Parent’s focus for their children’s growth has to turn on its head

What is the most important question in Indian parents’ mind regarding their child? What will he become when he grows up! Linked to this question is where he will graduate from. For, where a person graduates from, is seen to be directly linked to his career. Parents obsess over the IITs, IIMs and other esteemed colleges and universities. This notion is set to be turned on its head. Parents are slowly waking up to a notion that has been known to child psychologists and child development experts for long. That it is the first 6 years of a child’s life that pretty much determine what he will become in his life. So which college your child graduates from and what career he chooses gets pretty much determined in the first six years of life!

Brain research has clearly laid out the pattern of neuron development during a human being’s life span. This research shows that brain development is at its highest from the time of conception to age six. The brain develops as different neurons make connections to form a neural network. Or as Marcus Buckingham, author of First, Break All the Rules puts it, brain development is like building roads between neurons. This ‘road building’ activity is at its highest in the first six years of a man’s life. As more and more stimuli is given to the brain, these roads become wider and smoother – in effect creating a highway in the brain for life. Those areas which are not stimulated remain stunted, in effect creating narrow streets or none at all. As the synaptic activity starts slowing down from age 6 onwards, the brain’s highways and barren areas start to settle. This is what determines what you are good at and what you’ll lean towards in your later life. The time to build highways in the brain is till age 6!

Now compare this body of science to the practice of today. Most parents wake up to their child’s development when it is time for him to go to a school. By this time, the child is already 5 years old. In effect, 80% of his developmental time is behind him! What he will learn here on is more like incremental improvements, not fundamental development. We simply have to do better before the child turns 6 years of age.

Earlier, the first 5-6 years of a child’s life was spent in a rich environment of joint families where a large peer group, presence of grandparents and the uninterrupted attention of the ‘home-maker’ mother ensured that the child developed through instruction and observation. With nuclear families, smaller family sizes and working moms, that traditional net of child development has slowly disappeared.

Thankfully, help is at hand. There are various options now available to ensure the child gets the right developmental exposure in his early years. Pre-schools, mother-toddler groups, activity centres have come up to ensure parents have access to a research based and scientific approach to child development.

Pre-schools play an important role here. Traditionally, parents have considered pre-schools just as a place where there child can ‘prepare’ for a school and spend some time away from home. Neighbourhood pre-schools also prompted this impression since they were set up by a well meaning aunt who would put together a collection of toys and colourful interiors – in many cases a pre-school passed off for a daycare centre.

This expectation from pre-schools misses a bigger and more fundamental role they play in a child’s development. A pre-school can provide the child a diverse peer group to develop his inter-personal skills. It can offer an age-appropriate environment to stimulate his sensorial development. It can provide professionals trained in child development to guide a child in discovering his unique inclinations. What a parent cannot do on his own, a pre-school can supplement. In effect, a modern pre-school retains the advantages of the traditional system but adds the benefit of research and modern knowledge.

If the first 6 years are so critical and the right pre-school can make all the difference, how can parents select the right pre-school. The next article will carry suggestions on how to select the right pre-school.