Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Take the example of Brandi Binder, a 13-year-old living in Colorado Springs, who developed severe epilepsy at the age of six and had to have the entire right side of one portion of her brain removed. Afterwards she lost all control of muscles on the left side of her body, the side controlled by the right side of her brain. However today, after years of therapy and hard work, she is an A student and excels at math, art, and music--skills usually governed by the right side of the brain. While her recovery has not been 100% complete (she has not yet regained use of her left arm) it comes very close and, more than that, it demonstrates the adaptive powers of the early childhood brain. For this and other reasons, the debate that has long engaged philosophers--whether nature or nurture dominates development--no longer perplexes scientists. "It's not a competition," says Dr. Stanley Greenspan, a psychiatrist at George Washington University. "It's a dance."7

The key, then, is for families, teachers, and communities to work together and start reading to children early. According to Dr. Reid Lyon, Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch at the National Institutes of Health, most conventional intervention efforts (which begin after the third grade) begin too late. Not that these children are beyond help, by any means, but Lyon's research shows that reading efforts are much more effective the earlier they are implemented. According to his research a 12 year-old child will need between four and five times more "intervention time" than a 5 year-old child with similar reading problems.

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Nature and Nurture

As few as twenty years ago scientists believed that the genes we were born with wholly determined the structure of our brains. The facts recently discovered by neurologists and psychologists, however, prove that how children develop, learn, and grow depends on the critical and continual interplay between nature (or genetic endowment) and nurture (the surroundings, care, stimulation, and teachings received). And, according to Rima Shore and the Families and Work Institute, both of these influences are crucial.2

Sharing books with children not only lays the groundwork for much of the language and critical thinking skills they will need later in life, it also helps prepare them for many of the emotional challenges all people eventually face. Children who have continual, healthy interactions with nurturing caregivers become better prepared--both emotionally and biologically--to deal with and learn from the stresses and disappointments of everyday life.4

Children seemingly placed at a disadvantage by "nature" offer dramatic proof of the brain's amazing capacity to compensate in cona ducive environment. It is well documented, for example, that many children who lose language due to a stroke at a young age often recover the ability to speak because the young inventive brain is able to shift this function to another area. Even in cases of epilepsy, where it is sometimes necessary to remove an entire side of the brain, the remaining half often begins to work overtime--taking on many of the duties of the lost hemisphere. 5According to UCLA pediatric neurologist Dr. Donald Shields, "if there's a way to compensate, the developing brain will find it." 6