Are you tempted to use flash cards to teach your toddler to read? Are you considering buying computer programmes said to boost intelligence?
We are all hopeful that our children will succeed at school but to help them, we need to know how the brain develops and what kinds of learning will promote optimal development. Packaged programmes are not always the key to intelligence.
Making connections in the early years
Good brain function depends on a well-organised neural network, meaning that the brain cells have made zillions of connections and circuits are organized so that all areas of the brain function rapidly and smoothly. How does this happen?
In the first months of life, the child is in the so-called ‘sensorimotor’ period. His brain is learning to take in bits of information from the senses and practicing to respond with bodily movements. At this stage, the brain isn’t able to deal with much beyond physical experiences happening at a particular moment. He can’t combine information coming in from more than one sense. For example, he can hear a motor car and see the car but won’t be able to relate sight to sound. Only later will the sound of Mom’s car outside result in a mental picture of the car and the knowledge that it is bringing mother home.
As they grow more neural connections, toddlers begin to see the world in new ways. The development of language and symbolic play represent the beginning of abstract through. A child talking to Grandma on a toy telephone shows that she has a mental representation of both Grandma (out of sight) and the function of a telephone. It is generally believed that the roots of creativity also lie at this meeting of concrete and symbolic experience giving rise to ‘pretend’ play. Children who are good at pretending and ‘making up’ also seem to get along better socially.
Until sometime around age six or seven, children are ‘stimulus bound’. This means that her attention is easily drawn to any new stimulus and she appears to be easily distractible (useful when you are trying to distract her from a distressing event). Preschoolers are caught in the present, with only a vague concept of past, present and future. They have trouble with other people’s point of view; they can’t attend to any one task or idea for more than a few seconds.
Learning to grow beyond this needs firsthand experience and interest. Helping early intelligence to needs understanding the value of supplying a varying and interesting environment. Novelty and opportunity to experience new situations and settings provide the means of learning to pattern information.
The key to seeing patterns
Children will benefit through lots of self-organising play activities that will allow them to make physical and mental connections. This is more useful for healthy brain development than early tutoring. Because brain areas that function to connect sight, sound, touch and body awareness are still developing, it is difficult for young children to combine processes from more than one modality, such as in looking at a letter and copying it, or being encouraged to simultaneously dance and sing while listening to music.
It is possible to condition babies to associate two stimuli that are presented repeatedly together (e.g. the sight and sound of a letter of the alphabet) but this learning lacks real meaning for the child and she may end up using less efficient parts of the brain to do so. The higher levels of the brain ultimately responsible for these tasks have not yet developed enough. If she develops a ‘habit’ of using lower brain areas for higher-level tasks (such as word recognition or reading) and of receiving instruction (from you) rather than creating patterns of meaning, she may run into big problems later on.
So drilling your child in various learning tasks results in them being good ‘technicians’ in the early grades because they have learned to deal with isolated bits of information. However, when demands for comprehension increase, they become lost. In higher grades, they have difficulty organizing information into more abstract ideas. They simply cannot understand the content they are working with.
During the early years, some commonsense practices bring better results than expensive equipment. Here are a few ideas:
- Help your child figure out meanings and relationships in daily events; her endless ‘Why?’ questions show her need to make connections and her need for more explanation in order to do so.
- Introduce sequencing skills – arrange objects according to size, or remembering words or events in order.
- Talk about abstract sequences such as “If you go outside without your jacket you’ll get very cold because it’s winter”.
- Mental patterns are built on networks of sensory connections. Call the child’s attention to patterns in the sensory world: “What does that taste like?” “Do these look alike?”
- Call attention to visual patterns: “Look at the tree branches against the sky. It looks like the tree has arms. Let’s draw a picture of the tree”.
- Puzzles, blocks, dominoes, kaleidoscopes are all useful materials to help visual patterning.
- Finding something ‘wrong’ or missing in pictures links visual and intellectual skills.
- Encourage auditory patterning with rhymes, tunes, familiar stories, and attention to sounds around the house.
- Using tools (screws, nuts, bolts), measuring, cooking activities and gardening are all examples of activities that encourage perceptual and motor connections.
- Practice motor patterns over and over again: using utensils and tools; cutting; catching; throwing large, soft balls are all good.
- Self-help skills and household jobs are very important for the child to master. Give help when needed but encourage the child to do it himself even if the job isn’t done exactly the way you’d like it.
- Give the child time to organize her own play. Don’t hover or be too attentive. The is one study that showed that too-frequent offerings of food and drink to toddlers was related to later poor school achievement.
- If a child needs help mastering some motor pattern, scaffold the learning by gently guiding his body through the action sequence several times in order to lay down the neural pathway. Dividing the action into a series of smaller activity steps is also useful. Don’t expect young children to be able to copy complex actions that you show him. Allow him to learn with one sense at a time (in the case of a motor behavior, his body).
- Allow the child to make simple decisions. Also allow them to make minor mistakes. This is hard to do but necessary. Children need to have experience with cause and effect. For example, “If I throw my toy down hard on the floor, it will break”.
- Limit screen time. Choose a daycare centre where children don’t watch much – if any – TV or videos. Passively sitting and watching screens may lead to missing out of some of the most basic motor patterning and the attention skills and intellectual growth that goes with it.
- Allow time for reflection and thought. The brain needs downtime to process all the work going into its development.
Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) strives to uncover the root causes of puzzling behaviours and learning difficulties in children. Visit the website www.ilt.co.za to learn more about this approach and find a practitioner near you to help.
Image supplied by Freepik.
[i] With thanks to Jane M. Healy 2004. Your child’s growing mind. Broadway Books: New York