In life, it's all about the first five years

The biological 'code' of success is built by the experience of a child's early years, and damage done during this time is very difficult to reverse
By Sam Cooper, The Province October 18, 2010

Dr. Clyde Hertzman, internationally respected early learning scientist, talks about what happens when in early brain development, what parents should understand, watch for, in interaction with children. in Vancouver, B. C., October 8, 2010.

The debate has raged for centuries: Is it nature or nurture that most influences the course of a human life? That age-old question has now been answered right here in B.C. — and actually shown to be irrelevant — according to Dr. Clyde Hertzman, director of the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) at the University of B.C.
“Early life experiences can actually change the way in which our genes express themselves,” Hertzman says. “So it’s no longer a question of nature or nurture — it’s a question of how nurture changes nature.”

HELP is one of the most diverse interdisciplinary research teams in the world — working on everything from decoding brain-cell growth in worms to encoding a worldwide charter of rights for young children. The team consistently breaks new ground by cross-pollinating pools of knowledge and creating new areas of study. The guiding mission is ultimately to improve society by striking at the negative root causes that hamper children’s development.

Hertzman’s team of 200 interdisciplinary researchers has taken a world leadership role in determining how early childhood experiences “get under the skin” and shape basic brain structures, sensory pathways and functions.

What they’ve found, Hertzman says, is that the biological “code” of success in life is built by all the sounds, sights, touches, thoughts and emotional interactions that children experience in their first few years.

The team’s stunning bottom-line conclusion is this: If children don’t get what they need during the crucial developmental “windows” before the age of five, they likely will never bounce back.

In an interview in his office at UBC, Hertzman is asked: Can it really be true that a life story is basically written before the age of five?

“There is always plasticity [of the brain]; humans aren’t ants,” Hertzman says. “But when things work out to begin with, it’s way easier for kids to grow and develop. It’s like leaky condos — if it isn’t built right from the beginning, it will be way harder and expensive to fix later on.”

From birth to the age of three in particular — the “densest time of development” — the primitive areas of the brain that allow us to interact well with others are growing and coming together, much like the architectural foundation of a building, Hertzman says.

During this time, children are reading the facial expressions of adults and forming visual connections with the deep emotional centres of the brain. That means parents basically have an 18-month window to gaze at, hold and cuddle children to help them build the right structures, Hertzman says.

Those who are deprived of loving adult faces up close will often be very independent by the age of two or three. “It becomes the neurological base of not being able to connect to others,” Hertzman says.

At the same time, stress-response pathways are forming. By the age of three, children who’ve seen too many angry or depressed looks on adult faces, will have actually experienced a lifelong perception shift in the way they perceive emotions in other human faces, Hertzman says.

The change takes place in the prefrontal cortex, influencing how the child sees the world. They develop a different set of biological connections and emotional ways of coping, and even think differently.

“Kids who grow up in calmer environments will have much more ability to focus on tasks later on,” Hertzman says. “But kids who see chaos plus violence, will be much more vigilant, looking around to see where the next blow will come from. They adapt to their environment, but they don’t adapt for success in school.”

And the importance of reading a bedtime story to a child can’t be exaggerated, because a child’s grasp of language, and success in school, is directly related to the amount and quality of words heard in early life, Hertzman says.

“The more rich and varied language kids hear, the more language they will understand,” Hertzman says.

It’s not just the words learned during the bedtime story, but the emotional bonding and love the adult conveys that make the experience such a powerful brain-booster, he adds.

Besides entertaining a child, parents can switch things up by asking what happens next in an oft-repeated story, Hertzman says. Another enrichment tip is to make funny changes and mistakes in reading a story, which some children will love to correct,demonstrating their knowledge.

The deadline for building early language foundations stretches into the primary years, but developmental differences between those getting good words from their parents compared with those deprived of the experience start showing up as early as 20 to 24 months, Hertzman says.

The children who show up for school with a language deficit will struggle to keep up and fit in, Hertzman says. The concern is to close the gap or face a generation of educational and life-skill failures. Another important early intervention involves teaching good social skills such as sharing and empathy. The window there is from age three to five, Hertzman says.

“All of the quality environments in early life are play based,” Hertzman says. “Whether it’s peer-group play or individual play, there are opportunities to develop sensory pathways, vision, hearing.”

Hertzman has a warning for parents: Guard against trying to create the perfect environment for child development in a way that causes you stress, because that can breed stress in children, which is precisely the opposite thing needed in a young, forming brain.

Each child expresses a unique temperament and learning sensibility very early, so trying to cram them into the same “developmental experience” is a mistake, Hertzman says.

“You should not be upset if a child is slow in hitting developmental milestones, or putting extra pressure for development on the kid,” he says. “It’s just as good if one child wants to sit in the corner and look at picture books, and another child wants to put a cardboard box on their head, yell into it and play with the sounds. Those are both aptitudes.”

http://www.theprovince.com/life/life+about+first+five+years/3688534/story.html