Your new born baby has 100 billion (that's 100 x 1000 million!) neurons or brain cells.
Each of these cells can grow up to 20,000 branch-like dendrites.
Your baby also has 900 million other supporting brain cells.
And a massive exercise is underway to connect cell with cell.
One estimate is that 3 billion connections are being made per second!
Millions of messages are being transmitted along major 'motorways' called axons – and up to 100 metres per second! If these axons are properly sheathed in a substance called myelin they work better.
A synapse is an electrical/chemical contact point – between dendrites and nerve cells.
Your baby should be making about a tenfold expansion in synaptic connections between 4 and 10 months of age.
By eight months old researchers now estimate 1000 trillion connections can be made in your baby's brain.
At three years old your child's brain is more active that your adult one!
This massive activity is underway – and can continues until age eight or 10.
But some researchers say if you're not stimulating your baby properly at the age of eight months , the new connection rate will start to drop.
Some say half the new connections will die off by the age of 10.
So enriched environments, like those you can create by following simple steps in the Bright Start Programme, make dendrites grow and branch like trees.
The more dendrites you can encourage to grow – through more and varied experiences - the more your baby will make faster and better connections.
Bright Start is about helping you make the most of this amazing opportunity. It should deliver major benefits – now and later. The social benefits will also be enormous.
As you'll read in Bright Start Programme Parts One and Two, undertaking easy, no-cost simple activities to ensure your child has the right experiences and care at the right times can avoid major problems caused by under development in later life – especially learning difficulties.
Some of the Bright Start Programme's information on diet and care can also make life a whole lot easier from the very start – and ensure every day is a development day for your child.
Based on the latest brain development research, each part of the Bright Start Programme will provide you with
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| Simple steps to follow and |
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Easy activities you and your child can perform |
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"Is that so?" information: specific and sometimes startling research findings and relevant child development cases. These have been personally handled by Bright Start's developer, Maureen Hawke, in her 25 years' work helping under achievers. |
Benefit from the Bright Start Programme right away