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what a child experiences during the
first years of their life has a lasting
impact on the development of their brain
while gene set the roadmap experiences
create the neural connection inside the
brain that says the foundations of our
emotions language motor skills vision
and memories
if one region gets additional
stimulation the neural pathways within
that area and the connections to other
areas grow stronger this process is
called synaptic pruning you can also
imagine your brain as a planet there is
motor skill metropolis memory Mountain
and vision village through the years
popular cities grow bigger and links
between them get larger now if one area
was never developed there can be traffic
jams this then slows down the
development of the entire brain some
neurotransmitters will be tired getting
to work others will take shortcuts and
get lost
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Betty Hart and Todd Risley studied
children's exposure to language on
average children from families on
welfare were exposed to about 600 words
per hour kids from rich families got
about 2,000 by the age of three the gap
becomes 30 million words but it didn't
end there children from privileged
families received much more positive
feedback for every six words of praise
there was only one word of
discouragement welfare kids however had
twice as much discouragement as praise
this could make a difference that lasts
a lifetime in a study that began in 1963
psychologist David White Hart and his
team randomly divided 123
underprivileged kids into two groups one
group spent two years at a top preschool
with excellent teachers they made art
discuss problems and received a lot of
attention respite and love for the other
life went on as usual often without much
attention from anyone 40 years later the
highscope Perry preschool study was
published
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at age five 67% of the children in the
top preschool group had an IQ of over 90
they were school ready of the others
only 28% achieved that at 14 there was a
big difference in basic classroom
achievements at 27 the top preschool
group were more likely to own their own
home and at age 40 they earned more
money and were less likely to ever be
sentenced to jail the researchers
concluded that the two years at
preschool nourished the children not
only intellectually but also gave them
social skills courage and perseverance
this combination of character strength
also called grit was later responsible
for their success in life the $15,000
invested in putting those kids into
preschool later benefited the entire
society mainly through a reduction in
crime the total return of investment was
estimated to be at a hundred and ninety
five thousand dollars in 2006 Nobel
prize-winning economist James Heckman
published what became known as the
Hackman curve it shows the return of
investments in education which is the
highest in the early years governments
have since started to act in Germany
parents get a lot of financial support
to raise their kids in Japan mother's or
Father's can take a full year of paid
leave in France all children go to
kindergarten free of charge if you
happen to be in charge know that with
every extra minute you spend encouraging
and talking to that little troublemaker
you might be doing him a favor for life
according to the University of Michigan
regular family dinners are a stronger
predictor of good grades than doing
homework
you