From the Bernard van Leer Foundation

Banking on baby's brain

By Lisa Jordan, Executive Director, 16 May 2012
Investing in young children is not rocket science. It’s actually neuroscience, with a little bit of molecular biology and genomics thrown in for good measure.
There is a revolution occurring today in neuroscience. What we are learning about children’s development is nothing short of a new paradigm. Everything you have always wanted to know about brain development and early childhood has been brought together in the latest Early Childhood in Focus #7.
Brain research is not telling us what to do with our kids. It is helping us understand why we do certain things with our babies and toddlers and what impact it has on their development. For example, baby talk, also known as ‘’motherese” or “parentese”. From brain research we now know that baby talk helps to produce 900 neural connections a second. As the new edition of ECiF tells us, as an adult plays with the child, “areas of the child’s brain become progressively specialised for recognizing different aspects of the social world.”
Neuroscience is helping us understand the process that happens internally when babies are given adequate rest and good nutrition, and answering important social questions that puzzle parents. For example, we know from neuroscience that screens will never be able to stimulate the same neural activity in a baby as a human face. What a child learns on the iPad is totally different from what he or she picks up from being read to.
Neuroscience has also helped to quell nature vs nurture debates – these issues are really no longer relevant. We know today that children develop through the interaction of nature and nurture, one is not more important than the other and they cannot be divorced. It’s the combination that matters.
Similarly the risk factors that impede a child’s development are all the same, whether that child is born in Uganda, Romania or Kansas. Hunger and neglect are two of the biggest risk factors for impairing brain development. But here is a third. Violence. Violence is toxic to a kid’s brain. And unfortunately, because violence impacts the architecture of the brain, the more violence and stress a kid experiences in her first six years, the more likely it is that her learning capacity will be seriously impaired.
In the first seven years the brain grows more than at any other time in life. Neuroscience is proving what Oscar van Leer suspected all those many years ago -- interventions, if designed and timed right, can not only save generations of children but can allow an entire society to benefit from the productive capacities of a far greater pool of its citizens.
New science points to the importance of investing in young children. Really, as we say in the States, ‘’it’s a no brainer.”
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During University holiday time our older sponsored students come and visit at Kasensa and spend much one to one time with the infants - reading, singing, playing, hugging and visiting the families. 
The brain needs to be stimulated and families need to be continually visited and encouraged so that baby can be reunited with family as soon as possible.

We are grateful for our UNZA student's time spent with the babies!