The Amazing Baby Brain!

Many of us live busy, goal-oriented lives in which we race about, eager to achieve quick results and succeed in all manner of tasks, great or small. This cultural tendency permeates everything we do, even our nurturing. As parents, we may be eager for our children to achieve, and even when they are babies, we are encouraged to watch them closely, ticking the boxes of optimal d

evelopment as they grow…

Panic may set in at the first sign of inadequacy, but although fears relating to autism and learning disabilities are sometimes well warranted, in most cases a child that learns to walk first is not necessarily Einstein-in-the-making, nor is the child who crawls last destined to be Homer Simpson. All children are different, they progress at individual rates, and neurological development naturally ebbs and flows. While it is certainly useful for parents to have an understanding of developmental milestones, it is better again for them to:

• Learn how to enrich their child’s environment • Appreciate which lifestyle factors may dampen their child’s capacity to grow. Did you know that babies have far more brain cells than adults? When a baby is born their brain has more neurons (specialised cell-transmitting nerve messages) than it will ever have later in life, giving the child an enormous capacity to learn and thrive. It is a baby’s environment that creates the stimulus to get these neurons firing and wiring; i.e. the environment primes the brain. So what can you as a parent do to ensure you’re encouraging healthy brain development? Below, I have outlined some simple techniques that will help your bubba engage.