Your Baby's Brain

From birth to age 3, profound changes and growth are occurring in your baby's brain. Developmentally, every 3 years is a marked cycle of changes and types of growth. I believe if we all knew what the 0-3 growth was really about, we would be more selective in the environments we create for our babies.

It's a pretty good analogy to say that your baby is like a 'sponge' at these ages, and developmentally, taking in everything in her surroundings is part of the plan. "Pruning" of brain synapses happens, with or without our input. For optimum brain development, reducing or eliminating negative stress for your baby is a huge gift you can give. This means minimizing sensory overload, modulating loud or new experiences, and develping an awareness of what your baby does and doesn't like to be around.

It's documented with 'hard' science now that if a baby's brain is unduly overloaded with stress, there is a cascade of events that result in your baby actually 'shutting down' and learning that the world is a hostile, unfriendly environment. The cumulative effect of these kinds of experiences result in a young child out of touch with her own internal feedback. It sets up young children to be dependent entirely on outside sources for making decisions about what they need and want (easy to see how this can be a precursor to a lifetime of eating disorders, substance abuse, behavioral difficulties, etc.)

Please educate yourself as a parent about the extremely dynamic growth happening in your baby's brain. Your choices in how you interact and the environments that you create for her will shape her lifelong experience.