Parents' Powerful Impact on Young Children’s Brains

All experiences and interactions shape the brain through neuroplastic remodeling over one’s entire lifespan. These learning processes build the brain’s knowledge and self-control foundations via experiences.

What’s Happening in Children's Young Brains?

An outdated and long-held misconception contended that brain growth stops at birth. However, neuroimaging has allowed us to look at the workings of the brain in action. We now know that lifelong growth of the supporting and connecting cells promoting the communication between neurons is responsible for the rapid increases in cognition and social-emotional skill sets, especially during the early years.

The brain’s most rapid growth occurs during gestation, while an intense second period of accelerated growth occurs between ages 2 and 7. What makes the brain development during this time of their lives so exciting is the enhanced responsiveness with which their brains construct new connections between neurons.

In the first year or two after birth, most of the brain’s development and activity is for automatic, involuntary, reactive behaviors to fulfill children’s basic needs. However, it is during the brain's toddler years when their brains promote structural changes that accelerate understanding, cognitive, social, and emotional skills.

Neuroplasticity is one of the most exciting areas of research in the neuroscience of learning and the brain. Research reveals evidence that all brains have the potential to become better and all students smarter. Input, experience, sensory opportunities, and practice result in enhanced efficiency of information processing by boosting neuron-to-neuron communication, with increased growth of dendrites, axonal myelin, and synapses.

Practice Makes Permanent

Memory can be thought of as the construction, expansion, and strengthening of neural networks in response to activation. Let’s now consider what factors influence the construction of durable memory networks. Each time a network holding a memory is activated—such as the meaning of a word or skills for kicking a ball—the neuroplastic response is stimulated, strengthening the networks of connections among the neurons, each holding pieces of the memory. It is the mental manipulation of learning (practice, rehearsal, using information in new ways) that shapes these networks to grow stronger, faster, and more durable.

During their early years, children learn especially quickly through experience. A child’s natural curiosity drives investigation and those experiences are more likely to be remembered when carefully observed and revisited, particularly when experienced through multiple senses.

Self-management and other executive functions highly correlate to early school success and later success in life. A study of 100 children ages 2 to 5 evaluated their performance on a variety of tasks that rely on executive functions in relation to academic and social school readiness. The findings indicated that the ability to delay gratification was a manifestation of developing social-emotional skills, such as self-regulation.

Attention Focus and Goal-Directed Behaviors

These executive functions have numerous aspects that can be strengthened when you provide opportunities for motivated attention focus and how to plan for achieving specific goals. For example, distraction inhibition and sustained focus are built into games like Follow the Leader; Red Light, Green Light; and Simon Says.

Other opportunities to help children build their delay of gratification or other impulse controls may simply consist of not wresting control away from children. Look for ways to help them recognize the consequences of taking a toy away from a friend or not waiting their turn by recalling how they felt when they were the target of others’ impulsive behaviors. Identifying the benefits of successfully delaying immediate gratification to achieve a goal (for example, by taking the time to look into what they need to take to the park or a friend’s house instead of racing out the door will have a similar impact. These skills are what children need to persevere when facing the challenges and setbacks accompanying the processes of developing literacy, building successful collaboration skills, and achieving emotional self-management.

During their preschool ages, help children recognize both their self-efficacy and goal-building strategies. Help them recognize their progress and acknowledge their sustained efforts, rather than just the end products. When children are prompted to predict what they will need to do next or for an upcoming situation—for example, what type of voice they will use when they get to the library or what supplies they’ll need to keep a new goldfish healthy—they activate goal planning.

Neuroscience Essential Reads

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The Illusion of “Now”

Building skills to take on challenges, overcome obstacles, and persevere after mistakes is essential to developing the executive functions of sustained attention focus and goal-directed behaviors. As you help your children wire in these control systems, with opportunities to activate these skills, you’ll increase their lifelong abilities to tolerate frustration, persevere through setbacks, and take on greater challenges.

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It takes offering guided experiences over time and providing frequent opportunities for children to stimulate their neural network control systems, for emotional self-awareness and self-management. These repeated practices build and facilitate their neuroplasticity. With those strong, durable, easily retrievable neural networks, your children will have efficient access to these valuable skills whenever they are needed.