Helping parents ‘do better’
New Directions Institute for Infant Brain Development
Photo courtesy of New Directions Institute
Most parents do the very best they can. They remember how they were raised, they use the techniques their parents used, they “do the best they can with what they know.” Now, thanks to science and brain imaging that allow us to look into children’s brains, we know better. New Directions Institute for Infant Brain Development (NDI) is devoted to using that information to help parents do better.
NDI was founded nearly 10 years ago by Drs. Jill Stamm and Janet Johnson while they were students at Arizona State University, earning their doctorates in learning processes for typical, normal children. They got to be fast friends as they worked together on their research and shared their common experiences, each raising a multiply handicapped child and a typical child. “We were researching how children learn,” said Stamm, “and we knew from experience the difficulty of raising a special-needs child, and how much easier it was for a typical child to learn.” Healthy, normal development was fascinating to them both.
At the same time, the late 1990s brought the advent of new technologies in PET scans and MRIs, which made it possible for neuroscientists to look inside the brain while it was at work and actually see how the brain processed information. Some of the earliest work was generated from brain scans of children in Romanian orphanages who had been deprived of human interaction, one-to-one attention and social interaction for the first months and years of their lives. Researchers discovered that lack of stimulation affects the architecture of the brain; its fundamental wiring does not develop appropriately.
“Once scientists discovered the ramifications of neglect on different systems in the brain, they began to understand how rapidly the structures are formed, and how vulnerable the brain is to what is going on in the child’s environment,” says Stamm.
Stamm and Johnson became “crazy passionate” about sharing what they were learning with people; how simple things can make a huge difference in social and emotional growth for children, and that a lack of meaningful human interaction for newborns and babies could be detrimental and long lasting. “We literally sat at my kitchen table and said, ‘Somebody needs to do something with this information,’” Stamm remembers. “‘Oh, no! It’s us.’ Then we got busy.
“Early care is closely related to the ability to learn and to effective memory function,” adds Stamm. “Consistent, loving, predictable environments allow cognitive energy [or] brain energy of a child to remember rather than just experience. The ability to secure information in your memory bank takes energy. Children who are secure develop better memory systems.”
Parents looking for the “quick fix” to maximize brain development for their child may rush out to buy the latest video or gizmo or computer game. The reality is brain development is intimately tied to a child’s relationships with his parents and caregivers in the first three years, when the bulk of the brain is “wiring up.” Three concepts, done purposefully, go a long way to wire the brain effectively: attention, bonding and communication. A child’s feeling that somebody loves her, cares about her, attends to her when she cries, is the beginning of a lifelong ability to trust others and to feel attached to another human being. Children need at least one, predictable and loving caregiver that they can count on to “be there.” When children can count on that relationship, they free up cognitive energy to be better able to learn. Communication, the third element of the ABCs of early brain development, is facilitated by books and simple games that help children learn language. “Pay attention, bond and communicate with your children every single day,” says Stamm. “Turn off your cell phone, take your baby out of his carrier, and talk to him. When parents know the importance of this information to the development of their child’s brain, they do change.”