that all children receive what we believe to be optimal developmental experiences, where "we" refers to society, not necessarily to parents or families. Dr. Bruce Perry, a child psychiatrist at the Baylor College of Medicine, has been highly song in spelling out his view of what the new brain science means for breaking the bicycle of violence. Perry observed that we could solve these social bug but that it would require the states to "transform our culture." According to Perry, "We need to modify our child rearing practices, we demand to modify the cancerous and destructive view that children are the property of their biological parents. Man beings evolved not equally individuals, but equally communities....Children vest to the community, they are entrusted to parents." Needless to say, such a transformation would have far-reaching effects on our social, legal, and educational institutions. It would truly transform how we would think nearly families, children, and parents.

Looking through the prism of nascency to 3 also has implications for formal instruction and school instruction. Frank Newman, president of the Education Committee of the states, said, "I don't think there is any question that these revelations [about early brain development] accept a major bear upon on education policy and child rearing." Enriched school environments should help brand the about of each kid'southward mental capacities, merely, echoing the Caput Outset argument, the new encephalon enquiry indicates that formal schooling begins as well belatedly. "From the standpoint of encephalon development, children start school relatively late in life. Long before youngsters primary the ABCs, their brains accept passed many developmental milestones. Yet, educational activity policy has not addressed how children learn before they arrive at school. Nor has policy focused on helping parents enrich the abode environment so that their children will exist gear up to learn when they attain school historic period. New research in brain development suggests information technology is time to rethink many educational policies, including those related to early babyhood and special education." As 1 widely circulated quotation put it, we accept to human action and act early on because "by the fourth dimension a kid starts beginning grade, the most disquisitional of his learning years are past."

Of course, we would expect that looking through the prism of birth to 3 would also have some far-reaching implications for parenting. Popular articles do offer communication to parents. What is surprising, though, is that when we motility from the global level of Early Head Start and eradicating urban violence, to the level of how to raise Jack and/or Jill, the advice to parents seems far less dramatic and revolutionary. Oftentimes the encephalon-based advice offered to parents is oddly vague, contradictory, and what ane might call "middle-class traditional."

What should parents do to build better brains? What matters most during those early on years? Instead of specific advice and a few new insights, parents are told that everything matters in those early years — loving, holding, talking, reading, and exploring the environment. During the critical years, when experiences can permanently rewire the brain, we should engage children in culturally valued activities. Early on, just not subsequently, exposure to music, art, or chess can, parents are told, change the fine anatomy of the kid's encephalon forever. Parents should make use of the windows of developmental opportunity nature has provided, applying a full-court developmental press every minute during the birth-to-iii developmental season. Failure to exert full-court force per unit area can take long-term consequences. Parents must brainstorm to realize that "if they, or their baby sitter, or day care provider isn't speaking articulately to baby, Saturday scores may exist at pale." The implications are sufficiently dire to brand most middle-grade parents take observe. The advice provided is sufficiently vague to get out parents deeply uncertain and profoundly broken-hearted nigh what they should exercise differently and most what does affair — other than everything -- during the early years.

Non only is the advice vague, only it is also contradictory. Brain-based parenting advice has the aforementioned grapheme every bit the communication one gets from reading books on diet and diet that you can find in well-nigh drome bookstores. You want to live to exist 100? You should have a glass of red wine every day, merely avoid alcohol.

Here is one example sure to leave parents confused. The major theme in brain-based advice to parents is the importance of early stimulation during the critical years to facilitate optimal brain development. Those are the years during which parents, if they provide the right kind of stimulation, can build better brains. It is during those years that they and their baby-sitters can improve or impairment future SAT scores. One would call up that the scientific discipline-based parenting advice surrounding such a central theme would be pretty clear-cut. It isn't.

Parents are sometimes told that information technology is time to throw out Dr. Benjamin Spock and his old advice to new parents, "Trust your common sense." Why? Considering we now know that "for the majority of fathers and mothers, doing the things that maximize a kid'southward potential is not intuitive." If so, parents need expert assistance. To fully exploit nature's windows of opportunity, an article in the Chicago Tribune cited this expert advice: "People often ask Dr. Harry Chugani how much mental stimulation a baby should receive. Chugani, a pediatric neurologist at Wayne Land University in Detroit, said no precise respond can be given, only generally 'equally much every bit yous tin.'"

On the other hand, parents are too told that although optimal stimulation is good, too much stimulation is bad. The amount of talking, reading, and singing must be carefully matched to the child's developmental level, personality, and mood. According to kid psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan, every bit quoted in Newsweek, "Only 20 to 30 pct of parents know how to do this instinctively." It's not just a affair of the more and the earlier the stimulation the better!

Even so other popular articles in Newsweek, Time, and Working Mother tell parents that the implications of brain scientific discipline are not that radical and that the new discoveries reaffirm Dr. Spock'south endorsement of mutual sense. Parents are told that scientific discipline is, in fact, reaffirming what our parents and grandparents knew instinctively. In Sandra Blakeslee's New York Times commodity on the White House Conference, parents were told that although talking to babies is of import, "the curriculum that nearly benefits babies is simply common sense."

Parent might well ask, "So, what is information technology I should do?" or "What'due south all the fuss most anyway?"

One identify a bewildered parent might look for answers to these questions is the I Am Your Child Web site, the official site for the Reiner Foundation's national awareness campaign. The Spider web site and entrada are generously funded by fifteen major foundations and corporations, including the MacArthur Foundation, the AT&T Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, the Carnegie Corporation, the Dana Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Heinz Foundation. If we were to find a clear, curtailed brain-based message for parents, we would expect to find it there.

Once at the Web site, nether the heading "The First Years Last Forever," a parent would detect five paragraphs on brain evolution, in which brain science is presented in a very general, but accurate, way a parent would read that an infant'due south encephalon has 100 billion nerve cells that grow and connect to form the circuits that control our senses, motility, and emotions. Early babyhood experiences "aid to determine encephalon structure, thus shaping the manner people acquire, think, and behave for the balance of their lives."

There is another section called "Brain Facts," which informs parents nearly early synapse formation, how feel shapes brain circuitry, and how critical periods or "prime times" occur during brain development. A parent would as well read that the kind of care a child receives during these critical periods tin effect evolution and that warm, responsive care is good for the encephalon.

I Am Your Child presents 10 guidelines that parents can employ to promote children's salubrious development. Amidst these guidelines are: Exist warm, loving, and responsive; talk, read, and sing to baby; apply subject to teach; exist selective well-nigh TV watching; cull quality day intendance. In that location is zippo controversial on the list, but there is zilch on the listing that would prompt the average parent to say, "Wow, I never heard that earlier!" Parents could observe the same guiding principles in parenting books and advice columns published 30 years ago.

There are video clips on the Spider web site in which experts offer advice to parents. The experts include T. Berry Brazelton, Barbara Bowman, C. Everett Koop, and Bruce Perry. For the most part, these experts accept substantial followings and deserved reputations in child development and public health, just none, with the possible exception of Perry, would consider himself or herself an expert in developmental neurobiology.

The site provides a list of links to other parenting Spider web sites and a bibliography of the parenting and child evolution literature that cites works published between 1980 and 1997. Among the authors are the "the usual suspects" — Brazelton, James Comer, Alvin Poussaint, Penelope Leach, to proper name a few. The I Am Your Child bibliography cites but one volume on brain development, Kotulak's Within the Brain.

If parents become to the site thinking that they volition observe new insights into parenting practices, derived from brain research, that will optimize encephalon, intellectual, and social development, they volition be disappointed. After visiting the site and its associated links, many parents might withal be wondering what all the fuss is about.

A parent who reads the I Am Your Child guidelines carefully, however, might notice that the guidelines emphasize the importance of a secure relationship, or secure zipper, betwixt caregiver and kid and what such a relationship ways for a child's social and emotional evolution. This connection appears nether the starting time guideline "Be warm, loving, and responsive" and links responsive care and secure relationships to research on attachment theory (a theory we will examine more than closely in the adjacent chapter). I Am Your Child states that research on attachment shows that children who receive warm and responsive care and who are securely fastened to their caregivers cope with hard times more easily when they are older. Securely attached infants are more likely to develop a healthy response to stressful situations, and this response is, the Spider web site suggests, the result of optimal early on brain development. Co-ordinate to some attachment theorists, secure attachments are formed, or fail to form, during the first iii years of life. This is why parents should provide warm, loving care, respond to infant'southward cues and clues, establish routines, establish a close necktie to your kid by talking, singing, and reading, and look for childcare that does all of the in a higher place.

The importance and lifelong consequences of attachment form the central message of I Am Your Child. It is no blow that the site'due south page introducing advice for parents carries the imprint "The Commencement Years Last Forever" and that the final words of advice are "the get-go years truly final forever." This same message is implicit in Starting Points and developed in some detail in Rethinking the Brain. Information technology is this theoretical viewpoint that is at the basis of Reiner's confidence that all roads lead to Rome and that nosotros should view children and the world through the prism of the first three years. This is why, equally Reiner told the county government representatives to applause, "justice begins in the loftier chair, not the electric chair."

Nevertheless, a thoughtful parent reading the Web site might also notice something else. There are some general statements about encephalon development, followed by ten rather traditional parenting guidelines, guidelines that for the most role emphasize social and emotional development. But only what is the connection, for instance, between the 100 billion nerve cells, developing healthy brain circuitry, and selective Television watching? Does someone know that Sesame Street is meliorate for the brain than Rugrats or The Simpsons? Do nosotros know that one hour of television is proficient for the encephalon, two hours bad, and no television whatever the best of all? The brusque respond: no.

I Am Your Child suggests that there is a connection between brain science and the parenting communication, but like Starting Points and the White House Conference, it is not all that clear or specific about what that connexion is. There is talk about the brain, followed by some hand waving, followed by advice to parents. None of this instills much conviction in the merits that the new encephalon science is about to revolutionize parenting and childcare.

Farther Grounds for Skepticism: What Neuroscientists Say

There are additional reasons why we should be skeptical near the benefits of viewing the earth through the prism of the outset three years. Neuroscientists, as opposed to early childhood advocates, accept a somewhat different view concerning the possible implications of early synapse formation, critical periods, and enriched environments for early childhood.

According to the brain and early on childhood literature, early stimulation somehow affects early on synapse and brain circuit formation. It implies that parents and caretakers can influence this process and that we know in some detail what kinds of early experiences would result in the desired brain circuits and in optimal encephalon development.

Neuroscientists, fifty-fifty neuroscientists who take been involved in discussions of early encephalon development, have a different view. In a September 1992 Scientific American commodity, Carla Shatz noted that if we observe children's behavior, it is evident that children who are grossly neglected — left in their cribs for the starting time year of life — develop motor skills abnormally slowly. From this observation, information technology is reasonable to infer, she says, that children do crave a normal environment for normal evolution. Children need normal tactile, linguistic, and visual stimulation to develop normally. Withal, she continues, "Based in part on such observations, some people favor enriched environments for young children, in the hopes of enhancing development. Yet current studies provide no articulate bear witness that such extra stimulation is helpful....Much research remains to be done earlier anyone tin can conclusively determine the types of sensory input that encourage the formation of particular neural connections in newborns." Apart from eliminating gross fail, neuroscience cannot currently tell usa much about whether we tin, let alone how to, influence encephalon evolution during the early stage of exuberant synapse formation. If and then, we should not be surprised that brain-based parenting advice is vague and contradictory.

The brain and early on childhood literature suggests that the kickoff 3 years of life is the critical period for brain development. It's a time when the young brain'southward learning power is near limitless. As Hillary Clinton describes it, "The estimator comes with so much retentiveness capacity that for the outset three years information technology tin store more data than an ground forces of humans could peradventure input. Past the terminate of three or four years, however, the step of learning slows. The calculator will continue to accept new data, but at a decreasing charge per unit....But information technology is clear that past the time most children begin preschool, the architecture of the brain has essentially been synthetic. From that fourth dimension until boyhood, the brain remains a relatively eager learner with occasional 'growth spurts,' just it will never once again achieve the incredible stride of learning that occurs in the first few years." Subsequently this critical period, as Harvard child psychiatrist Felton Earls told Ron Kotulak, "A kind of irreversibility sets in. At that place is this shaping process that goes on early, and so at the end of this process, be that age ii, 3 or 4, you have essentially designed a brain that probably is not going to change very much more than."

This interpretation of critical periods assumes that the brain learns best and is unusually plastic only during the early on, superdense years. It besides assumes that the experiences we take during those years are particularly powerful and have long-term, irreversible consequences.

Once more, neuroscientists; see it a little differently. In a review on kid development and neuroscience, Charles Nelson and Floyd Bloom deftly summarize our emerging understanding of how molecular and cellular events contribute to encephalon development. Nigh of import, they also discuss some genuinely new findings in neuroscience — what happens in the encephalon when adults learn new motor skills and the rapidity with which the adult brain can reorganize after loss of sensory input from an amputated limb. The new findings Nelson and Blossom allude to suggest that the encephalon retains its ability to reorganize itself in response to experience or injury throughout life. They conclude, "...it may be useful to question the simplistic view that the brain becomes unbendable and increasingly difficult to modify beyond the start few years of life. Although clearly much of brain development occurs late in gestation through the first years of postnatal life, the brain is far from set in its trajectory, fifty-fifty at the completion of boyhood." If so, we should be wary of claims that parents have only a single, biologically delimited, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help their children build better brains.

Although not in a scientific journal, the neuroscientist Arnold Scheibel, who, with his wife Marian Diamond, has studied the effects of enriched environments on brain development, arrived at a similar conclusion. In an commodity he wrote on the implications of the new brain scientific discipline for education, Scheibel expressed reservations about popular claims that the encephalon's ability to learn varies during development and that instruction should be keyed to those critical periods when the brain is most receptive. "Those who subscribe to this view," he wrote, "might be left with the feeling that if nosotros miss a disquisitional window of opportunity between ages 3 and 6, or betwixt 8 and ten, we have failed in our responsibilities, and the students nosotros have missed are destined for linguistic or cognitive mediocrity. But I believe this is an inaccurate conclusion fatigued from improperly interpreted structural and functional data." Scheibel goes on to argue that the brain remains a "superbly attuned learning instrument for virtually all of life." If and so, nosotros should be wary of the merits that by the time a child starts get-go grade the most critical of his learning years are past.

Finally, the brain and early childhood literature tends to misinterpret the significance of research on the effects of enriched environments on encephalon evolution. The policy and popular articles assume that if early experiences during the critical period sculpt the brain for life, then rich, complex early experiences will sculpt rich, circuitous brains for life: "Research bears out that an enriched environment can boost the number of synapses that children form." Based on a conviction that the early years are the nigh crucial learning years, these articles argue that early enrichment is specially powerful: "In an environment rich in all sorts of learning experiences, the growth of synapses — the connections betwixt nerve cells in the brain that relay data — is more lush, and this complex circuitry enlarges brain capacity. Infants who are not held and touched, whose playfulness and marvel are not encouraged, form fewer of these critical connections."

Neuroscientists who accept done research on the effects of enriched environments on brain construction take a different view. In 1997, William Greenough, 1 of the most prominent researchers in this area, wrote a brusk piece for the APA Monitor, a publication of the American Psychological Association. He stated that despite the claims of children's didactics organizations and manufactures in the pop press on how early on childhood experiences can enhance children's cognitive development between the ages of 0 and 3, the neuroscience used to back up these claims is not new. Furthermore, he continued, careful test of the evidence does not back up a selective focus on the beginning three years. Experience plays a major role in brain development, but claims that information technology plays a more than important part in the beginning iii years than at other times need to be assessed carefully. He emphasizes that his own, oft-cited inquiry on animals raised in circuitous environments indicates that the brain continues to exist plastic — modifiable by experience — throughout later development and into adulthood. According to Greenough, the existing neuroscientific and behavioral bear witness practice not support an exclusive focus on birth to 3 to the relative exclusion of older age groups. If and then, we should be wary of claims that the only, or the near of import, time to provide enrichment is the early years.

At this early indicate in our exploration of brain scientific discipline and child development, what these neuroscientists are saying should serve to heighten our skepticism about what nosotros read in the papers and run into on the Internet. Their comments should at least prompt united states of america to take a more careful, critical look at brain science and the claim of viewing the earth through the prism of the first three years. Of course, by themselves the neuroscientists' assertions bear no more weight than do those of the most fervent birth-to-3 brain advocate. However, the neuroscientists take reasons for saying what they do, reasons that derive from their weighing and consideration of the existing scientific evidence. So, rather than merely listing government and assertions pro and con, it is fourth dimension that we look advisedly at that evidence. Afterwards nosotros review the show in the subsequent chapters, we volition see that nosotros do non have a revolutionary, brainbased action agenda for kid development. What nosotros accept instead is the Myth of the First 3 Years. And, looking through this mythical lens gives us a highly distorted view of children, parents, and early on childhood policy.

Some might ask, "Why should we care whether what we have is a enquiry-based agenda or a myth? Nosotros demand improve programs and policies for children and current programs are underfunded. Any argument that would atomic number 82 to improved opportunities and outcomes for children is a expert argument." One could take this position and many well-intentioned early childhood advocates do have this view. Information technology's the hard-nosed only often realistic view that anybody knows that policy arguments are merely exercises in political rhetoric. Sophisticated citizens (normally those making the arguments) know this and the statement is intended just to sway the emotions of the unsophisticated. On this view, science, every bit such, and the evidence information technology might bring to a policy give-and-take, do non affair. Science is simply another rhetorical tool that happens to elicit a stiff emotional response in the public, like God, the sanctity of motherhood, the innocence of childhood, and the flag. Some might then say, "It'southward a myth and I know information technology. But by God, given what I want to do, it's a useful myth." If this is the opinion we wish to take, so we should also admit that our arguments about what to do for children and families and why we should do information technology carry the same weight equally the blustery, staged debates from the left and right that entertain us over dinner on Firing Line. On this view, although science and scientists might have a place at the policy-setting table, others at the table do not take the scientific discipline seriously if it conflicts with their policy goals.

On the other hand, if we do take the science seriously, then we accept to care if we are acting on a science-based agenda or a myth. What a science-based policy argument should do is add together some prove and factual basis, beyond our own biases, prejudices, and ideological tastes, for what the preferable policy might be. Scientific discipline should inform u.s. of what the optimal strategies might be to reach a policy objective. What the scientific discipline can add together to the policy debate are insights nearly the causes, mechanisms, and leverage points that nosotros could well-nigh effectively exploit to achieve our goal. If the science is wrong, misleading, or misinterpreted, and so we are trying to achieve our policy, and parenting, goals by pushing the wrong, ineffective, or nonexistent buttons. We are wasting time and resource attempting to bring about modify via causes, mechanisms, and leverage points that do non exist.

The brain and early on childhood literature appeals to neuroscience to fence for the unique importance of the first 3 years of life. Co-ordinate to that literature, seeing the world through the prism of birth to iii is the key to improving opportunities and outcomes for children, families, and the nation. If this view is authentic, and then Early on Head Start, removing children from violent inner-urban center neighborhoods, and applying a full-court developmental printing are good ideas. But what if, equally our current grounds for skepticism at least suggest, brain science does not support that key claim? We might want to notice other and better reasons to invest $4 billion in Early Head Get-go or to consider other means, using other leverage points, to expend that money to help young children. Nosotros might be reluctant to transform our civilization and change our views well-nigh who children vest to. Nosotros might question the prudence of decreasing expenditures for adult educational activity or special didactics on the grounds that a person's intellectual and emotional form is firmly prepare during the early years. We might be reluctant to tell parents to apply full-court pressure during the early years and to propose to parents that early on learning problems volition leave their children at a permanent disadvantage.

Being critical of the Myth does not mean existence critical of making the world improve for children. It signals, instead, a commitment to expect at the scientific discipline of early on encephalon evolution seriously in the hope that we can identify the almost efficient leverage points with which to button parenting practices and early on childhood policy in the desired management.

Myths frequently have interesting histories. The Myth of the Starting time Three Years is no exception. The Myth's popularity and its beguiling, intuitive appeal is rooted in our cultural beliefs near children and childhood, our fascination with the listen-brain, and our perennial demand to find reassuring answers to troubling questions. That history is the subject of the next chapter.

After we review the Myth's history, we will examine each of the Myth's three biological strands, reviewing the science and the conclusions we tin can and cannot describe from this inquiry for child development. In Chapter iii, nosotros will explore what neuroscientists know virtually rapid synapse development in the early years of life. Chapter 4 discusses our current neurobiological understanding of critical periods and what critical periods mean for childcare and development. Chapter 5 presents the research on enriched environments and examines what information technology implies for early on babyhood education and lifelong learning. Based on this review of what we know about early childhood and brain development, Chapter 6 attempts to answer the question "What is a parent, or any of us who are interested in children, brain science, and policy, to do?"

(C) 1999 John Bruer All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-684-85184-9

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bruer-myth.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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