Crucial developmental years

Crucial developmental years

Infancy is a crucial stage in human development. But is overstimulating just as harsh as under-stimulating a child? To understand one must first understand the changes occurring in brain development during infancy.

During development inside the mother's womb, the embryo produces trillions of neurons. According to Doctor Arnold B. Scheibel, at least 50,000 brain cells are produced every second of the embryo's intrauterine life. After birth, the infant's brain mass will weigh approximately 25% of its adult brain. By the time the child is three years old, the brain mass will have tripled. Though the brain does lose millions of cells a day, as a child a great deal of 'pruning' happens. This simply means that the synapses and pathways that are not needed will wither away whilst the ones in service remain and produce stronger connections. Though genetics plays a role in the brain's development, a major contribution falls largely on environmental factors as well. A baby's early brain development is influenced by the interaction and experience with the external world. Though it is not sure what crying directly influences in the child's learning it is a the first way a child learns to change the external world.

At birth, a newborn's sense of touch is well developed since it is the first sense to develop prenatally. The child is most sensible to touch in the areas surrounding the mouth, palms, and the soles of the feet. This is why kangaroo care is important during hospital care of premature infants. The child is able to register the slightest pressure and distinguish. There is a connection between mother and child skin to skin contact that send signals of nourishment to the infants brain supporting a health...

... middle of paper ...

...ld's playtime is important for it is the building blocks for social interaction, personality, language, development, identity development. If a child is overstimulated, the child will lack in coping with failures, social interaction, personality and identity development. How come? Most children that are overstimulated stress the mind and repression takes hold. Most of the times parents that tend to overstimulate tend to treat their infants as adults causing the infant to be deprived of Erickson's second stage of development in which sense of autonomy must be reached and are stalled into shame and doubt. This causes serious problems in their later life. This can be seen with those rare cases when a – what seemed – 'perfect child' bursts out into becoming a social psychopath. I, like Dr. Steinberg , believe: as all the ages to their age so must a child be a child.