Environment Conducive to the Brain Development

We are becoming more and more aware of the importance of promoting proper brain development in the first years of our children's lives, thus being cognitive stimulation in childhood, an essential axis to enhance their attention, perception, memory, and language skills and executive functions, among others.

But who is responsible for fostering this development? According to Tatiana Chaparro Farfán, psychologist and Master's student in special education, therapeutic psych pedagogy, and intervention in learning difficulties, “those responsible are all the social actors involved in the contexts in which the child develops. We all have a significant role in the development of these functions, but mainly the people who are part of the closest environments.” In this way, if we want to achieve a healthy development in the early childhood of our children, it is necessary to create the appropriate conditions for them to develop equally in the physical, socio-emotional and linguistic-cognitive aspects, involving the family, the school, the therapeutic team (if required), the State and society.

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So, from each of our daily environments, we can help the development of that wonderful world that is the brain of our children, but what would be the best way to achieve it? The Specialist in psychological evaluation and diagnosis and Mg. in clinical neuropsychology, Laura Orozco Palacio, considers that “this process can be done in many ways: talking to them and listening to them when they speak, letting them finish their ideas and not trying to guess or giving them the answers; lovingly correcting them when they are wrong (not scolding); playing, teaching rules and respecting turns; setting challenges, favoring creativity; that they paint that they make music, that they move with dance and rhythms, that they construct and act out.”

In all stages of childhood, cognitive stimulation is not the same. Specialists affirm that it is very important to think about the needs that must be met in each child. “If we think of a metaphor to explain the way in which learning skills are developed and stimulated, we can think of an orchestra. Each instrument would be a skill whose interpreter must learn and rehearse the interpretation of it with the help of a teacher and independent work, it only sounds perfect, but when joining it needs planning and that is where our conductor comes in: executive functions," says psychologist Tatiana Chaparro.

But we must be vigilant. The media boom makes us believe in many myths around this topic. "We tend to observe children who are being overstimulated based on the idea that the brain of young children learns easier…this can create an environment for children to feel stressed and sometimes anxious," says Dr. Laura Orozco. The focus should be to have healthy humans and not overstimulated superhumans.