[Parenting] Is 3 years old a lifelong decision?

"How many minutes a day should I talk to my child before it's enough?" "My child doesn't like Mozart. He cries when he hears it. What can I do?"

I was very surprised by these questions. Moreover, judging from the fact that they did not have time to exchange pleasantries and asked questions right away, it seems that they were scared, worried and nervous by the wrong concepts of early childhood development. In fact, this is totally unnecessary because the above questions are not supported by empirical evidence.

It is true that a young child's brain is born with more nerve cells than it actually needs, and it is true that the brain is pruned according to its life experience, and any nerve cells that are not connected to other nerve cells are pruned away, but there is no evidence that pruning is complete at age 3, and that the brain is set to remain unchanged. In fact, brain plasticity is lifelong, otherwise rehabilitation would not be effective. It's just that it's more plastic when you're young and less so when you're old.

From the research of positron tomography scanning, it seems that the brain activity of children is much higher than that of adults, and it is not until the age of about 9 that it slowly drops to the standard of adults, and the frontal lobe, which is in charge of the execution of plans, the distribution of attention, working memory and other important functions, does not mature until the age of about 20, so there is no worry that "it is too late, it's already too late" at all.

Give your child a happy childhood

As for the question of how many minutes of play with the child is enough to stimulate his brain development, this is putting the cart before the horse. We play with the child because we like to play with him, not because we want him to develop his brain, and treating playing with the child as an obligation or doing homework will deprive us of the joy of raising a child.

As long as a child grows up in a normal environment, there is no need to worry about not having enough stimulation from the outside world. The children in the Romanian orphanage, which is cited as evidence, actually grew up in extreme poverty, and this report has been questioned because there is no control group and because Romania is an Iron Curtain country, information on the biological parents of those children is not available, so there is quite a bit of controversy in the conclusion on the causal relationship.

As for the Mozart effect, the subjects of this experiment were University of California college students, not babies or toddlers, which is a bit too imaginative for this kind of data.

Therefore, in my opinion, "a happy childhood is the most precious gift that parents can give to their children". Children are a blessing from heaven, and parents should grow up with their children in a grateful mood. Parental tension will cause their children to feel uneasy, and will cause them to mistakenly think that they are inferior to others, which is a case of loving them but mistaking them.

Don't worry about what others say, your child's smile is your best guide, enjoy your child's love without fear!

Prof. Hong Lan