Your baby’s amazing brain
March 29, 2008 Leave a comment
Everything you do with your baby helps to develop their brain and helps them to learn. You are the most important first teacher for your child. Forming a loving, strong relationship with your baby helps their brain to develop.
How does my baby’s brain develop?
At birth, your baby’s heart, lungs and liver are fully developed. They can already breathe, see shapes and hear, they have a really strong suck, and they startle. The connections for these actions have already been made in their brain before birth.
Your baby’s brain, however, needs stimulation from the environment to form completely. As your baby grows and is stimulated, the connections between the cells (or neurons) in the brain continue to form. These connections form pathways in the brain that are the basis for all learning, thinking, feeling and knowing.
There are so many connections in your baby’s brain that, if an electrician had to solder all the connections between the neurons, it would take millions of years!
How can I help my baby’s brain to develop?
To develop properly, the pathways in your baby’s brain need to be covered and protected – this happens with the right diet. This can be either breast milk or correctly made-up formula. Both these foods contain the fat that is absolutely essential for the covering of the neurons – the myelin. The pathways or neurons must be formed properly and covered so that the messages in the brain go to the right places.