Today we talked about brain development. The woman who did the talk was (I guess) some sort of expert in the area of child brain development and language. She was all about the hand-outs and group discussion, and not much about actually getting through her power-point in the time alloted.
Handouts in my stack of hand-outs:
We began the talk with a fairly easy "True or False" quiz about brain development. Fairly easy, that is, if you understand the agenda: to emphasize the importance of the early years. How else can the Early Years Centre get its funding?
The second handout is an article printed off msn about a girl who was so severely neglected that when she was found by police, at age seven, she couldn't talk, wasn't toilet trained, lacked basic social skills, and skittered around on her toes like a crab intead of walking properly. All this to illustrate that having a nurturing, loving environment at an early age is important. Also to make us all feel good knowing that no matter how imperfect we are as parents, there's always someone out there who is much, much worse.
The next is entitled "feeding a baby's brain" and lists a bunch of stuff most of us would do with babies anyway: snuggle, play peek-a-boo, provide a visually interesting environment, play music, talk to babies, express emotions, encourage babies to practice small motor skills.
Last, we have a drawing of a boy with an exposed brain. Apparently, the upper brain lets us think, talk reason, and create, the mid-brain controls emotion, sexuality, and has a role in memory, and the lower brain controls breathing, heart rate, and "many basic instincts". The hand-out wants me to colour the three parts of the brain different colours. Perhaps I'll get William to do it.
Not sure what all this has to do with "discipline", but I assume the latter half of the presentation (which we never got to) would tie it all together for us. In any case, I shall be obsessed with stimulating my children's brain development for the rest of the afternoon.
2 comments:
I kind of hate PowerPoint right about now. Maybe because most people have no idea how to use it effectively.
And yet, Al Gore won an Oscar using it.
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