How to become a child prodigy
Any child in two or three years of life can be classified as a "child prodigy" if his parents can correctly and timely "include" the apparatus of hereditary development, inherent in nature in every person. Such a bold conclusion was given by the long-term studies of the neuropsychic abilities of young children, which are dealt with at the IM Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation. The correspondent of "Labor" E. Druzhinina is told about it by the head of the laboratory of neurophysiology of the child Professor A. Shepavalnikov.
- Disputes about the level of consciousness of a newly born person have a long history. So, there is a strong opinion that the brain of a newborn is a "clean sheet", on which only after the birth "records" begin. This concept was formulated by Aristotle.
Today's level of development of science allows us to assert that the wise nature prepares the child's brain for perception of the world even in the womb of the mother. Recently, the results of observations of a group of American psychologists who established the ability of infants to recognize a fairy tale that they read aloud before birth were recently published. There is also an experiment involving 700 future parents who are trying to communicate with their unborn babies. Many of these children, it turned out, began to pronounce the first words in three to four months, at seven - to walk, and about a year to freely pronounce many difficult words.
It is known to physiologists that by the six months of intrauterine life the hearing analyzer of the fetus is already functioning, which means that the sounds of the still unborn child are functioning. Apparently, he does not sleep at all, and the level of wakefulness periodically increases. Women are aware of these periods of activity by the way, they are the most favorable for early "learning".
- But the baby was born. What can he already know and know?
- According to reliable data, a lot. He hears and sees, smells and tastes, responds to touch and body positions. He manifests elementary conditioned reflexes - for example, recognizes the voice of the mother.
Until two years, children live so intensely that they do more cognitive work than later in their life. Their brain develops surprisingly quickly: by the age of three, it already reaches 80 percent of the weight of the adult brain. Physiologists now claim that the possibilities of developing the child's brain under normal conditions of our life are not fully realized. One can even say that this development is delayed by the stereotype of our relationship with young children, and thus the most active period is lost. To teach a child a meaningful perception of the world, to give him multifaceted information, quickly overcoming the period of senseless infancy, is one of the ways to ensure that the next generations not only repeat their parents' abilities but surpass them.
- Indeed, the children of the "television era" are much more informed, and primary school programs are also designed for a higher level. But does science know where the boundary lies between informative and mental burdens on children?
- Modern researchers have a reliable means of monitoring the work of the brain - recording its biocurrents. Electroencephalograms give an objective picture of the activity of brain structures under different loads. So, they show that most of our children suffer not from excess, but from lack of information.
For the full development of the child from the very first days of his life, it is very important not only the tenderness and love of loved ones, the touch of the mother's hands, her tender voice, but also games and conversations, music. After all, emotions contribute to the formation of his nervous system, the development of the brain."Sensory hunger" in childhood is an irreparable loss. An example of this is "children-Mowgli": grown in an animal pack and returned to a human family, they do not become full-fledged people - the learning ability is lost.
It is known that the right and left hemispheres of the brain perform unequal functions: the left predominantly responsible for logic, the right one gives thinking to imagery and comes to the aid of the left in unexpected, difficult situations. So we consider it important from the earliest childhood to deliberately load the right hemisphere. For example, in one of the Leningrad kindergartens art education is perfectly delivered: the kids become good artists here, they even get prizes at international exhibitions. There is another "specialization" of kindergartens - in fact it is already clear that for every activity developing the child, there are the most suitable years and months of his life.
- And what can be done in a family or an ordinary kindergarten?
- First of all, you need to spend more time playing with children. They are able to master the most serious ideas, if you follow the rules of fun games. Force them in these games to work - if they are interested, they will not get tired. Complicate problems: evolution has paved the way for our mind to overcome difficulties.
- Alexander, I know that in your studies you model children's psyche in adults with the help of hypnosis. Why is this necessary?
- A person remembers himself, usually from the age of three. Therefore, no one can share the memories of the newborn. But the brain has an amazing ability to store all the information ever learned. Already three or four months old baby remembers a lot. But if so, then why does the adult brain forever lose the key to the storerooms with memories of early childhood? We tried to "deceive" nature with the help of hypnosis. A group of volunteer students was selected, which experienced hypnotists suggested that they are now children of different ages. And in a state of hypnosis, they behaved according to the age he had proposed. The "five-year-old" could say how his dog's name is or how old he is, but did not answer "student" questions - for example, what is the dean's office."Three months" did not talk, but with pleasure played a rattle.
And we made sure that childhood does not go away from the memory of an adult. In a state of hypnosis, later stereotypes and behaviors retreat, and from memory the stereotypes of early childhood emerge. This allows us to create an artificial model of the child's psyche that helps to check how much and when it is possible to load the child's knowledge without causing damage to his nervous system.
- How can the results of your research be applied today?
- Huge work on the study of the possibilities of intensive brain development in the first three years of life has only just begun and is unlikely to be solved in the near future, as long as it is handled by a few specialists. This is a complex task of extraordinary importance. After all, on the knowledge of the neurophysiology of the child's brain, all modern methods of preschool and school education, all pedagogy, must be built. Specific recommendations for parents should be worked out. For this, it is required to unite the efforts of scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences, teachers and doctors.