Madeleine Fitzpatrick asked:


Your baby is born with most of the brain cells she will ever have, but during her first 12 months in the world, her brain will become increasingly complex. By the time she reaches the age of two, her brain will already be 75 percent of its adult weight. By the age of three, it will have reached 90 percent of its adult weight.

Almost 50 percent of the brain cells your baby is born with will wither and die during the first few years of life. This process, known as neural pruning, organizes the brain and makes it more efficient. The brain learns through experience. Events in your baby’s life trigger electrical impulses to the brain, establishing neural pathways. The more a pathway is used, the more established it becomes, making it less susceptible to pruning. Just like a muscle, the brain works on the principle of “use it or lose it.”

How your baby’s brain develops

Humans are the only animals whose brains triple in size during the first two years of life. If it were any larger at birth, a baby’s head would not fit through its mother’s pelvis. Any smaller, and the baby’s survival would be in jeopardy. So how does the brain grow to 75 percent of its adult size by the age of two, and 90 percent by the age of three?

* When your baby is born his brain weighs about 350 g (12 oz); by his first birthday it weighs 1 kg (2.2 lb).

* At birth, the brain already has some 200 billion neurons (nerve cells) – about the same number as it will have in adulthood.

* Each neuron responds to stimulation by growing a network of dendrites (branches) and synapses (connections) between itself and its neighbors.

* Each neuron ends up with dendrites leading to an average of 15,000 synapses.

* Dendrite formation becomes more complex over time, with third- and fourth-tier branches appearing by 6 months of age.

* The more stimulation the brain receives, the more sophisticated its dendritic networks become.

* The frontal lobe (the part of the brain that deals with emotions) becomes highly metabolically active from 6 months of age. By 18 months the neural foundations of your baby’s emotional intelligence are laid.

* Between 2 and 4 months of age, the number of synapses in your baby’s visual cortex increases tenfold to 20,000 per neuron.

* By 12 months of age, neurons that distinguish native language have found their permanent position in the brain.

* At 18 months the language center of the brain experiences a massive synaptic spurt, producing an explosion in grammar.

What does this mean for your baby?

During the first eight years of life, and in particular the first three, there are a number of critical windows for acquiring specific types of intelligence. Once these windows have closed, learning is much more difficult, if not impossible. Babies are particularly open to learning during their first year, as outside of the brainstem (which controls critical life-sustaining processes), very few neural pathways have been formed.

Your baby’s emotions

The part of the brain responsible for processing emotions is one of the first to develop after birth. For the first few weeks, your baby’s emotional state will be fairly black-and-white – she’ll either be happy or unhappy. By 3 months, experience will have made her emotions more nuanced. As the frontal lobe of her brain grows from 6 months, your baby will begin to show a variety of emotional and social responses.

* Expression: Your baby will begin to make sense of his feelings in relation to his surroundings. Instead of simply crying, he may find another way to get your attention and so communicate his feelings.

* Inhibition: Your baby will start to be able to think twice about her behavior. For example, she may come to the realization that there is no point in crying every time you put her down to sleep.

* Stranger anxiety: Towards the end of the first year your baby may begin to show a fear of strangers. As the frontal lobe of the brain continues to develop, your baby’s experiences through the anxiety stage influence his social abilities in later life, helping to determine whether he is a shy or outgoing person. Frequent and positive social interactions cause synapses to fire in ways that help to hardwire the brain’s emotional and social intelligence.

Your baby’s senses

During the first 12 months, your baby grows from being aware only of herself, to being able to appreciate and enjoy her surroundings. His five senses also develop rapidly.

* Hearing: At birth your baby will recognize his mother’s voice – and possibly his father’s. He will be startled by loud noises. By 3 months he’ll respond to familiar voices even if he can’t see the person speaking. By 6 months he’ll recognize the vowel sounds, tone, pitch and lilt of his native language.

* Sight: At birth your baby can focus on objects 15-20 cm (6-8 in) away. At this age, the retina’s rods (cells responsible for detecting black and white) are more developed than its cones (cells responsible for detecting color). Between 2 and 4 months your baby’s vision improves a great deal, enabling her to follow moving objects and look towards sounds. She can also distinguish color, as her retinal cones have been activated. By 5 months she can judge how far away things are. At 8 months the number of synapses in the visual cortex of her brain peaks.

* Taste: Your baby can tell many different flavors from the moment he is born, but he will only be interested in sweet and umami tastes initially, which help to relax him, as they are the component tastes of breast milk. Sour tastes will cause your newborn baby to purse his lips, while bitter tastes will upset him. Although he can taste salt, he neither likes nor dislikes it, and will not show a reaction.

* Smell: Your newborn can discriminate between many different smells: infants as young as 6 days old have been shown to recognize their mother’s breast odor. However, your baby cannot tell if an odor is good or bad, even through the first year of life. This ability does not develop until three years of age.

* Touch: Your baby’s sense of touch develops from the top down, with the strongest sense of touch in her mouth – one of the reasons that babies explore new objects by putting them in their mouth. Your newborn can already distinguish different shapes and textures using her tongue. When using her hands however, it is not until 10 weeks that she can identify shapes, and 6 months that she can distinguish texture.

Your baby’s language skills

Language acquisition is an innate skill – babies’ brains are programmed to learn language. The critical window for speech development is from birth to age three. Here are some milestones to look out for:

* By his first birthday your baby can produce most of the vowel sounds of English, and about half of the consonants.

* Between 12 and 18 months, your baby slowly accrues new vocabulary items.

* At around 18 months, your baby’s vocabulary hits a critical mass and she acquires one new word every day or two.

* By the time he’s six, your baby understands around 13,000 words.

If intelligence is defined as the ability to learn, then babies are born geniuses. Babies’ brains are so plastic (adaptable) that learning is effortless for them. By providing positive mental stimulation to your baby, you can help strengthen the neural pathways that lay the foundation for his cognitive, emotional and social intelligence into adolescence and even adulthood.



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Flor Ayag asked:


WHY BE FRIENDLY, AND WITH WHOM? HOW CAN YOU AVOID DANGEROUS FRIENDSHIPS?

DESPITE the scientific changes that have come over the world in recent years, people still need people. For most persons this need is not satisfied by mere acquaintances, but goes much deeper than that. It reaches out for a friend who can be trusted with one’s most precious thoughts. Its want is for a confidant who is responsible, trustworthy and who will respond when one is in need.

The ideal situation is when most of one’s emotional needs are satisfied within a Christian family relationship. Children who have devoted parents and loving brothers and sisters have good reason to be quite content. Sustained by this warmth and association, a child can grow up happy and well balanced without always having to look elsewhere to satisfy his emotional needs.

However, even when friendship in the home is not lacking, children may feel the urge to embark on new friendships. The stimulation provided by other children near their age can be beneficial. On the other hand, lack of friendship inside and outside the family relationship causes many youngsters to become lonely. This is a common problem among teen-agers.

Parents who are aware of this try to satisfy their children’s growing need for friendship. One way they can do this is by developing a closer and more confidential relationship with them. Teen-agers especially find that life takes on a happier tone when parents give them a chance to express their views, and help them to work out their doubts and uncertainties. In frank discussions the children can be fortified with encouragement and counsel.

There are also times when the friendship of another youth can provide the needed encouragement. Wrote a middle-aged man of his more youthful days: “As a teen-ager I was often moody, for reasons I no longer recall. During one particularly bad week when I was at my lowest ebb, thinking myself ugly, misunderstood and unlikable, the phone rang. A high-school lad . . . was on the line. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked gently when he heard my voice. ‘You sound as if you didn’t have a friend in the world—I’m not dead yet!’ A glib, graceful phrase, perhaps—but in twenty-five years I have not forgotten it, how I sat up straighter, smiled and felt alive again that night.”

How to Become a Friend

Some people seem to have a talent for making friends. Others need to learn the art of friendship, and they do. Still others are neither gifted in friendship nor quick to learn its ways. They need help. Whatever the case may be, to be a friend one has to care about people, what they think, how they feel and why they suffer. One must be sympathetically interested in things people do. One must accept their faults as well as their virtues. One must be willing to make sacrifices and help others to achieve their goals.

The American poet and essayist Ralph W. Emerson once said: “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” Help someone, if you want a friend. That should be easy, because there are so many people today who need help. Where there is work to be done, volunteer to do it. Working brings people together.

Invite people to your home for a meal or simply to share conversation with you over a cup of tea or coffee. Simply say, “How about coming to our place Saturday night?” Even if it is not convenient for them to come this time, at least they will know that you would like to know them better.

Perhaps the very beginning of a friendship is the willingness to say “hello” first. You must show that you like people. If you greet them with a smile and with a cheerful salutation, it may surprise you what response you will get.

What Is Needed to Keep Up Friendship

Friendship can be likened to a plant that has to be cultivated. It must be watered and tended if it is to produce sweet and wholesome fruit.

Maintaining a friendship is not automatic. It takes planning. On our weekly list of things to be done, we might well assign deeds of friendship. We could write down the names of those we would like to visit or telephone or drop a note to, or send a gift. How easy it is to neglect friends just because they are friends. Many who know the art of friendship plan to have dinner once a week or once a month with certain friends.

An aid to preserving friendships is doing things together. One friend taught another how to cook. After that, the delights of cooking enriched their conversations and their lives. Others have encouraged their friends to go places with them and to do things together, such as visiting museums, taking walks through parks or having picnics together.

Distance may prevent friends from getting together, but a warm letter can bridge the gap. A telephone call will remind them that you care. It may be possible to spend a vacation with an old friend and renew the friendship. Often reunions are most heartwarming.



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