What are the characteristics of brain development in infants and young children?

Every baby is the focus of protection for the whole family. Parents hope that their babies will grow up healthy and have a smart mind. In order to make their babies smarter, parents will carry out early education from an early age. In addition, they will pay special attention to the baby's nutrition. Parents should be reminded to spend more time to understand some characteristics of the baby's development. The brain development in different time periods will have different characteristics.

Characteristics of infant brain development:

The brain of a young child does not develop at a uniform rate. The metabolism is slow from 0 to 3 months. The baby retains some reflex movements and begins to develop hand-eye coordinated grasping movements. Starting from 5 to 6 months, the metabolism speeds up, the baby will recognize people, be able to distinguish between strangers and acquaintances, and begin to recognize his own toys and supplies. After that, the baby's brain development accelerates. He will use gestures to express language, recognize picture cards, understand stories, and begin to express his wishes with sound. From 2 to 4 years old, brain metabolism is basically stable, and children begin to have preliminary visual thinking.

After the age of 4, brain metabolism begins to slow down and excess neural connections die again. Because when children are 2 to 3 years old, they absorb a large amount of information from the outside world like a sponge, and it is necessary to filter out the useful parts in order to concentrate on developing their advantages. During the first four years when the brain develops fastest, children should be given as much information and opportunities as possible. The traces of these experiences left in the brain will resonate with new information at any time. The more resonance there is, the greater the interest generated, which gradually becomes its advantage. If the experience reserves left in the brain are too small, various information will be difficult to resonate with, and children will not be interested in many things and will become bored with learning. Therefore, when children are 2 to 3 years old, the richer their learning environment is and the more opportunities they get to practice, the more beneficial it is for developing their potential.

Young children have limited attention span, so new and unique toys and ways of playing are needed to attract their attention and interest. For children who get bored easily, parents should often change the way they play to attract their attention and cultivate their interest. Children are very plastic. Before the age of 5, a child whose left brain language center is damaged can still speak because other parts can compensate. Children with varying degrees of disabilities can fully or partially restore normal functions through exercise. Before a child is 12 years old, many interests can be cultivated through games, and they can enter into professional training through games of interest.

The cerebral cortex is packed with neurons, forming wrinkled gray matter. Their processes and synapses form the white matter. The brain is divided into two hemispheres. The left brain is responsible for language, organized logical thinking, analysis and calculation, and is responsible for the sensation and movement of the right limbs. The right brain is responsible for music and art, recognizing graphics and spatial orientation, and is capable of geometric and figurative thinking. It can synthesize and intuitively view the overall situation, and is responsible for the sensation and movement of the left limbs. Infants and young children develop the right brain first, so babies like music, like to look at colorful things, and mainly use visual thinking.

The area where the left and right hemispheres connect to the temporal lobe is called the limbic lobe, which is the database of memory. Some of the nerve nuclei, such as the almond-shaped one called the amygdala, are emotional centers that are particularly developed in infancy and childhood, so they are most likely to feel the love of adults and are afraid of leaving their mothers. When a child is happy, his excitement spreads throughout the limbic lobe, so what the child learns when he is happy is easy to remember. Be full of love for your children, eliminate the interference of anxiety, and arrange some games that make your children happy. Let your children learn while playing, sing and remember, which will be the best effect.

The period from 0 to 3 years old is the critical period for infant learning, based on the order of maturation of the main parts of the brain and the period of myelination formation.