Protect, nurture your baby's brain

While we always have known that a baby's first years were important, we now are learning from many sources how important the early years of a child's life are. One study brings added emphasis to this fact.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York found the following:

_ Brain development before age 1 is more rapid and extensive than previously realized.

_ Brain development is much more vulnerable to environmental influence than suspected.

_ The influence of early environment on brain development is long-lasting.

_ Environment affects the number of brain cells, connections among them and the way connections are wired.

_ Early stress has a negative impact on brain function.

Each of these facts stresses the need to be sure that each child has a good start in life. Opportunities for learning need to begin right away because a baby is ready and needs to be stimulated to keep his capacity for maximum intellectual growth. In reality, if he doesn't use it, he loses it. The study also found that stress has a huge negative impact on the child.

Babies are born with billions of brain cells. During the first months of life, connections between these cells are constantly multiplying. Cells and the connections between cells that are not being used quit working. For this reason, the baby needs to have a chance to be stimulated from his very earliest months. Stimulating the child doesn't mean teaching the child. But it does mean taking time with him, reading to him, putting him on your lap and talking to him.

It means spending time ... "not just quality time but also quantity time."The evidence continues to accumulate. You are your child's most important teacher. What you do today does affect how your child will do tomorrow.

What makes a gifted child?

The battle between nature and nurture – at least in terms of how they affect intelligence – is far from over.

An Australian study, which was published in the journal PLoS Medicine earlier this month, found that children born to older men did worse on intelligence and cognitive tests from infancy to seven years of age when compared to children of younger fathers.

Whether the legacy of nature outweighs the latter-day efforts of nurture or the other way round, Dr Joanne Staunton, a cognitive psychologist from the Thomson Paediatric Clinic, identified five things parents can do to help develop their child's intelligence.

Teach your child to approach things in a systematic, or step by step, manner.

Encourage your child to group similar items together so he can learn to discuss and explain their similarities and differences.

Teach your child to follow instructions.

Show your child how to complete patterns.

Develop your child's language skills by reading to him and asking him questions.

A person's intelligence is most commonly measured by an IQ, or intelligence quotient, test.

Average scores for children range between 80 and 119.

Those scoring between 90 and 109 form roughly 50 per cent of the population while children who obtain a test score of more than 130 are described as "of very superior intelligence" and make up the top 2 per cent of the population.

The concept of a gifted child was mooted by Stanford University's Lewis Terman, who developed one of the first tests to measure intelligence, in the early part of the 20th century.

However, paediatricians Mind Your Body spoke to do not advocate putting children through IQ tests unless required.

Dr Chong Shang Chee, an associate consultant in the division of paediatric neurology, developmental and behavioural paediatrics at the University Children's Medical Institute in National University Hospital, said: "IQ is not the best measure or predictor for everyone or for success."

IQ tests measure a child's verbal comprehension, reasoning, working memory and information processing speed.

Dr Staunton said that parents should take their child for an IQ test only if they suspect he or she has learning difficulties, high intelligence or low intelligence.

She said: "At the moment, the IQ test is viewed as the best measure of intelligence although there are many who say that intelligence tests do not fully measure intelligence.

"All IQ test results need to be viewed with caution as they do have a margin error in the score and need to be interpreted in relation to your child and not as an isolated score."

This article was first published in Mind Your Body, The Straits Times

Intelligence: Nature Vs Nurture

A person's learning and ability derives from a combination of genetics and environment. Nature may include some form of cognitive inherits from parents, and nurture includes the process of inferential and experiential learning that registers in the brain.

There are many components to intelligence. Memory, comparative behaviour, planning behaviour, classification, choice of inputs and outputs, language etc.

One important element is the use of time, not only "quality" but quantity time. Intelligence involves elements of knowing what is right or neccessary, but without proper guidance or mentoring, this intelligence is applied " selectively" in the face of benefits and threats. Thus, it is important to guide the children in coupling intelligence with values and applications for a healthy individuals, and not intelligence as a unit only.