Development Stimulation - Is intelligence fixed at birth?

Developmental Stimulation:

Is intelligence fixed at birth?
There has been a general debate since the 18th Century as to whether human intelligence is the product of generic attributes only, or if it is affected by stimuli and experiences. Scientists now agree that there can be no doubt that there are real differences in children’s inborn intellectual capacity from the beginning,(after all, we can’t all be Einstein!!) there is however clear evidence that there is nothing fixed or permanent about IQ! It is certain that in the early stages of life, enormous changes to IQ can be made by Developmental and Environmental stimulation. Babies need a stimulating environment in order to grow and develop mentally and physically to their peak potential. Intelligence is NOT fixed at birth; early stimulation has an immensely powerful effect on intellectual development. A baby who is left in a carrycot or playpen or carried on the back for most of the day will never develop to their full potential. A lack of stimulation can have a devastating effect on development. A baby needs to be given direct attention, spoken to and played with in order to develop and learn. A stimulating environment is food for brain growth! The brain, more than any other organ is where experience becomes flesh!

You can fill a house with toys, but if you don’t help and encourage them to play and show them how to play with the toys, then having the toys is no good.

The infants brain at birth has virtually all the nerve cells it will ever have, but the pattern of wiring has not at that point been established. The information the infant receives through his senses results in neural activity, and connections are made. The first three years are a time that the completion of neural circuts in the brain need appropriate stimulation. This stimulation is critical in shaping future development, and sadly, deprivation of stimulation in these years has an irreversible effect on intelligence as experienced in the tragic outcomes of the Romanian orphans!!



HOW CAN I HELP DEVELOP MY BABIES BRAIN?


Play, fun, exploration and experiences are what lead to learning and brain development in children.
Play can roughly be divided into 4 main categories, although they overlap and dominate playtimes to different degrees as the child develops, and get older. The adult needs to encourage all of these types of play.

Investigative Play:
Babies start off by investigating things through shaking, banging and tasting them in an attempt to find out the basic properties of objects eg size, shape and texture. As their intellectual capacity increases, their investigation become more complex, and they begin to become interested in how things work and how they relate to one another and form concepts such as bigger/smaller, in/on/under. They also learn about cause and effect through investigation, trial and error. eg ‘if I hit this peg with the hammer, it disappears into the hole, and if I miss and hit my thumb, it hurts!’
Toys to promote investigative play:
Rough and smooth objects
Big and small objects
Noisy toys, bottles filled with rice etc.
Pull-along toys or a can on a string
Boxes and tins with lids that they can open and close.
Water and things that float/sink
Shape sorter etc.
Manipulative Play:


As their skills in manipulation increase through increasing control over their bodies, hey will need toys to promote their dexterity, motor skills and co-ordination and control over the use of their muscles and fingers, etc. Toys to promote manipulative play help develop the child’s fine motor skills, and helps develop analytical thinking.

Toys to promote manipulative play:
Stacking rings
Blocks
Stacking cups
Play dough and shape cutters, etc
Paper and crayons
Large soft ball/ beanbag
Peg board and hammer
Representative or Pretend Play:


Very simple symbolic or pretend play develops from around a year old. The toddler may hug a teddy, push a dolly in a pram, or push a car making a ‘brrr’ sound.
Pretend play is play in which pretend objects are used to represent other objects, thus using them as symbols. This is critical to children’s intellectual development. It is the precursor to the ability to think through problems in abstract and find creative solutions to them. The ability to use the imagination creatively helps in every aspect of life. Einstein once said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Pretend play reflects the intellectual capacity of being able to represent something symbolically.
By the age of 15 months he should start using objects which are less similar to the real ones eg a box as a dolls bed or a matchbox pushed along like a car. As they get older, pretend play and investigative play tends to dominate playtimes and they also start to enjoy mimicry.



Toys to promote pretend play:
Soft animals and dolls
Farmyard set
Tea-set
Doll pram
Toy telephone
Cars/trains
Wooden vehicles
Dolls brush/comb
Tins / boxes
Puppets
Interactive Play


Play involving actions with other people or children are enormously important in intellectual and emotional development. Interactive games involving turn-taking are very important. Activities like taking turns to drop balls into a bucket; fit shapes into a shape sorter and, throwing games all lend themselves well to turn-taking.

Learning takes place through a combination of these types of play, and the process of learning is greatly accelerated if an adult firstly provides the appropriate toys, objects or stimuli, and secondly, encourages play through interaction either with themselves or with other children.

Learning is most likely to occur when:
The child is praised for their achievements.

He is given freedom to explore.

The adult displays confidence in his abilities.

The adult accepts some mess.

The child in interacted with e.g. spoken to, read to, told stories.

The child is allowed time for free-play.

The child is allowed contact with other children.

The child is encouraged to explore and play make believe.


EDUCARE offers developmental stimulation courses to assist Moms, Nursery School teachers and Au-Pairs to help their child develop to their full intellectual and creative potential

Just about every magazine today is offering tips on how to live a more “eco-friendly” lifestyle and you can hardly open a newspaper without a reference to the impact of global warming. Even our Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel, has been heard uttering the word “green” when it comes to the national budget. So, it should come as no surprise that that consumer demand for a biodegradable alternative to plastic is becoming hard to ignore. Outside of South Africa, supermarket chains like Sainsburys, Wal-Mart and Marks & Spencers already have products on their shelves in biodegradable packaging. In Europe alone the consumption of biodegradable plastics or, bioplastics as they are often referred to, in 2003 doubled from 2001, with a consumption of 40, 000 tons per annum. According to a leading website in the food production industry, it has been predicted that that the bioplastics market will grow by 20% per year.

Catherine Morris, Managing Director of Green Home, the first company to distribute a complete range of biodegradable food containers in South Africa, says that progress in bio-technology has led to the development of biodegradable alternatives which look and feel exactly like conventional packaging. Morris says: “The environmental impact between the two, however, is enormous”. Conventional packaging like polystyrene products are petroleum-based which is a limited resource and takes up to hundreds of years to degrade. According to Morris, the production of these plastics is highly toxic, and incineration carries the added danger of releasing toxic fumes into the atmosphere which poses a threat not only to the environment, but also personal health. The alternatives, on the other hand, are made from natural and renewable plant resources such as corn, sugar, wood or soya, and have a significantly lower environmental impact during manufacture. More importantly, unlike petroleum-based products, these biodegrade into water, CO2 and compost in a matter of weeks. “In South Africa, landfill waste has increased between 12 and 14% in two years. We need to reduce our waste production. And where we have to use disposable packaging, it needs to be compostable and made from renewable resources.” says Morris.

However, there have been concerns over the impact that the growing demand for biofuel and bioplastics will have on water supply, deforestation and soil erosion. Many critics have warned that the move towards using food crops likes maize, soya and potatoe starch would encourage unsustainable, mono-crop agriculture which has already had a devastating effect on the land. The counter-argument has been that the introduction of bioplastics (as well as biofuel) has to be accompanied by a sustainable approach to farming practices. “Crop rotation and other forms of sustainable agriculture, like Permaculture are options in the move towards replacing oil with renewable forms of energy – but the government needs to come to the party”, says John Pistorius of Bioman Energy, a leading manufacturer of biodiesel processors in the country.

In South Africa, the bioplastics industry could potentially revitalize a struggling agricultural industry as more and more farmers are finding it difficult to turn their land into profit. “There is so much undeveloped land in the country”, says, Pistorius, “the government should be supporting the agricultural sector from the point of view of developing farmers”. A larger South African agricultural economy would inevitably secure better government protection of the agricultural sector and provide much needed employment – especially in the rural areas. Here, in South Africa, desertification is a greater concern than deforestation, and is often a direct result of unsustainable and abandoned farming practices. A revived agricultural economy has the potential to slow down and even reverse this process.

Arguably, the most pressing concern has to do with the way in which the demand for biofuel (and now bioplastics) has pushed up the price of food products like corn and wheat. Corn is already at its highest level in a decade on the Chicago Board of Trade and growing demand for biofuel might increase prices even further. However, it would seem that internationally, there is a growing certainty that the world has enough agricultural resources for both food and fuel and that, if managed correctly, there is room for biofuel / bioplastic production as well as food security. The European Commission has issued a mandatory biofuel target of 10 percent of all vehicle fuels by 2020 – a level that officials say will not discourage farmers from growing crops for food. In the United States, industry officials claim that they will be able to produce enough corn in coming years to meet the domestic demand for food and ethanol, in addition to meeting its export obligations. Ultimately, using food crops like corn to replace fuel is regarded as an interim measure to solving the fuel crisis. “W need to experiment; it’s a new field, the shortest cut has been the food crop - just to get the ball rolling - then we need to look around for other options.” Says Pistorius who is also investigating alternatives like algae. “Algae is definitely something we’re going to be exploring. We need to get further down the road but we need to do something in the interim.”

In South Africa, provided the market is prepared for these adjustments, a higher selling price of agricultural produce is exactly what local farmers have been desperate for. A higher selling price means greater profitability in the agricultural sector, thereby raising employment levels, curbing desertification and putting more money back into sustainable land use practices, as well as providing a greater food supply. This will require government involvement, planning and protection. Clearly, it is not going to be an easy task to wean ourselves off our dependency on oil but the reality is, do we really have a choice?