The formative years in your child’s development – beginning with pregnancy and extending through the first three years of life – will have a profound effect on your child for the rest of his or her life. During this stage of development, children have a unique ability to absorb knowledge quickly and effortlessly.
The good news is, there’s plenty of research available these days to help you make the most of these moments. Even though every child is different, each has the capacity to respond to the same science-based techniques that can unlock their intellectual, emotional, mental and physical potential.
Children should have every opportunity to be all they are capable of being. As a parent, that’s where you come in. When you are present and engaged, your child will blossom in unimaginable ways, learning skills that you thought were beyond their years or stage in development. That’s because every newborn has about 100 billion brain cells. The networks these cells form create the pathways for thinking and learning, pathways they will use the rest of their lives.
In infancy, the brain is growing at a phenomenal rate: 25% of its adult weight at birth, 50% by age one, 75% by age two and 90% by the time they turn three. By then, their brain has formed more than one-thousand trillion connections, according to experts. Every connection, whether it’s learning to walk, talk, read, sing, or even play, forms new connections. These young minds are hungry for input and the more you provide, the more connections are made, not only in their brain and with their body, but with the relatively new world that surrounds them.
