Childhood Builds a Healthy Brain The Importance of Playing, Puttering, and Pretending
When our first child was born I was determined to do everything I could to maximize his development. My devotion to his betterment had begun even earlier, during my pregnancy, when I listened to lots of classical music, took lots of walks, thought lots of good thoughts. This was a good start, mainly because these were all activities that inspired me! But once he was here, a certain frenzied insecurity set in, about making sure I was “doing enough” to stimulate his development. I promptly bought a book on baby exercise—yes, baby exercise!! I dutifully followed the prescribed twice-a-day regimen of moving his various tiny limbs around and about, folding and stretching his new little body this way and that. It was supposed to get his sensory-motor development off to a head start, which sounded good to me.
As luck and fate would have it, just a couple weeks into our workout plan, I attended my first R.I.E. class… and what I learned there that very first day carried the blessed ring of truth. Actually, more like the booming clang of truth. And I got it.
I could relax—I didn’t have to “improve upon” or “maximize” anything! My child had an innate intelligence that knew exactly how to unfold the unique body that was his. It didn’t need me to pose it, bend it, or prop it into positions that were not yet natural for him. (A basic tenet of the R.I.E. approach is “non-interference in gross motor development”—in other words, we allow the innate intelligence of the baby’s developing body to determine when he first rolls over, sits up, stands, walks, etc. And I must declare—you have never seen a roomful of babies sitting with more naturally erect spines… or toddlers with graceful, “accident-free” walks… than in a R.I.E. classroom! Because they did these things when their bodies were ready, not when our adult agendas decided it was time.) To learn more
How A Child Really Learns
Unfortunately, it isn’t so much their child’s body that parents today are looking to “maximize” in the early years—it’s the mind. In an understandable desire to help our kids, we look to give them a “head start” by beginning (earlier and earlier, it seems) to teach them the alphabet, their numbers, then maybe to write their names, perhaps a little pre-algebra. (I’m just kidding—I think! I imagine that somewhere there’s an “Elmo squared plus Barney squared equals a Teletubby squared” lesson taking place.)
But the latest science of brain development supports what educator and Waldorf school founder Rudolf Steiner taught almost one hundred years ago: early academics does not strengthen the young child’s development, but instead undermines it!
Due to the parts of her brain that are most active in the early years, the young child—up until around the age of seven—relates to the world primarily through her senses and her body. Her primary modes of learning, therefore, are through sensing (seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching—indeed, lots of touching!) and doing. Understanding this basic fact about their child should help parents with two very important issues:
- knowing that for a child to touch something, or to do with her body, is similar to an adult thinking about that same thing… which sheds new light on the “No, sweetie, don’t touch that” reflex that it seems we parents have overdeveloped!
- realizing that it is activities that engage these two aspects - sensing and doing - that are the richest, healthiest, and most effective forms of learning for the young child.
And the activity that most powerfully engages these two learning aspects in the child? Play! Play is the all-important work of the child until around seven… or should be. But in our hyper-accelerated culture we’ve lost an understanding and appreciation for just how critically important play is in the healthy development of our children! We somehow see it as a waste of time. A toy cannot simply be a toy, it has to be educational. Play cannot be for its own sake, it needs to be organized, improved upon, and packaged as “enrichment.”
But when a child engages in open-ended play (that is, un-organized, un-“improved upon,” and un-packaged), he engages the all-important senses: as he imagines the wooden crate as his pirate ship, he sees the tall mast, hears the crashing waves, feels the salt spray. As he climbs in and hoists the sail (Mom’s favorite guest towel), his body and brain are engaged in a stunningly intricate series of sensory-motor interactions. In an hour of such play, he is stimulating robust growth of important new neural connections in the areas of the brain that most need it at that age. This development will serve as an important foundation for later academics!
Dr. David Elkind has noticed that bright young architecture students at Stanford University are having to play with erector sets in class, because they didn’t get to play enough as children! As a result, the sophisticated computer drafting technologies don’t serve them as well because they don’t have a “real-world” frame of reference for the two-dimensional images on the screen. The same problem exists when we introduce abstract intellectual concepts to young children—like the alphabet. Letters are symbols, and the areas of the brain that process and make sense of symbols are not yet available in an integral way in the young child. Children live in the realm of the concrete—what they can sense. Symbolic thinking introduced too early has little depth of meaning and leads to a more superficial interaction with words, ideas, and concepts. Not the best way to begin a child’s lifelong learning!
As Elkind so wisely points out, “The language of things must proceed the language of words, or else the words don’t mean anything.”
How Parents Can Build Their Child’s Brain
There is, however, one very important area of the child’s brain that does need parents’ active participation for optimal healthy development: the orbito-frontal cortex, or OFC—which is central to the brain circuitry responsible for emotional and social functioning. The latest research from the new field of attachment neurobiology finds that the first three years is a critical window for development of the OFC… when the OFC circuitry in the child’s brain gets wired up in direct response to the nature of the child’s primary attachment relationships. This is the foundation for everything that underlies a child’s lifelong success!!
The OFC is the seat of common sense thinking… the ability to read other people’s “signals” and recognize their intentions… to sense their emotions, and have empathy… to imbue intellectual thought with feeling, and vice versa, to moderate emotion with rational thought. In short, the OFC is the seat of the skills of being truly human!
The OFC is also the fundamental regulating and integrating structure of the brain. It allows all of the information from other parts of the brain—facts, sensations, internal feelings—to be put together in a way that makes sense, that has meaning, that fits… and that allows us to fit into our social surroundings in a comfortable, satisfying way. It is what allows us to self-regulate-our moods and emotions, our reactions, our internal sense of order. (The OFC seems to be intimately involved in such regulatory disorders as ADD/ADHD, ODD, etc.)
Self-regulation lays a the basic foundation for the very sense of self. So the development of the OFC is critical to personality development and lifelong success. It’s quite complicated, the technology you need to help get this circuitry of your child’s brain wired up most effectively, but if you promise not to be intimidated by the advanced engineering, you may click here and take a look at a graphic that illustrates this sophisticated process.
Dr. Bruce Perry points out that the young child’s healthiest early brain development is nurtured by consistency and predictability in her daily life. Just like a poem I have on my wall says, children learn what they live—especially in the early years and especially at the basic, unconscious level of brain organization! When the child lives regulation, consistency and stability, the child’s brain is wired to be regulated, consistent and stable. This is the foundation for success in school, and in life! Says Perry, “Patterned, conditioned, systemic experience leads to patterned, conditioned, systemic neural activity” (as opposed to chaotic, dis-synchronous neural activity”—which is synonymous with such conditions as ADD/ADHD.)
The Cost of a “Head Start”
These new findings about the importance of developing a child’s healthy orbito-frontal cortex are amazingly consistent with what Rudolf Steiner taught last century about the importance of developing a child’s healthy will forces. And a healthy will is supported when we follow Steiner’s suggestion that the child’s job during the first seven years is to learn to fully and comfortably inhabit the body!
You see, Steiner’s theory of child development involves a central spirituality: the young child is only newly-arrived to the physical world from the spiritual world (or to use author John O’Donohue’s enchanting phrase, babies and young children are “fresh from the eternal.”) When considered from this aspect, it isn’t so hard to imagine that it just might take seven years to really “settle” fully and happily in one’s body! What Steiner asks of us parents is to help the child comfortably situate in the body before we introduce intellectual work. The child’s life forces are needed for the complex activity of building up the physical body up until around age seven. When they are diverted from this main task by academics and intellectual work—in which the jobs of memory and thinking consume tremendous amounts of this life force, or energy—the healthy development of the body and brain may be compromised in lifelong ways.
Another related danger of premature academics and other “adultifying” influences is their weakening effect upon the development of the will forces. In our urgency to give kids a “head start,” we push early academics, despite research that demonstrates its counterproductive psycho-social and intellectual effects on children. Early academics and other “pseudo-mature” pursuits can indeed produce a child who is very bright and capable, but who can later—by middle- or high-school age-burn out, become depressed, cynical and disengaged, because there is no inner foundation to support this intellect. Supporting the healthy development of a child’s will is an investment in her future; it builds a sound infrastructure that will carry her future interests, passions, and intellectual pursuits. This sounds a lot like the health development of the OFC!
Our current ignorance of this developmental need is, I believe, a huge contributing factor to the crisis facing our children. Developmental and learning disorders, along with behavioral problems, are epidemic. Depressive disorders are appearing earlier in life than in past decades; indeed, between 1991 and 1995, The National Institute of Mental Health documented substantial increases in the use of several psychotropic medications, including tricyclic antidepressants, in preschool-aged children!
Youth suicide has grown in the past generation to be the third leading cause of death in 15-24 year olds, and has doubled in the 5-14 year old age group. Cross-cultural psychologist Dr. James Prescott makes the stunning observation that “more children and youth (ages 5-24 years) have committed suicide in the past ten years than the total number of American combat lives lost in the ten year Vietnam war (est. 55,000 v. 47,355), yet little or no public attention has been given to this reality or what it represents.”
Many of our middle- and high-school children have become jaded; they do not seem to find in school, in learning, or in life, anything about which to be excited, enthused, or inspired. Their will forces, whose development ideally should have been supported in early childhood, instead often languish, latent yet unrealized, sapped by the pseudo-mature pursuits with which parents packed their young lives. Without these will forces, which are transformed in later childhood and young adulthood into interest in the world, our youth fall prey to cynicism, ennui, and yes—ironically—boredom. Had they the opportunity for a kind of constructive “boredom”—i.e., calm, predictable, home-based rhythms—in early childhood, teenagers today would scarcely understand the notion of boredom, for their interest in the world would be so robust.
Instead, they have been filled with facts and information, leaving their souls parched. Relieved of the meaningful, family-centered—and centering—daily chores that were done by their pre-industrial counterparts in decades past, they emulate their adult role models in hungrily pursuing the diversions of materialism and “culture as anesthetic,” but still feel an emptiness. Because, as educator George Leonard points out about the trap of materialism, “You can never get enough of what you really don’t want.”
Dr. Philip Incao, a family physician who practices according to Steiner’s homeopathic principles1, suggests that the ever-growing numbers of children suffering from the distresses mentioned above are telling us that they aren’t finding what they need when they come into this world and into their families. “They are the canaries in the coal mine.”
The Rhythms of the Heart
So what do our children need from us? How do we support the healthy development of the will? By weaving a comforting routine, filled with physical and emotional warmth, and rhythmic activity. Meals and bedtimes are even and regular. Outings take on the predictability of ritual, which the child can count on and keep a sort of internal beat to: now we go to the market, now we go to the post office, now I turn the dial on the box, now I am bored at the bank.
We have become so frightened today of subjecting our children to—dare I even utter the word again?—boredom, that we pack their lives full of extraneous, “exciting,” new adventures that will “stimulate” their imaginations. Ironically, it is sameness and routine, the comforting rhythm internalized by the child, which frees him to engage his imagination. (I’m reminded of last summer’s Six Flags commercial in which the father and young daughter frantically noodle away on their individual Palm-Pilots trying to schedule some time together. It would be amusing if it weren’t so sadly close to many children’s’ reality.)
Thomas Poplawski points out that the life-formative energies we want to support “can be characterized as warm and as pulsing with a calm, steady rhythm—something like a large human heart. It is just these qualities that we seek to provide for younger children. We must surround our children with warmth, both physical and emotional.” You can find this author here.
The will is embedded in the body, experienced in the body, and is felt most keenly in—and strengthened by—the experience of doing. The child who is developing a healthy will helps fold the laundry, stirs the soup, he putters, he plays, he dabbles, he peeks at his mom from behind the door, he sweeps the kitchen floor—all in the course of a day that has a comforting, secure structure and rhythm. (Such rhythm used to occur naturally when work was home-based in pre-industrial America; today it requires dedicated effort and ingenuity to meet these needs of the young human, needs that have not changed to keep pace with the technological revolution!)
It is in the doing of these simple activities that the child’s will forces take shape and are strengthened. The regular recurrence of the daily rhythm in which one element flows smoothly into the next is indeed calming, and offers children a sense of security through which their forces of will, expressed particularly in their play, can be strengthened and their imagination take shape in the environment.
Another important function of the predictable routine is that the form provided by the rhythm allows children to live in the “dream-consciousness” that is the hallmark of the first seven years. The slower brainwaves of the young child do in fact resemble that of a dreaming adult! Children need to be able to unselfconsciously and wholeheartedly participate in the day’s experiences without worrying about what comes next or what they need to be ready for. But these days it seems that even very young kids are savvy and alert and in-the-know about everything that is going on in the household.
The Beautiful Dream that Nourishes the Child
Another fundamental need of the young child is an atmosphere of reverence, awe, and beauty. The young child’s natural impulse is to celebrate beauty and to feel reverence and awe about almost everything… but what does our culture do in this techno-materialist age? We foist upon them a sophisticated world of facts and commentary. We explain away all sense of the miraculous with our cold, adult intellect—with the good intention of “helping prepare them for the real world.” (“Daddy, look at that bright star!” “Oh yes, Esmerelda—do you know that a star is a dense concentration of gases—just air!—that burns very hot…”)
We dress babies in black T-shirts with hiply ironic slogans that make us laugh—at the expense of respect for “the kingdom of childhood” as Steiner called it. Educator and counselor Kim Payne
It is best if we don’t “awaken” the young child from her “dream”; therefore, we shouldn’t offer many choices, involve her in “democratic family policy-making,” and we definitely should not over-explain. We shouldn’t involve the young child in negotiations. Not only does this breed insecurity in the child (with “difficult behavior” as the inevitable result), it also prematurely awakens self-consciousness and a sense of reason in the child—and teaches her to be a little negotiator.
The young child learns first and foremost through imitation, so if you negotiate and debate with her, she will soon get better at it than you! This is a vicious cycle: the more the child perceives that you are looking to her to participate in important decisions (and to a young child even the basics seem very important), the more insecure she will feel, and the more controlling she will become. Before long she won’t do anything without opening and closing arguments, along with Exhibits A, B and C. The sad thing is, she desperately (though unconsciously) does not want to act like this. She desperately wants you, her parent, to be the loving, calm authoritative figure she can look up to, rely upon, and joyfully follow!
The Promise Within
Your child is not a blank slate or empty vessel who needs to be filled up with copious amounts of excellent information. Your child comes to you with an intact intellect that is gathering energy and waiting to unfold in good time, like a flower in the bud. You would never pry open a rosebud to somehow maximize it or improve upon it! Instead, you would make sure it has the best soil, and nourishing fertilizer to support its optimal unfolding.
So it is with our children. But we are the soil in which our children grow. For those precious and critical early years, we are their earth, their sun and their water. If we are willing to embrace that daunting and magnificent responsibility, then the possibilities for their unfolding, their well-being, and their lifelong success are virtually unlimited.
Notes
- Steiner was a student of mathematics, physics, chemistry and ultimately took his doctorate in philosophy. As close to what we might call a celebrity in his day, Steiner enjoyed “a considerable reputation among those who knew him as an original, if unacademic, thinker.” In whichever of the many European cities he visited, lines would form around the block of his hotel, of people seeking just a few moments of his counsel. His practical advice was sought by doctors, therapists, farmers, businessmen, academics and scientists, theologians and pastors, and of course by teachers. His anthroposophy (science of the human spirit) included a medical aspect, which does not regard illness as a chance occurrence or mechanical breakdown, but as something intimately connected to the biography of a human being. Anthroposophic medical care emphasizes the strengthening of the healing forces; reestablishing balance and rhythm in life processes; and integrates conventional with new and alternative practices.