Santos – experience

We’ve learned more in the last 30 years about what’s happening in those early years of development than we ever knew in the preceding 2500 years. So most of that research is new and has only been recently begun to be applied to thinking. In terms of what’s happening in there – it really starts from conception. Like often we think about children sort of after they have been born and we often need to remind ourselves that so much happens in the prenatal period during pregnancy, and so, in terms of how we support kids it really needs to start with supporting parents and pregnant moms especially. In terms of what’s happening developmentally, the story of how the brain develops I think is what  really captured the imagination of the public and everybody that’s been working on this today. 

The thing you refer to in terms of sculpting is sort of a metaphor for what happens at the level of the neurons in the brain. So unlike  most of the rest of living beings in the world, human beings, at birth, their brains are not formed fully developed, that is, that after the  child is born much is still required to help that baby’s brain develop in a way that will increase that child’s life chances and potential.  

And that, as I say, experience-based learning is heavily dependent on the social environment of the child. So in addition to the things that I think we take as givens – a child needs enough food and water, and warmth and physical safety. The way the brain develops in the early years is heavily dependent on the presence of nurturing relationships, on the presence of caring adults in the child’s life, such that, they talk about the sculpting, the connections in the child’s brain, really depends on that interaction. So it’s really incumbent on us, from that research perspective, to consider how best to support that happening.  

I do want to mention that there has often been a lot of talk about, kind of the early years being a critical period or sensitive period of development. And while that’s true, a mistake that’s often made is that it all sort of ends, the chances sort of end, all before kids enter school, which is not the case.  

If you look across the life course, from when a child is conceived through their life into adulthood, the most enormous point of activity in terms of brain development are in the early years – there is another peak in early adolescence which is another discussion.