Growth versus Development: Your Baby’s Brain and Body Working Together

Dr Melodie de Jager and Cozette Laubser explore the connection between babies’ physical growth and their ability to reach developmental milestones.

Neuroscience indicates that babies are born with more brain cells than they will ever use. Depending on the range of a baby’s movements during the first year of life, unused brain cells die off at a rate of 10,000 brain cells per day. The greater the variety of movement, the greater the brain development that takes place. The number of brain cells is not what is most important, what is important is the number of connections between the brain cells.

A sense of connection

Nature has a few simple, but profound methods for forging connections. This enables growth and development to take place. Connections need to happen in 3 areas:

• Between the senses and the brain.
• Between various brain areas.
• Between the brain and the muscles.

How does this happen?

When a baby is born and immediately placed on mum’s chest for the very first time, it is the senses of touch, smell and taste that send information to the brain and signal, “This is my mom”. The baby does not recognise mom by sight initially but through touch, familiar movement, natural body odour (smell) and taste. The baby smelled and tasted amniotic fluid for close to 9 months in utero, and as the baby is placed on the mom’s chest, skin-to-skin, without first removing or washing off the amniotic- and birth fluids, the baby’s nervous system perks up to instantly recognise mom.

When the baby’s brain recognises the sensory information, the happy hormones start to dance and the brain reflexively instructs the muscles to cuddle up, latch, and feed peacefully.

Growth versus development

Growth happens when your baby increases in size – gaining weight and length. You can track this growth with the Road to Health Card. Development on the other hand happens when the number of connections between the senses, brain and muscles increase, and the baby acquires the skills that will support the baby to reach milestones, refine skills, make further connections and then reach more complex milestones. So the cycle will continue to support the baby’s future development.

When a baby is allowed to move and play freely from the very start, the chances are great that the baby will reach every motor milestone – like rolling, sitting, crawling and walking – on time and in sequence. Baby milestones are beacons of progress, they indicate when a brain developmental milestone has been reached.

Milestones reached in sequence have a cumulative effect. Every motor milestone utilises the connections formed during the previous developmental phase and builds on them. This cumulative and spontaneous journey from one milestone to the next also requires the baby’s muscles to grow and develop.

Brain development will echo in body development and body development will reflect in brain development ~ Cozette Laubser

Earlier isn’t better

Because milestones are viewed as indicators of brain development, reaching milestones in sequence is important, and so it is also important to allow sufficient time, and therefore sufficient repetition within every developmental phase. Research indicates that it takes thousands of repetitions to form a strong neural connection – some say 10,000 hours and others say 50,000 repetitions. Either way, it takes time and many repetitions to wire and develop a healthy, happy and clever brain.

Let’s use crawling as an example – Encourage your baby to crawl for as long as possible. Once the baby becomes mobile we tend to want to pull the baby into a standing position, but this can cut the time spent on all-fours short. Depending on your baby’s activity level, crawling for 2-4 months offers ample time to get the needed repetitions, and  therefore benefits, from this brain-boosting milestone.

Seeing is believing

While the young baby cannot yet communicate verbally, the baby’s movements, sounds and cries tell us what is taking place on the inside.

Above: While lying on her tummy, her core engages to support her head in an upright position and her muscles lift her upper body off the ground. It seems that she is on her way to the toy, but that something else has caught her eye. The baby is aware of her environment, she is engaged and she is smiling – these are all indicators of healthy development. The senses, brain and muscles are appropriately engaged.

Above: His open hands show he is calm and comfortable with textures. In BabyGym we also refer to an open hand as a learning hand, while a closed hand is referred to as a resting hand. In some cases, a closed hand can also indicate a hand that is protecting or wants to limit the sensory experience. His eyes are focused on something or someone and his facial expression displays interest. This is another example of a little one developing well. Again, the senses, brain and muscles are appropriately engaged.

Encourage repetition in the right environment

If we want the senses and muscles to work as often as possible, we need to create development opportunities rather than confine a body to a chair.

When we refer to the environment of the baby, we refer to their actual play and living space. Is the little one regularly placed on the floor to stretch out, lengthen the spine and develop the appropriate muscle tone or is the baby constantly placed in contraptions that trap the body and restrict movement? The baby’s day-to-day environment should encourage ample movement. When the senses and muscles are engaged, developmental opportunities arise.

Babies need very little to be ‘entertained’. Placing one or two household items, like a clean wash sponge or an empty paper towel roll, in their view will be sufficient. Once they have explored the item sufficiently, remove it, and replace it with something else. Items simply need to differ in size, shape, material, texture and colour to tease their senses.

Undercover development

Often parents do not know how to gauge their baby’s development as it does not seem that much has changed over the first few months – They might show, touch, name and explain, yet feel that baby gives very little back in return.

Let the Chinese Bamboo serve as encouragement and a reminder of the importance of the fundamental first years:

According to Stephen Covey, the Chinese Bamboo grows 1cm in the first year. In the second year, it grows another centimetre, and in the third year, it grows, ever so consistently, another centimetre. But, in its fourth year, the bamboo shoots up to 10m!

What happened in the first three years to enable that growth spurt in the fourth year? While it may seem that not much happened in the first three years, we were focusing on the growth above the ground, while the root system was growing and developing at an astonishing rate below the surface.

It is the developmental quality of the root system that ultimately anchors the whole Chinese Bamboo for the remainder of its lifetime.

In the first 1,000 days of a human baby’s life, it might not seem that anything significant is happening. But, rest assured, the root system of the body, called the nervous system, has the tremendous potential to develop and just like to root system of the Chinese Bamboo, the nervous system will ground your child to continue to grow and develop as a whole person, for many years to come.

Be involved and see results

An involved parent is the greatest developmental gift. When a parent interacts with the baby and playfully introduces and repeats words, names, songs and rhymes – those playful interactions are met with great enthusiasm and as the baby responds, the parent is motivated to repeat the interactions until every little pathway is strengthened and becomes a permanent piece of that little ones’ brain architecture.

Reaching milestones in sequence

As your little one moves from one milestone to the next acknowledge this incredible achievement and celebrate your little one’s hard work. The more your baby senses and moves, the closer your baby moves to reaching the next developmental milestone. Every milestone reached does not only represent that particular developmental phase but reflects your little one’s cumulative efforts.

When your baby:

• suckles rhythmically
• learns to hold the head in position
• rolls to both sides
• sits without support
• crawls on all-fours
• pulls up into standing
• cruises along furniture
• and finally walks without support

your baby communicates that the fundamental gross motor milestones have been reached – milestones in both the body and the brain. The baby is now ready to leave babyhood and venture into toddlerhood. In the toddler’s world, there are new challenges to meet and new milestones to conquer. Here, motor milestones will continue to build in complexity, plus emotional and social milestones will now take the lead.

IN SUMMARY

The first 1000 days offer an immense opportunity to set your child up for a great start to life. Take the golden nuggets from this article and foster them as a lifestyle – keep it simple, stay close to the floor, know you are your child’s greatest developmental tool, be present, encourage repetition, keep an eye on the big motor milestones and encourage your little one to reach them in sequence. Be in awe of your little ones’ progress and know that the baby years are developing the root system that will anchor your child for the rest of their life!