Who should read this chapter? Parents of young children.
Summary: An infant's brain grows by increasing the numbers of connections between brain cells. The more they learn, the more connections they develop. These connections grow mostly during childhood. Adults have a minimal ability to grow new connections. The foundation for raising a child who loves to learn starts soon after birth. Infants gain pleasure from spending time with parents. When parents teach their children, they learn to associate learning with the pleasure of being with their parents. Their learning is rewarded by associating it with pleasure. They now want to learn more.
Current research indicates that a newborn baby is born with all (or nearly all) the brain cells he/she will ever have. The brain does not become smarter by growing more brain cells, it becomes smarter by connecting the brain cells together. Since each brain cell can connect to many other brain cells, the numbers of brain connections can become very complex. Why is this important? The brain grows most of its connections in childhood. If the brain fails to grow its connections in childhood, it can never catch up later.
If children are raised in a primitive orphanage where they sit in a crib all day with no one to play with and no one to love them, their brain does not develop connections. If you remove these children from the orphanage at age 15 years, they are permanently retarded.
Compare this to a child in a family of 10 children who gets very little dedicated parenting time, but has many siblings to play with. This child grows many brain connections and is destined to be normal. Compare this to children who take piano lessons at an early age. Their connections preferentially grow in the musical parts of the brain. Piano is not only musical, it is complex, mathematical, spatial, and a lot of other things. Connections grow in these parts of the brain as well. Compare children who learn to play the piano with adults who take piano lessons for the first time. Since children have the capability to grow new connections to adapt to this learning, they learn to play the piano much faster than adults who cannot grow as many new brain connections and must use older existing connections (originally wired for some other purpose) to learn this new task. This explains observations such as the way young children are capable of learning a new language with ease, compared to adults who can only learn a new language with great difficulty and hard work.
When children are young, parents must provide them with a stimulating learning environment to maximize the growth of new brain connections during this period of maximum brain development. Young children enjoy time spent with parents. This time is naturally pleasurable for them. When parents teach children something such as colors, objects, letters, words, etc., children associate this learning with pleasure. They are rewarded for learning because the learning is associated with the pleasure of being the object of their parents' attention. Since they associate learning with pleasure, they now want to learn more. This pleasure of learning probably does not develop the same way for a parent substitute such as a preschool teacher, nanny or baby sitter. The pleasure is naturally strongest with parents (including foster parents and close grandparents) compared to parent substitutes (such as nannies, sitters, etc.), so the pleasure of learning is stronger when parents are the teachers. A recurrent theme in this book is that parents must do the parenting, instead of paying someone else to parent for them. This pleasure gained from learning is a treasure that only a parent can give.
While your children are young, the opportunity to shape their future is before you. Parents have the choice of taking this opportunity or relinquishing it to someone else. Children who enjoy learning take all opportunities to learn new things. Learning to play the piano was just an example used earlier. It is likely that all new learning (ballet, language, sports, comedy, shapes, computers, reading, crafts, etc.) stimulates the growth of more brain connections increasing their future capacity to understand complex principles, to think creatively and to expand their unlimited potential.
It's clear that you aren't born with the brain that you will eventually have. Parents must help their children form as many brain connections as possible. Spend more time teaching your children and learning with them.