Did You Know? 🤔

Children learn and develop by seeing, doing, hearing, feeling, experiencing and imitating everything around them. Reading books, like Before you Sleep, and enjoying family days out can profoundly influence their growth and development.

The Science

Google will throw you lots of quotes, lists, and stats if you search this topic. So, let me save you some time. The most important scientific fact you need to know is...

90% of all brain development happens in the first 5 years of life.

But don't Panic! I've got you covered with a very simple philosophy that will help you instinctively do the things you need to do to give your baby the best start in life. Now let's get on with the show.

First: Dummies Guide To What’s Happening Inside Your Baby’s Brain.

When your baby is born, their brains have billions of very excited Nerves and Neurons I like to call "Happy Snappies". (Short for Synaptic connections and rhymes with nappies 😂). They immediately burst into action connecting and bonding with each other to build your baby’s very own Information Super Highway. Complete with neurological pathways to store, find and provide access to the vast universe of thoughts, memories, instructions, and cognitive skills they build up throughout their lives.

But the Happy Snappies can’t build anything without the raw material they need. So, with an insatiable appetite for information and experiences, they use your babies senses to gather feelings, sounds, sights, smells, tastes and emotions. The Snappies work closely together (using Synaptic connections), carefully processing, indexing and storing, in precise detail, the experiences and information they receive as MEMORIES.

Every little detail is stored.

Your baby will soak up every single thing they are exposed to. For example, how your baby felt when they did something, what they did, what muscles were used, what they saw, what they liked, what they didn’t like. Nothing is left out or forgotten.

Listen to Benji's view on reading

 

I really hope you found all this useful and you will read to your children as much and as often as you can! 

Love, 

Benji! 

 

References and bibliography

The research and scientifically proven benefits of reading to children in this blog were drawn from many sources, including the following.

• Early childhood brain development has a lifelong impact.
• The Benefits of Reading to Babies
• Reading to infants benefits both baby and adult
• Reading Books to Babies