Children's Brains

Johnny Jones, February 1996

I always thought Barbara Clark was right--but back in 1983, when Ms. Clark wrote Growing Up Gifted, the biological research to support her claims wasn't available.

Now pioneering research, detailed in the last week's Newsweek cover story, shows that "...the experiences of childhood...help form the brain's circuits--for music and math, language and emotion." Ms. Clark said, "While the basic features of brain organization are present at birth (cell division is essentially complete), the brain experiences tremendous growth...declining around puberty. These processes can be profoundly altered by the...environment."

But Ms. Clark wasn't entirely correct. It turns out that the learning window, the time when those circuits are becoming hard-wired into the brain's motherboard, are shorter than we thought. For math and logic, the window is birth to 4 years; for language, it is birth to 10 years.

Newsweek says, "It is the experiences of childhood, determining which neurons are used, that wire the circuits of the brain as surely as a programmer at a keyboard reconfigures the circuits in a computer. ...which experiences a child has--determines whether the child grows up to be intelligent or dull, fearful or self-assured, articulate or tongue-tied."

Barbara Clark put it this way: "By the environment we provide, we change not just the behavior of children, we change them at the cellular level....At birth nearly everyone is programmed to be phenomenal."

There are actually two broad stages of brain wiring: "...an early period, when experience is not required, and a later one, when it is. Yet, once wired, there are limits to the brain's ability to create itself. Time limits. Called `critical periods,' they are windows of opportunity that nature flings open, starting before birth, and then slams shut, one by one, with every additional candle on the child's birthday cake."

Animal research in this area is fascinating. Researchers is the '70's learned that sewing one eye of a newborn kitten shut meant that so few neurons were connected from the shut eye to the part of the brain where the kitten sees, that the animal was blind even after its eye was opened.

Likewise, "A baby whose eyes are clouded by cataracts from birth will, despite cataract-removal surgery at the age of 2, be forever blind."

What fascinates me is that the researchers have found ways to improve the likelihood of optimizing the brain.

For example, in the area of language, we know that "Circuits in the auditory cortex, representing the sounds that form words, are wired by the age of 1. The more words a child hears by 2, the larger her vocabulary will grow." What can we do about it? "Talk to your child--a lot....Protect hearing by treating ear infections promptly."

How important are parents as their children's first teachers? Here's what the latest research, quoted in Newsweek, shows: "Children whose neural circuits are not stimulated before kindergarten are never going to be what they could have been. `You want to say that it is never too late....But there seems to be something very special about the early years."

Barbara Clark said environmental differences can make for a 20-40 point span in measured intelligence. That knowledge has implications for how we raise our kids. Our children are precious, and their critical learning time is shorter than we once supposed. Deuteronomy emphasizes a deliberate approach in teaching children about the Lord: "Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." We are not to think of our children's somehow catching on to important things in life, like they catch a cold: We are to teach, to train. Proverbs tells us, " Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." Now we have research to demonstrate the importance of early childhood experience and training.

The Newsweek article ends with, "For now, it is enough to know that we are born with a world of potential--potential that will be realize only if it is tapped. And that is challenge enough."

What a gift our children are! God put each person in this world for a purpose. What an opportunity we are given to help our children be all God meant them to be. It's like being allowed to help paint the Sistine Chapel, to assist in research that wins the Nobel Prize, to be on the team that wins the Super Bowl. Our children are potentially awesome. It's a privilege to be on their team and to watch--and help--them grow.

Newsweek 2/19/96 "Your Child's Brain

Note:  I read Newsweek cover to cover for decades before unsubscribing to it.