There are quite a few ways of ensuring proper fetal brain activity and growth. Your doctor should tell you the main things to focus on while pregnant, but just as a reminder, I will list them here as well.
1. First and foremost, avoid smoking, alcohol, caffeine, and drugs!!! This should be a no-brainer, but it still boggles my mind when I see a pregnant woman smoking a cigarette! These things are known to impair neurological development, so give them all up cold-turkey in order to give your baby the best chance at a bright future. This should actually be done even before conception to ensure that none of those harmful things get anywhere near your baby!
2. Gain weight! In order for your baby to grow adequately, it is recommended women gain between 25-40 pounds. Starting after your first trimester, you should consume an extra 300 calories per day, and make sure to include about 10-12 more grams of protein than you would usually eat. Too much weight gain can lead to a large baby, making it difficult when it comes time to deliver. However, not gaining enough weight can lead to the baby having a smaller head and brain.
3. Eat a well-balanced diet. Take a multivitamin or prenatal pill, depending on what your doctor recommends. These will ensure your baby is getting the nutrients it needs for neurological development. If taking a multivitamin, clear it with your doctor and make sure it has enough iron and b vitamins for you and your baby. You can start taking these vitamins even before you get pregnant as they help reduce the risk of neuronatal diseases.
4. Practice good hygiene. This is important to avoid viral infections. Wash your hands frequently, avoid sharing food and drinks with others (including loved ones) and report any symptoms to your doctor immediately. Do not forget to speak up while visiting your doctor and ask them ANY questions on your mind.
5. Exercise regularly. It will help ease the stress level of yourself as well as your baby, and should help to ensure a smooth delivery.
Now that we have the basics down, we can get into the fun stuff! What can be done to promote brain activity?
It has been reported that by the 26th week of gestation, the body of the fetus will react to vibration and loud sounds. This is due to the maturing of the brainstem. As the brainstem continues to mature, it becomes more and more responsive to external sounds. By 36 weeks, the brainstem responds to external noises and even the sound of the mother’s voice with reflexive movements, head turning, and an accelerated fetal heart rate. Through repetitive auditory stimulation, neural networks are molded. These pathways will then respond to familiar sounds, such as its mother’s voice or certain melodies. So sing, play music, and read to your baby throughout the last trimester and it will get those neural circuits in your baby’s young brain working!
Another idea is to play ethnic music during your pregnancy as well as throughout your young child’s life. Any music in a foreign language will work. Neural tissue required to learn and understand a new language will develop automatically from repetitive exposure to the language. This will not affect the way they learn their native language, it will just help wire the brain in a way that makes it easier for them to accept and learn new languages later on in life. So when it comes time for that Spanish or French class, your child’s brain will already have the connections it needs in order to take on a foreign language!
“Music is the universal language of mankind.”
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Beyond Basics
What if, instead of just teaching the basics, we decided to make it a point that we teach our child even more. When I say “beyond the basics” I simply mean that I am not talking about learning the alphabet, counting to ten, or learning to color inside the lines. Why is it that we stop there? I believe our young children should also learn about life basics such as kindness, self-esteem, and honesty. The first few years of a child’s life are so critical and important, yet we as adults are only taught to focus on the basic things in life, so they are able to function in a kindergarten class. I believe we should do more.
The human brain can handle more than we give it credit for. A child’s brain is no less high-functioning than an adult’s brain. It is actually doing a lot more work than an adult’s brain does. Your child’s brain is basically hard-wired by the time they reach the age of six. That means you only have six years to create and mold your child into the type of adult you would be proud to have raised.
My goal in creating this blog is to gather tons of information on a wide variety of subjects, characteristics, and abilities I believe are extremely important for a person to acquire, and present them to the reader in a way that they will be able to both access and comprehend in an easy manner. That is not to say that I am trying to dumb it down for the reader, it is, however, that I have tried to simplify this process of teaching your child as much as possible, in the short amount of time there is before the child’s brain has become hardwired.
Obviously, learning is something humans are able to do for their entire life, and I am not saying that after age six there is no hope of changing someone. However it is becoming well known that the fine-tuning of a child’s brain happens between ages three and six. By the time they are six years old, a child's brain has reached almost 95% of its capacity and is four times the size it was at birth. These are the critical years, during which an incredible amount of wiring takes place in the parts of the brain involved with focusing attention, organizing actions, learning new ideas, and planning activities.
I understand that as a parent, you probably don’t have much extra time to learn innovative ways of teaching your child new ideas. But that is the beauty of this blog. Every post will have a new idea of how to get the point across in a simple, but effective manner. Most of the ways of learning will be able to take place while you are doing your day to day routines.
I encourage anyone with children, or anyone involved in a young child’s life, to follow my blog and read about different ways of educating and enlightening your child so they are able to expand their minds. Come back often to discover the many ways you are able to teach your wonderchild beyond the basics.
The human brain can handle more than we give it credit for. A child’s brain is no less high-functioning than an adult’s brain. It is actually doing a lot more work than an adult’s brain does. Your child’s brain is basically hard-wired by the time they reach the age of six. That means you only have six years to create and mold your child into the type of adult you would be proud to have raised.
My goal in creating this blog is to gather tons of information on a wide variety of subjects, characteristics, and abilities I believe are extremely important for a person to acquire, and present them to the reader in a way that they will be able to both access and comprehend in an easy manner. That is not to say that I am trying to dumb it down for the reader, it is, however, that I have tried to simplify this process of teaching your child as much as possible, in the short amount of time there is before the child’s brain has become hardwired.
Obviously, learning is something humans are able to do for their entire life, and I am not saying that after age six there is no hope of changing someone. However it is becoming well known that the fine-tuning of a child’s brain happens between ages three and six. By the time they are six years old, a child's brain has reached almost 95% of its capacity and is four times the size it was at birth. These are the critical years, during which an incredible amount of wiring takes place in the parts of the brain involved with focusing attention, organizing actions, learning new ideas, and planning activities.
I understand that as a parent, you probably don’t have much extra time to learn innovative ways of teaching your child new ideas. But that is the beauty of this blog. Every post will have a new idea of how to get the point across in a simple, but effective manner. Most of the ways of learning will be able to take place while you are doing your day to day routines.
I encourage anyone with children, or anyone involved in a young child’s life, to follow my blog and read about different ways of educating and enlightening your child so they are able to expand their minds. Come back often to discover the many ways you are able to teach your wonderchild beyond the basics.
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