Did you know that human beings are the only animals on our planet whose babies require 13 to 14 years to mature? Anthropologists now believe that the reason for this is the size of our brain.
To provide a child’s remarkable brain ample time to mature takes up about one fifth of our life. What this means is that the time your child spends living with you is critical to the shape of his brain for the rest of his life. You actually have a great deal of control over your child’s “brain power” by building the brain’s super highway system and then paving the highways and byways that will allow your child to select among a variety of adult vocations and live a fulfilling life.
But, interestingly, although the childhood period is quite long, you need not try to fill every day with meaningful activities for your child – her brain is actually designed to extract and use the information that her early life contains to build itself. Your child’s brain is a learning machine that will utilize interactions with you and other adults as well as experiences within the environment to create a scaffolding that will prepare her first for school and then for life as a productive adult and social expert.
