Editorials

Healthy Relationships Key to Healthy Brain Development

Through my work and involvement with The Urban Child Institute, I have learned that during the first three years of a child's life, family, home environment, and interactions with adults are the major factors in shaping the mental foundation for learning. Making the most of children's early upbringing has the potential to improve education and health and decrease poverty and unemployment – issues that are of great interest to me as someone who is concerned about the future of our community and our country.

Talk to Your Baby - in Utero and Out

Has anyone ever told you how important it is to talk to your baby? Have you thought to yourself, "That's silly; my baby is too little to know what I am saying"? Even though babies can't answer back in conversation, that isn't an excuse not to talk to them. Studies have shown that the more you talk to your baby, the greater the chance he or she has of learning to speak and understand words.

Make Time for Story Time

Everyone is familiar with the "three Rs": Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. This phrase has long been used to describe the essential components of education – the three skill areas that all subsequent learning is built upon. But there is another phrase that we wish were just as familiar: Touch, Talk, Read, Play, or TTRP. These represent the most important activities that parents share with their babies and toddlers, and when it comes to learning, they are just as important as the three Rs.

Talking Children Up

Children who hear calm voices and a variety of words have a much greater chance of academic achievement, physical health, and well-being. Babies who are not stimulated by calm conversation are more likely to struggle to learn and less likely to make positive contributions to our community as adults. A child's brain development irrevocably changes, based on the words that she hears in the first three years of life.

Kids Need the Proper Kind of Touch

Touch can be a touchy subject. Child sexual abuse has long been a taboo topic. Only in recent years has it come to the surface in public discourse. Stories of children abused by adults in positions of trust or authority are frequently the focus of headlines, talk shows and television dramas.

Youngest Citizens Rightfully Lead Our Agenda

The past few weeks have reminded me yet again how special Memphis is -- the accessibility of our public leadership, the willingness by city government to reach out to the public for help, and the creation of a civic agenda that we can all embrace and support. There has been one important thread running through the fabric of these recent events -- early childhood development -- and it's being woven by the smart thinkers at The Urban Child Institute.

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