okay work welcome to our next lecture okay today we're going to be talking about uh the first two years um of uh of development first two years after birth that is um so and it's biosocial development okay so the first two years of life okay zero to you know to two biosocial development so the biological stuff but it's also affected by social factors so it's called biosocial development but it's basically biological stuff okay so we're going to talk about all these things growth nutrition brain development neonatal states abilities motor development immunizations um let's just get right to it first let's talk about growth okay so during the first two years uh you know as you guys already know especially if you're a parent uh children grow very quickly during the first two years there's rapid growth in waking during the first two years the norm the average that's called the 50th percentile that's the term that's used um so for instance uh when you go to the doctor and they they measure your child let's say and they tell you your child is in the 75th percentile that means your child is taller than average if your child is below 50 your your uh your child is smaller than average okay my daughter was always around the 85th percentile she's kind of tall kind of big but she's also uh you know in the uh high percentile also when it comes to weight and that means she's also a little bit overweight we'll get to that those kind of things in a moment but yes you need to know what we mean by the 50th percentile that's the average okay and if you're above that that means you're higher than average or below that you're lower than average if you're right there right in the middle that means you're average so at birth the average is seventy seven and a half pounds as we said before and about 20 inches tall okay um and the children grow very fast during this time okay bye and they also gain a lot of weight by uh by their fourth month their weight will have doubled already in just four months they will have doubled their weight by their first birthday their weight will have tripled the average at two years the average two year olds will weigh about 30 pounds and be about 34 inches tall and that's already by the way 50 of the adult weight so a good approximation is uh if you know what your child's height was when they were uh two years old uh then just double that and that's pretty close to how tall they're going to be when they are full grown and i told you before that how tall you are and how much you weigh at birth doesn't necessarily mean it's not necessarily a good indication of how tall you're going to be when you're an adult okay because um you might be average at birth but you can grow be very tall later on uh like if you heard of the uh uh the uh retired uh now uh hall of famer uh shaquille o'neal he was just an average baby when he was born i think he weighed about eight pounds you know and probably weighed about you know what maybe about 20 inches or something like that i remember the exact numbers but you can see that he's not he's not average now he grew up he grew really fast you know by by the time he was 13 years old he was already like like six nine okay but those are extremes the point i'm making is how much your child weighs at birth and how tall they are is not an indication how tall they're gonna be when they're full grown okay it's how fast they grow after that that determines it but by two years if you double their height that is a better approximation of how tall they're going to be the weight gain is mostly fat uh and that can help helps keep them warm and it's also a stir of nourishment that's what fat is fat is energy um and it's needed uh for survival like um that's what that's that's what you have if you have fat around your your belly or waste or your legs that is just extra energy that you're carrying around with you and if there should be a famine or something like that then you'll use up those reserves to survive and children gain weight most very quickly and most of it is fat it's a storage of nourishment it helps nourish the body they're growing very quickly okay there's something known as head sparing and what that means is that if nutrition is temporarily inadequate the body will stop growing but not the brain the brain is very important so if there is inadequate nutrients if there's not inadequate nourishment the brain will claim most of them and then the body will just basically stop growing and waste away we don't have to waste the weight but the body will stop growing and basically what that means is that children that are malnourished will be shorter than they otherwise could have been okay because the brain is more important it will claim most of the nutrients um weight by gender birth to 24 months see a graph here so boys uh over here and uh uh boys are uh the dotted lines or the the lines with the little squares and girls on the solid line okay uh the 90th percentile there right for boys you can see uh this is the 50th percentile in yellow there in brown and then the 10th percentile and you can see that this is aged months not years this is in months you can see they grow very quickly actually they actually this is weight they gain weight very quickly they also grow very quickly those of you who are more visual just a little bit about how quickly they gain weight um there are uh children who uh who may be classified as uh failure to thrive and those are infants that are at the bottom three percent of height and weight and that can be too due to the variety of uh of reasons so they're not growing properly they're not gaining weight properly um it could be due to a variety of reasons it could be gastrointestinal problems where they don't observe absorb nutrients properly they could have problems with the nervous system problems with the brain um you know or even some illness or some disease um i know a little girl actually she's close to being a teenager now um and i remember when she was a little girl her mother told me that uh she was a she wasn't failing to thrive but she was in the um only at that like that that like 10th percentile and she has uh leukemia okay which is a has the condition uh i believe that's to do with the blood um and um you know that makes it harder for that you know i guess uh i guess it affects um the absorption of nutrition or nutrients and things like that as and uh she you know well she's not tall okay she's in she's in a very low percentage but yes it could be caused by a variety of things could also be non-organic things like poverty okay neglect malnutrition malnutrition basically you know the parents just don't feed the the child or don't feed the child enough or feeding the child the wrong things neglect they don't care for the child they don't feed the child poverty they can't afford adequate food things like that not really too much of a problem in this country uh malnutrition but it is in other countries here in this country even the poor people uh can get enough to eat i mean there are plenty of uh organizations that will help those that are needy and poor and you know um so here in this country you don't have to being poor doesn't mean you're going to be malnourished um 50 of this these children that are classified as failure to thrive will experience physical cognitive and behavioral problems physical which means that you know they'll be more prone to illness and won't grow properly cognitive it will affect the development of the brain and learning and intelligence and also can have behavioral problems okay more likely to have you know problems like you know adhd and um or other things like that depending on the environment let's keep going let's talk more specifically about nutrition um the good thing about nutrition when you're a newborn is that breast milk provides everything you need for the first four to six months uh breast is best okay about 81 of newborns are breastfed um but that that drops to about 50 by six months by six months only about half of newborns are being breastfed and you know some mothers breastfeed longer than others uh my wife breastfed until maybe uh um i think about two years for my daughter which i think now that i think about it sounds like a lot then my son you know he got cut off at about one year of age i guess so you know she was nice to them i guess but um only about half are being breastfed by age six now there are some people who will breastfeed their kids much longer and um people are you know kind of shocked by some of these things but i've heard of cases and i even seen pictures like in magazines and things like that uh like you know like a mother who was still breastfeeding her child when he was like seven years old okay that's not necessary that's probably extreme but when it comes to breastfeeding it's up to you if you continue breastfeeding you will continue producing and when you stop breastfeeding you'll dry up so you can't stop and then pick it up later okay if you're gonna breastfeed you have to do it continuously because when you stop uh you will dry up but if you continue you know well i guess you can continue but um um i will tell you that uh there is a long breastfeeding usually longer in poor countries than to develop in richer countries because in poor countries nutrition is often inadequate so that's how they keep their babies healthy is by you know continuing to breastfeed them there has many benefits there's a positive emotional feeling uh for the mother there's a you know bonding with the with the infant right it really helps you bond and i don't know where the picture is uh sideways there it's not supposed to be sideways um but some weird things happen when you try to present on on an ipad or i guess in zoom i don't know what's really causing it there's also a reduced risk of breast cancer you know for the mother for some reason there's a reduced risk of breast cancer probably because she's producing uh well she's breastfeeding she's producing more breast milk and it probably has you know a lot of calcium uh and that also benefits her so reduced risk of breast cancer actually no bad the the calcium is will will cause lead a reduced risk of osteoporosis which is brittle bones but there's also reduced risk of breast cancer for some reason okay there's also reduced risk of asthma obesity heart disease and allergic reactions for the infant so the infant will be healthier will receive a lot of the antibodies that are in the mother's milk um and basically which will you know and that will make the the child less vulnerable to disease less likely to be obese less likely to have heart disease later on obesity and heart disease kind of go together less likely to have asthma so there's a lot of benefits it's uh it provides balance nutrition for the infant okay bret breast milk okay everything the infant needs at the beginning for like the first six months uh is in breast milk of course not everyone not breastfeed there's others who um who will use formula um breast milk is exclusively best for the first four to six months like i said uh during the first three days the type of breast milk that is that the breasts produce is called colostrum it's very thick and very high calorie uh from about four days to the second week it's called transitional milk it'll be known as transitional milk it's less concentrated you can start introducing other foods like you know soft cereals and fruits at like four to six months okay you know the little gerber you know little uh you know fruit and vegetable there it's really soft um you know and um it's very tasty actually the infants like it you can start introducing that in like four to six months um you know and uh but breastfeeding for about one or two years uh is actually uh is common okay uh now there are those who choose formula instead because breastfeeding can be inconvenient for a lot of people or some people don't want to don't want to breastfeed because uh you know there's a variety of reasons but usually it's because it's inconvenient you have to go back to work right away and uh well you know you can't be breastfeeding at work you can't take your baby with you most places that you know where you can work uh and breastfeed the baby there so uh by the way uh you can i mean some women will use a pump and pump out breast milk during their break while they're at work and then bring that home and uh and then bottle feed the baby but you can also use formula when you mostly it's uh you buy it in a powder you mix it with water and feed the baby that way bottle feed the baby you can buy a formula that's already mixed probably more expensive that way um feeding a child through formula is uh preferable if the mother has hiv uses drugs or has some other problem like that that can lead to uh problems for the infant that things that can be passed on to the infant so formula can be uh it is important to have that option so um yeah i mean what me and my wife did the first it was just breast uh breastfeeding she breastfed for a while she went back to work and she and she would pump and bring home breast milk um and then we started supplementing that with formula and then eventually was off of a bottle feeding altogether now there are infants who do not get enough nutrition who can suffer from what's called malnutrition it's not really a problem in the u.s like i said uh the us is a very rich country now uh there are a lot of people here who are poor now um not as much as in other countries but here there's a lot of safety nets you can call it there is help for those that are poor there's a there's food stamps and even if you're homeless and you don't you don't have much there are there are places that will provide food and shelters and things like that so here not a lot of people really suffer from malnutrition okay but it is a problem elsewhere in other countries in some very poor countries uh like in the middle east or in africa or even in south america and central america places like that although i will tell you that things are changing very quickly and those countries are developing also and uh you know malnutrition every year there's there's less and less of it but it's still it's still a big problem uh protein calorie malnutrition uh where the uh that happens when the infant doesn't get enough consumption of any food of any kind okay and they don't get enough protein because they don't get enough food okay and so they don't get enough protein that's eight percent of the world's children okay uh suffer from protein calorie malnutrition uh and that leads to severe weight loss severe illness and can even lead to death if um if it continues uh it will lead to stunting where the children will be too short for their age 33 of the world's children actually are too short for their age and that is due to uh not getting uh either the right amount of nutrients or not enough uh nutrients as a matter of fact if you're poor and you you know and you grow up uh you know being skinny and you don't have enough food and you actually experience hunger chances are when you're full grown when you're an adult chances are that you didn't grow as tall as you could have and we can see that now with countries that are developing um like in india [Music] a lot of people in india are still poor but used to be an even poor country and people there weren't that tall and now that the country is developing very rapidly by the way uh we're seeing that people from india india are getting tall they're getting taller okay uh wasting also happens uh where children are severely underweight for their age two standard deviations or more that's a statistical thing but it basically means they're severely underweight 25 of the world's children are basically uh undergo some kind some wasting where they are uh severely underweight and those numbers are decreasing year after year and yes it is a moral problem in poor countries like africa and in the middle east and latin america and other places uh stunting in children under five by region so you can see more common in places like south asia sub-saharan africa the middle east north africa east asia the pacific latin america as well north america europe not so common the richer countries basically there's a less malnutrition less wasting less stunting uh than in the poor countries but uh you know as countries and economies develop around the world uh poverty becomes uh less less common and then so does malnutrition africa asia you know all those places are developing very rapidly now a lot of investments being made a lot of infrastructure being built in those countries and as that happens as the country develops there's more jobs and then there's uh more income and then there's better uh outcomes for people and uh more and better nutrition um chronic malnutrition chronic malnutrition is a an even bigger problem malnutrition i mean suffering from malnutrition at some point or other i mean that's that's problematic but when the malnutrition is chronic which means that it continues and it's long-lasting that can lead to um to some severe irreversible problems if there's chronic malnutrition chronic means that it continues it lasts a long time okay or it could even be permanent let's say um so if there's chronic malnutrition the brain will not develop normally the brain will not develop normally and that means cognitive skills cognitive ability will suffer the child will not be as intelligent as the child could have been disease is also more lethal if there's chronic malnutrition 50 of infants around the world um 50 of the infant's deaths around the world are have some relationship to chronic malnutrition there's another type of chronic there's type of nutrition chronic malnutrition called merasmus where the body will stop growing and the body tissues waste away and then the infant eventually dies okay and then there's kwashiokur which is a protein deficiency where the face the legs and the abdomen will swell with water so they look like they have big bellies but they're actually very malnourished the essential organs are claimed uh and essential organs will claim the nutrients and the body will degrade the hair will usually be thin brittle and colorless so sometimes it can look like uh like you know like their hair is kind of blonde and they're just severely malnourished hair is very brittle and thin um let's talk about brain development because we are this is biosocial development so we talked a little bit about growth and about nutrition now let's talk about brain development we've been mentioning the brain here and there how the brain is affected by nutrition now we need to know some things about the brain review some things i don't know how much of this you guys got from other psych classes or psych 101 i know i covered this stuff but review a few things and then we can talk a little bit more about development so remember so there's an image of the brain there remember the uh the part of the brain called the cortex is the outer layer okay it is literally the outer layer that looks wrinkled okay cortex is basically means uh uh cerebral cortex basically means wrinkled brain okay so cortex means wrinkly so it's the ring it's the part of the brain that you see on the outside that's wrinkled the outer layer of the brain where most thinking feeling and sensing occurs okay that's that part of the the cortex of the brain and you can see the different regions there i'm not gonna read it it's very small but um it's a very important part of the brain the cerebral cortex and you have the the prefrontal cortex the prefrontal cortex is the very front part of the cortex and that's the front part of the brain okay that is specialized in things like anticipation planning impulse control attention self-awareness so the front the front part of the brain has been described as like the executive part of the brain where uh the decisions are made the part of the brain that allows you to control yourself to be aware of yourself to know that you're breathing and alive and be aware of what you're doing and things like that to focus and pay attention that's all the front part of the brain very important part of the brain it's the part that really distinguishes us uh from uh from other animals it's not really a prefrontal cortex and the ability for us to control ourselves to plan and to you know function uh in different ways the hindbrain which is toward the back um the hindbrain also called the brainstem so it's toward the back it's uh it's right where the spinal cord connects the hindbrain or brainstem uh region deep inside the brain that controls automatic responses like heart rate blood pressure breathing temperature arousal like sleeping and waking the hindbrain basically controls a lot of the things that we think of as automatic like your heart rate okay it goes up and down and it functions more or less automatically depending on what's happening if you get scared it's going to go up if you're sleeping or you're relaxed it'll go down it controls blood pressure all right controls your breathing but you can also have you also do have some control of your breathing okay uh it regulates temperature controls temperature and arousal and by arousal we mean when you get sleepy right and when you feel more awake that's all the hindbrain or the brainstem we also have the midbrain that's right in the middle there you can't really see it it's inside the inside the brain the midbrain connects the forebrain and heartbreaking so it connects the biggest part of the brain the part you can see on the outside okay and it controls the back of the brain it's involved in in some things that are that are reflexes so visual reflexes like uh basically uh eye movements and eyelid movements that you don't really think about that they kind of just happen like if somebody blows air into your eye your eyelids will close automatically okay also auditory reflexes okay like if you heat up hear a sudden sound you'll get startled okay also involved with uh with uh pain and movement okay uh that's all the midbrain um the midbrain is actually damaged and those that have parkinson's disease so that's the midbrain now the forebrain okay the forebrain is the biggest part there the part you can see okay and the wrinkly surface is cerebral cortex that is really uh what we're gonna what we need to know more about is more about the cerebral cortex but other parts will come up as well uh there's also the limbic system the limbic system is a is the part of the brain that actually uh helps produce emotions motivation and memory so the limbic system it contains things and this is inside the brain you can't really see it it's it's deeper inside the brain it contains things like the amygdala and the amygdala is responsible for aggression and fear like when you see like let's say a bear or something like that and you get scared that's because of the amygdala or if somebody jumps at you in an alley somewhere right you'll become scared and you'll also probably become aggressive and try to defend yourself that's the amygdala that controls that the hippocampus helps uh store and activate memory so the hippocampus is involved with memory it helps it helps store memories the hypothalamus is involved with the fight-or-flight response it actually responds to the amygdala which is involves which is control sphere and aggression and the hippocampus which involves memory to activate the fight-or-flight response so the thing is let's say you see a bear okay you see a bear right and uh what will happen is that the uh you'll see the bear in the hippocampus will help you remember that bears are dangerous and the amygdala will be triggered and uh and will basically make you become fearful and potentially aggressive should the bear attack and that and and that that whole set of responses involving memory the amygdala and all the different parts of the body the adrenal release of adrenaline is it involves a bunch of different structures actually even um you know a bunch of different structures okay all that is part of part of the fight-or-flight response it involves the activation of amygdala the hippocampus but also the adrenal glands increased heart rate blood pressure all those things um all part of the fight-or-flight response and the hypothalamus is the part of the brain that basically activates the fight-or-flight response the hip the hypothalamus also um regulates your sex glands your ovaries and your testicles which produce hormones by the way which can cause you know changes in the body okay but we'll talk about that uh later when we talk about development and then there's also the pituitary gland you can see there labeled in orange okay it's orange uh you know colored in orange there the pituitary gland also responds to the hypothalamus and serves as the master gland that controls many hormones the pituitary glands controls many hormones okay many hormones and glands like it controls your thyroid gland which which um regulates metabolism and your adrenal glands which release adrenaline for quick action and also cortisol which is a stress hormone which is also involved when there is a when you're anxious or fearful moving on okay so let's talk more about development those are just a little bit of a review as to different parts of the brain and what they do so brain development um so early brain development um believe it or not the brain is 75 of its adult weight by age two that doesn't mean it's 75 percent developed because it's gonna advance a lot more than that but it is it weighs 75 percent of what an adult brain weighs by age two and if you notice uh you know toddlers you know little kids uh they have big heads compared to the rest of their body and that's partly what makes them look cute and that's because their brain goes very rapidly and therefore the head their head is actually big compared to the rest of their body as they get older their body will lengthen and then the their head won't look as big you know compared to the rest of their body um you also have to know about neurons neurons are basically um you can call them brain cells nerve cells they allow the brain different brain areas to communicate with one another you're born with about a hundred billion of these neurons at birth and seventy percent of them are in the cortex seventy percent of them are in that wrinkly part of the brain and you have a motor cortex that controls movement a somatosensory cortex uh that allows you to understand what you're feeling so has to do with the sense of touch for instance an auditory cortex which lets you understand what you're hearing and a visual cortex which makes helps you understand uh what you are actually looking at okay all that is in the cortex and seventy percent of those neurons are in the cortex shaken baby syndrome um you know it's very tough to raise children they will frustrate you they'll get you very upset but shaking them is a very bad thing shaky baby syndrome is when um infants have been shaken uh violently and what it does is it ruptures blood vessels in their brain and breaks neuro breaks neural connections and basically leads to brain damage okay you don't want that to happen um there's uh yeah there's a graph that shows you brain weight um height and uh and weight um in uh the first two years compared to adults so children are their brains about 75 percent of they don't weight height is about 50 percent of two years and their weight well is less than 25 for of their adult weight there's an image there of a neuron more about brain development um the brain under undergoes something called pruning that's actually very important pruning is basically when unused unneeded neurons wither away and die so pruning is basically just uh the brain getting rid of the excess uh neurons that are not needed you're actually born with more neurons than you need and what happens is um you know as you uh grow and develop you know your you experience several things okay so you have to need proper nutrition as well in an environment you know you grow you develop you play you interact and as these things are happening as you're using your senses whether you're tasting things seeing things hearing things all those things and you're playing and hearing language all these things uh neurons are actually forming connections during those time during that time and the neurons that don't form connections whoa the neurons that don't form connection will actually die and that's part of pruning okay and that's actually a good thing now if neurons aren't properly pruned that can lead to fragile x syndrome fragile x syndrome is a condition where basically too many neurons survive and they they get in the way of each of the other neurons that are trying to connect and communicate and uh and actually yeah cause the problem known as fragile x syndrome which basically will involve cognitive problems you know lower intelligence because uh too many neurons have survived and they're actually impairing the ability of the brain to communicate so what needs to happen is because of experience and nutrition and all the different things that are going on neurons form connections the ones that are not needed wither away and die and leave the past kind of free for those that are needed so pruning is actually a good thing okay if too many neurons survive you'll have problems as a matter of fact and several types of children that actually have problems like like those that have uh cognitive problems or those that have other conditions um some uh some of them have bigger heads than they normally would um and and that's a um that's a symptom usually then if your head is too large it's actually a a sim it's actually a sign that there might be some some problem okay now keep in mind that children's head are large compared to the rest of their body um but there is such a thing as having too big of a head that usually indicates problem if your is actually too small that usually indicates problems as well there is a normal range of uh to head size and and brain size and if you're below or above that it usually indicates uh problems that uh lead to uh learning disorders uh more about early brain development um i don't know if you guys remember but there are these things called dendrites dendrites are these things that look like branches at the end of the neuron let me point some out actually and we go back see those things that look like branches there and green those are dendrites but over here this image over here this small one of a neuron here with the nucleus there um see as you go the things that look like branches there around that nucleus around that thing that looks like a cell neuron is a cell those things that look like branches those are dendrites okay dendrites are branch-like structures uh and there and they receive messages from other neurons and they allow for connections among [Music] neurons they usually end these little things called uh you know synaptic vesic uh terminal buttons okay this little this little thing that looks like a knob right there those are the terminal buttons um and the point at which the the terminal button there or the end of the of the dendrite there's a little gap between it and the next neuron so there's a little gap between neurons that's called the synapse that is the point of communication between neurons and neurons will release neurotransmitters neurotransmitters that will flow across from one neuron to the next and that's the way neurons communicate okay experience will enhance the brain thinking and learning require new connections so it's killed that it's good that children you know learn and play and hear lots of language and that they eat and smell things and touch things all that is experienced and it helps basically these uh neurons form connections form these synapses and basically it's and that will of course improve thinking and is uh it's part of development for these connections to be uh to be made experience will shape the brain and then the brain of course also affects experience transient exuberance is basically a five-fold increase in the cortex by age two so what happened prenatally where there was a six-fold increase and uh in neurons um and by from birth to about h2 um there will be a five-fold increase so the amount of dendrites that are on those neurons will increase five-fold so a lot of those you know things that look like branches will grow just like on a tree and they'll increase five-fold which basically is because the nor uh through children are experiencing things and the neurons are trying to connect and they're forming more connections they're for more of these dendrites which will lead more to more synapses more about brain development um the brain is uh is going to be affected by the environment okay uh like uh you know stress hormones like cortisol for instance uh will affect the developing brain a child that uh you know is exposed to too much stress or or has experiences that lead to too much stress um can actually will actually have uh problems it can lead to a hyper vigilant child so a child that is growing up in a very chaotic environment where they experience a lot of stress maybe there's a lot of violence or maybe it's just an environment that's always changing um or is scary they're exposed to a lot of things that scare them that can lead to a hyper vigilant child you know it's basically it's like the child is is hyper aware always scared that kind of stuff um or maybe an indifferent child where the child can kind of uh cope with that stressful environment by learning to tune things out and all that will affect the developing brain and will make it harder for the child to learn later on they're always stressed out they can't focus or if they're indifferent they learn to tune things out um then they've kind of uh their emotions are blunted and they will uh um you know uh their learning will also be affected by that i will move a little bit faster i only have 10 left on my ipad so i'll have to move a little bit faster hopefully we can get through this um at four months there's cell proliferation uh pruning their cell proliferation and pruning of vision and the hearing areas uh which means that if the child has a uh a hearing problem or a vision problem they need to know about that early on that's why you need to take your kid to the doctor frequently for checkups they need to check the child's hearing and vision if there are any problems they need to diagnose those problems very early before four months of age because by that time the brain will have pruned or will have basically the a lot of neurons will have already withered away and died and if the child can hear well and can't see well then the child will have lost neurons that would otherwise otherwise would have formed connections so the need to correct that hearing connect correct that vision six to 24 months uh language areas develop quickly children develop language very quickly and infants need to hear a lot of speech early on okay for those language areas to develop properly you can still develop language later on even if there are some problems this age and you don't hear a lot of language but uh you'll be behind and you won't be as fluent as you could have been um language seems to have what we call a sensitive period a time when certain aspects of development are uh where a certain aspect of development is most is most likely to occur so language is a sensitive period it language develops more easily uh early in life in those first years of life so children need to hear a lot of language and be exposed to a lot of language because that they learn language very quickly and develop more easily then later on if they're deprived and they don't hear any language it'll be harder for them to learn language later on think of it this way it's a lot easier for you to learn a foreign language or easier for you to learn language in general when you are young than when you are older you can learn a foreign language very easily or a language very easily when you're a you know an elementary school kid and you're a kid in general uh then then when you're an adult it's it's a lot harder when you're an adult you can do it when you're an adult but it's harder so language is sensitive it happens more easily early on more about brain development um there was this uh experiment that was done with rats where some rats were raised in an enriched environment and other rats in a deprived environment and you know the rats in the enriched environment had a large cage uh with with these little wheels that they could run on and little tunnels and all kinds of things all kinds of things to stimulate them and then there were other rats that raised in a deprived environment in a small cage with little more than just food and water and we're isolated by the way from other rats part of the enriched environment is that you know for the rats and the enriched environments that they were also with other rats and then later on they you know they killed the rats they dissected their brains and they found that the rats raised an enriched environment heart larger heavier brains more dendrites so more developed brains they were probably smarter uh we can't do such experiments in humans but there are things that have happened uh with horrible things that have happened to human beings we can learn similar things like in romania in the 1980s there were a hundred thousand children that were put in uh crowded orphanages the government basically encouraged that for people to have lots of kids and then people couldn't take care of all those kids and 100 000 of them were putting all these crowded orphanages and if you're in a crowded orphanage you're not going to get a lot of attention all the stimulation that you need you're not going to be properly cared for and fed some of those children were adopted before the age of six months those children that were adopted early had a normal iq by age 11. you know obviously they were paired at the beginning but by 11 they were fine those that were adopted after six months after six months had an average iq of 85 by age 11 which is below average so the earlier they escaped that impoverished environment that really horrible environment uh being in a crowded orphan orphanage where they're probably being neglected um you know the better off they were stress social deprivation lack of stimulation all harm the developing brain that's the lesson from that let's talk about neonatal states um newborns alternate among uh four different states okay states of mind uh they could be uh you know they could go through what we call alert inactivity which means that they're calm they're attentive their eyes are open they're inspecting the environment they're awake but they're not active okay they're awake and alert but they're not very active not moving around much there's also waking activity um in which the baby's eyes are open but they seem unfocused they move the little arms and legs and bursts of uncoordinated motion so they're awake and they're active okay there's crying babies cry very often a confident accompanied by agitated uncoordinated emotion uh that's what babies do a lot they cry a lot that's how they communicate with you they cry to tell you they're not happy okay that they're cold that they're hungry oh you know that they're tired that's how they communicate with you and they spend a lot of time sleeping and let's talk about sleep because children spend a lot of time sleeping okay most of what newborns do is sleep actually newborns sleep an average of 15 17 hours a day okay and a lot of this rem sleep you know sleep that involves rapid eye movement um by three to four months um they get more what we call slow wave sleep uh it's important that children sleep the newborn sleep regular ample sleep okay proper amounts of sleep are correlate with brain maturation learning emotional regulation psycho adjustment in school and with the family children that sleep well uh are growing uh properly brains developing normally and are you know it all that while you're sleeping the brain is the brain is uh you know the brain is mapping connections it's doing several things and it all that allows for learning emotional regulation psychological adjustment so it's very important that children get a proper amount of sleep especially early on okay growth hormones are also uh released while children sleep and they need that for proper growth if the children isn't sleeping properly uh they can also their growth can also be impaired because growth hormone is is released while you sleep uh by age one uh the uh child's uh sleep uh pattern should resemble that of adults eighty percent of all one-year-olds sleep through the night uh however that's if you're lucky there are some children that will not sleep through the night for years both my son and daughter drove us crazy when it came to sleeping they would wake up all the time and cry and want to be comforted go back to sleep wake up again they drove us crazy okay and that is why it's very hard to raise children because they really deprive you of sleep especially at the beginning most of you will be okay by one year later but some children will deprive you of sleep for years sudden infant death syndrome is something related to sleep that we need to talk about that's very important um sometimes when children are sleeping during the night infants they'll just suddenly stop breathing and die about it happens to about 1 in 400 children in the u.s 400 newborns it is recommended that infants should be put to sleep on their backs to reduce the chance of this because when infants sleep on their backs they have less chance of suffocating you know because when infants uh uh lie on their backs um you know they won't basically uh block their uh you know their nose their nasal passages and will be able to breathe the thing about children is um you should not put them to sleep on their stomachs because uh like before seven months of age they can't really turn themselves over so if they end up on their stomach they can't hold their neck up very well as well they don't have much strength they could end up suffocating but for several reasons you know it's better that you put them to sleep on their back studies show that when the sleeping rate decrease when stomach sleeping decreased from 70 to 30 percent so they encourage mothers to put infants to sleep uh on their backs rather than their stomachs right the rate of sids dropped from 1.2 to 0.7 per thousand in that study so the rate of sids was uh almost cut in half so it's important that you put babies to sleep on their back leave out all the little toys and all the warm fuzzy blankets where they can suffocate but sometimes infants will just stop breathing and die and it's not because they suffocated sometimes it just happens and that's called sudden infant death syndrome it's very devastating uh let's talk about newborn abilities neonatal abilities so what can newborns do well all their senses are are active they can see they can hear they can taste smell and touch all those are present at birth but they're immature they will develop further infants can see best objects that are 40 to 30 inches away and this interest interestingly enough um that's the way it is when you hold the baby you might be four inches away or 30 inches away if you hold them up at arm's length but they can see best at about that distance at the beginning when they're newborns infants prefer to look at human faces okay uh that's it's part of their their brain is kind of primed to recognize human faces um of course experience and maturation of the visual cortex uh will improve shape recognition visual scanning and deep and detail as their visual cortex as that part of the brain that that basically uh deciphers vision as it develops they'll get a lot better at not just seeing things but recognizing things and scanning the environment binocular vision develops by age but by three months of age which means that binocular vision is when they basically uh both eyes can kind of uh you know focus in the same direction okay um before that infants can seem cross-eyed where one eye is looking in one direction and the other eye is looking in another direction so you know that's uh they may seem that way before they develop binocular vision the ability of their eyes to basically look in the same direction at the same time in order to focus other neonate abilities so infants can hear okay at the beginning they can listen and localize sounds at birth right they can listen and look in the direction of the sound localized sound even turn their head at the beginning okay if they're if they have that ability if they're not if they're not too young uh infants will learn to recognize the caregivers smell and touch by the way okay um they'll learn to recognize that uh and the and they also have the sense of taste uh research shows that uh the taste of sugar can calm a two-week-old infant you can help them stop crying a four-week-old infant um can be calm by the taste of sugar but they also require a human face to look at them uh reassuringly so four week olds it's not just a taste of sugar but a face looking at them telling that it's okay will calm them down the senses are used primarily for interaction with the caregiver they look at the internet their caregiver touch the caregiver you know and you know all those they smell the cat you know those things for interaction really and for comfort to be soothed right touch is very soothing to them right you know and so are sounds and looking at certain things so all that the senses are used for all those things for infants primarily interaction and for comforting and you can see the images over here this little girl definitely has uh the sense of taste okay definitely has that she bites into us there uh a slice of lemon and then you can see her reaction at the end she can definitely detect the the sour taste showing that infants yes do have the ability to taste let's talk about uh movement what about movement there's two kinds of movement okay there's gross motor movement and there's spine motor movement gross motor movement is movement that involves large muscles okay large bones and muscles um for five-month-old that usually involves you know wiggling they can wiggle they can move forward by using their arms shoulders and legs so large body movements they can't do very much by eight to ten months infants can crawl by lifting up their midsection using their arms and legs twelve months they learn to climb on couches and chairs 16 months they're walking and running these all involve uh large bones and muscles gross motor movements walking and running starts out very hesitantly so they don't do very well at the beginning and then it becomes smooth and speedy and coordinating by the way research shows that african americans acquire walking and running they start walking and running before uh latinos and before european americans so some truth there to the stereotype that african americans are better at movement and we see all those evident all that evidence in sports on average not all african-americans but on average they do start walking sooner um than other babies here's a chart that tells you some of these uh uh some of the things that children can do at uh a certain age right when they can sit and hold their head steady uh fifty percent of infants can do it at three months four perce 95 percent can do it at four months right sit unsupported you can see the chart there i'm not going to go through all of it because i want to make sure i get through this i have six percent of battery life left um i guess i should and i didn't bring a charger with me so i can't plug it in uh motor movement uh other motor movements also fine motor movement now fine motor movement includes uh is movement that involves small bones and muscles so they are smaller more coordinated movements by two months infants can wave and stare at an object that's dangling three months they will try to reach and touch it okay by four months they may grab the object but their timing is off and grabbing does involve fine motor movements they're using little fingers they're little muscles six to nine months they'll reach grab and hold an object of the right size by one year they master the pincer movement the pincer movement is where they say they can put their index finger and thumb together you know to grab something first they master it with their hands doing it with their hands okay just fold their hands so to speak then with their fingers and then they can do that with utensils they master the pincer movement by two years their grabbing becomes more selective as they learn rules uh more about motor movement so there's dynamic systems which underlie motor skills um three three elements that underlying motor skills three things that are needed okay first is muscle strength that will develop as they get older as they grow also brain development is needed and practice so they need their muscles to get stronger and they'll get stronger they develop and as they practice things their brain will develop and as they develop their brain develops they will get better at movement and of course as they practice that will also affect the developing brain so muscle strength brain development and practice are all important for the children developing movement proper movements or getting just getting better at that immunizations okay immunizations are important okay and an immunization is about or a vaccine you know it's basically a small dose of an active virus to stimulate production of antibodies an immunization could be a vaccine or they give you a small dose of an of an uh of an active virus to stimulate production of the antibodies okay so stimulate antibodies in the body which will then protect you uh from disease and illness uh measles whooping cough pneumonia all kinds of other diseases and illnesses claimed a lot of children's lives okay before those vaccines became available no longer now those things are not as common okay there's no vaccines for age malaria cholera typhoid fever lots of things now i know that there is some people there are some people who don't believe in vaccines they believe it causes autism uh you should know okay the science is clear vaccines do not cause autism and those anti-vaxxes vaxxers as they're called are putting their children at great risk and because of these anti-vaxxers we are seeing an increase in these diseases and illnesses that we thought we had wiped out we thought we'd gotten rid of and now they're making a comeback because of that okay please do not be misinformed do not be ignorant the science is clear on this don't believe something just for political reasons especially when it comes to your children's health okay vaccines are useful okay and have saved a lot of children's lives and that is it guys that is where we'll stop i will stop recording