"Indeed, much research has shown that our early life experiences and the environmental conditions that characterized the communities in which we grew up have formative effects on how we develop as adolescents and adults," Ball explains. "Early life experiences can affect the extent to which we realize all of our potential, such as how far we go in school, how well we relate to other people, our desire to achieve, the likelihood that we will develop certain mental disorders and the personal resources we bring when we try to create families of our own."

Actually, a child's potential for personal growth and the establishment of a solid foundation that will allow that potential to be optimized begins well before birth. Revolutionary new technology now being utilized by neuroscientists and other researchers is shedding even more light on how the brain functions at the cellular level and how it develops in those first crucial days, months and years.

At birth, a child's brain already contains trillions more brain cells and neural connections that it will ever need to function. But it is how those connections or synapses are made and strengthened — and how new pathways are created — that determines an infant's ability to learn and cope with changing life circumstances.

"Scientists agree that how children develop is a result of the interactions between biology and environment, or `nature' and `nurture'. Heredity may determine the basic number of neurons (that) children are born with and their initial arrangement, but this is just a framework," explains Ball.

"A child's environment — the experiences that are possible because of the people and conditions in his or her life -— has (an) enormous impact on how the circuits of the brain will be laid (down). Nature and nurture together, not nature or nurture alone, determine growth and development."

During the first few years of a child's life, the physical characteristics of the brain and the configuration of its cells can undergo significant changes, in direct response to the sort of mental stimulation the child experiences during that time. Researchers in the field of neuroscience refer to this capacity for brain modification in a child's early years as "neural plasticity".

"Well-organized, stimulating interactions between the child and the caregivers stimulate the child's brain and produce profound changes," says Ball. "New, useful connections between brain cells are formed and strengthened. Existing connections that are stimulated or used less often are eliminated..."

Should the child be raised in an inadequately stimulating environment or if the majority of the stimulation that does occur is disorganized or chaotic, fewer beneficial neural pathways will develop and the child will be less prepared to respond appropriately to other people or manage a variety of environmental factors.

Communities assess their child
Providing our children with the support and resources needed to foster their healthy development is one of the goals of the Greater Victoria Early Childhood Coalition (GVECC).
The GVECC is working with Dr. Clyde Hertzman of the University of British Columbia and his Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) program to evaluate various ECD services and resources in communities and neighbourhoods throughout BC.

Those assets include libraries, daycare facilities, parks, playgrounds and community support services directed at kids. Researchers are also identifying those communities that do not have enough of these sorts of facilities in place to provide adequate learning opportunities for children.

All of that information is currently being correlated with socio-economic information from Statistics Canada and the results of a comprehensive questionnaire program called the Early Development Indicator (EDI).

The EDI questionnaire has been completed by kindergarten teachers throughout the province and measures five specific aspects of the "school readiness" of five-year-old children: physical health and well-being; social competence; emotional maturity; language and cognitive development; and, communication skills and general knowledge.

"The Early Development Instrument is a research tool that enables a community to assess its children's readiness to participate in and benefit from school activities. Measuring children's readiness for school is important because it is one kind of reflection of children's early development..."

But Ball emphasizes that the EDI is a "group-measure tool", which means that the information can only be interpreted at a school or neighbourhood level and is not intended to be an individual diagnostic or screening method.

"The purpose of the tool is to look at populations of children in different communities to get a sense of how well communities are doing in supporting young children and their caregivers. Until now, there has been no tool and few attempts to monitor the development of all young children in a population (or) to understand how local circumstances are affecting their life chances."

Ball notes that some environmental factors, including elevated levels of stress or inadequate mental stimulation, can adversely affect a child's overall development.

"One type of research looks at the body's `stress-sensitive' systems. One stress-sensitive system is activated when a child is faced with physical or emotional trauma and high levels of chronic chaos and stress in their environment," she explains. "This can activate high levels of steroid hormones (called cortisol) that can actually cause the death of brain cells and reduced connections between cells in certain areas of the brain. (But) babies with strong emotional bonds to their caregivers show consistently lower biological stress responses. Their positive relationships with caregivers literally protect them from the potentially damaging effects of stress on brain development."

Frequent or prolonged negative experiences can diminish a child's capacity for learning and memory-related abilities, which can mean they eventually will be forced to overcome significant long-term developmental and emotional hurdles. Growing up in a warm, loving and supportive environment, on the other hand, can counteract many of those undesirable influences.

"Nature has provided a way of buffering the (negative) effects of stress: strong attachment between children and their primary caregivers," Ball says. "Studies have shown that children who have the benefit of strong, positive relationships with adults who care for them are able to `turn off' their biological stress-sensitive responses more quickly and efficiently, resulting in less negative impact on brain growth and functioning."

By Jessica Ball
25 July 2003

http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=community/saanich&articleID=1370167