Happy nurtured toddlers, advance in leaps and bounds.
This confirms what, to most of us is intuitive; nuturing parents give rise to creative adaptive human beings because the growth of young brains has been nourished to permit development to those ends, and this serves to illustrate the value of ‘practice’ in early years; ‘practice’ in anything but practice in a supportive, positive, affirming, loving, low stress environment.
The research, which is published online at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition, correlates a nurturing environment with a 10% size increase of the hippocampus, and a larger size hippocampus would suggest a link to improved performance in school, among other things.
Researchers say it is logical that the hippocampus is smaller among depressed children as adult studies have demonstrated similar results. What was surprising was how nurturing made such a big difference in mentally healthy children.
To understand more about how others have nurtured their children from day one to success, take a look at this programme.