Early childhood is important for human development

December 31, 2009 12:30 PM

Early childhood is important for human development, and adult attention to the needs of children has lead to improvements in children's health and education. As a scientist, I spend a lot of time studying how and what children are learning as they interact with their parents and others.

It is likely that what humans enter the world with is a general ability to learn. We have an amazing ability to be able to pick up on various things that are happening in the environment and remember them and group them together. As a result of these very, very powerful abilities to learn, what we're able to do is master lots of different complex behaviors--reading emotions, understanding basic physics, decoding language. If human infants are indeed born with highly effective learning abilities, when we're interacting with our children we are teaching them.

The big picture is that children are very active learners. Learning does not mean just numbers and letters. It also means learning about relationships. We have to learn how to communicate to others how we feel, how to read the signals that others are sending to us ...

As a parent, what I try to do is to use situations as moments to help children master social communication, love, understanding, empathy because these are not things we are born with, they are skills that emerge with practice.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-seth-pollak/pbs-this-emotional-life-a_b_408330.html

Babies learn through social interaction with people, at home and in playgroups. Talk to your baby more. Play with your baby. Arrange your baby to join a playgroup during weekdays when you are away at work. Your baby will flourish with rich language stimulation and exposure. Find out more at the Saturday Parenting Seminar. Tel: 2866 2028.