Kids and neural pathways

“Ball: roll it to me,” I clearly state with adult inflection in my voice to my 16-month-old granddaughter as we sit on freshly mowed grass, facing each other in my backyard. Fiona looks at my lips as I say the words, giggles then pushes the ball back to me. Previously unable to repeat my words, she exhibits understanding by following my direction.

The ball quickly returns to me with an awkward two-handed push and a four-tooth smile from a little girl who proudly utters for her first time, “ball.” As a proud gramps, I clap my hands and repeat, pushing the ball toward my granddaughter: “ball.” We continue this exercise for 20 minutes, with me giggling each time she says ball and her clapping each time I receive the ball, quickly pushing the blue piece of soft blue plastic back to her to hear her utter those four letters again; b-a-l-l. This could possibly be the best day of my life!

Three hours latter my house is quiet; my granddaughter, home with her parents preparing for bed, my wife, upstairs preparing for tomorrow’s day at school and me in my writing room, writing this column and wondering? How many children’s words are spoken but unnoticed? How many children are not allowed to explore his or her world with the guiding hand of a caring adult and how many parents are uninvolved in their child’s growth?

Having a baby is simple, raising a child is complex. Understanding that a child learns most of the language she uses in her life between the ages of 2 to 7 is an important fact lost on most parents. Baby-talking a 3-year-old may result in a 10-year-old with speech issues.

Consistently using simple, one-word or one-sentence commands with small children may result in a child who struggles to solve multistep problems as an adult. Offering a small kid multistep directions allows the child to form neural connections that will last a lifetime. Kids are created to learn and challenging a child to perform difficult tasks at a young age is beneficial in the maturation of the child’s brain.

A child creates his or her interbrain connections at a very young age and the adult in each child’s life has the power to create strong neural pathways through rich speech interactions and enriched environmental experiences. Adults can also permanently damage a child and have important neural paths pruned to die away through inactivity or apathy.

Knowing the importance of consistent discipline is also important. One might have a child who struggles while a parent shops in a grocery store. As the dad makes his way through the aisles of the store, the 3-year-old begins to fuss. “I want candy,” the child screams. The dad warns the child to be quiet, and the child declares more loudly, “I WANT CANDY!” Embarrassed and unsure what to do, the dad frustratingly caves and mutters, “If you’re quiet, you can have a piece of candy.”

Every child is constantly learning — from the day he is born, to the day he dies. In this case, the child learns that he must scream really loudly to gain what he wants so in the future, the child bypasses whimpers, fussing and begging and goes directly to screaming because he has learned, through experience, that screaming gets him what he wants, quickly.

Raising a child is enriching, rewarding, fun and cathartic. Raising a child can also be stressful, depressing, inconvenient and damaging. As a parent, one gets to decide what child one wishes to raise. Some make no decision while disregarding wisdom and advice and casually raises his or her children with no bearing or direction. More caring parents search for advice and wisdom and spend the time necessary to raise confident, kind, worldly and verbally sturdy children prepared to be successful in the world in which he or she lives.

Raising an emotionally healthy child is in the beginning more difficult but in the duration of the child’s life, rewarding. Future-thinking parents understand that frontloading the hard work makes life easier in future years. Being consistent, continually talking with our children and offering our kids worldly experiences outside of our homes enriches a child’s life. Doing this work in the first years of our child’s life makes the future years fun, exciting and rewarding. Neglecting this work early in a child’s life forces the parent, law enforcement or social services to complete this work as a child ages which is difficult if not impossible. Raising a child requires no license but does require thought, energy and knowledge.