Developing Healthy Childhood Brains: A Guide for Parent and Teacher Partnerships

By Thalia Veintimilla

What happens to the brain in early childhood years-at school and at home-can have a direct influence on the rest of a person's life.

Developing Healthy Childhood Brains is designed to help teachers and parents work together for the benefit of young children, when their young brains are undergoing crucial phases of dev

• Language: English
• Publisher: Endeavor Literary Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781736873434

Thalia Veintimilla

Thalía Veintimilla was born in Ecuador and spent part of her childhood in the Czech Republic. After studying international affairs and conflict resolution at the University of Denver, she focused on childrearing and education. She has educated parents and school officials about childhood emotional wellbeing and academics, helping to build a stronger bridge between educators and parents.

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Developing Healthy Childhood Brains

A Guide for Parent and Teacher Partnerships

Developing Healthy Childhood Brains:

A Guide for Parent and Teacher Partnerships

Copyright © 2022 by Thalía Veintimilla

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews. For information, contact the publisher.

Published by Endeavor Literary Press

P.O. Box 49272

Colorado Springs, CO 80949

www.endeavorliterary.com

ISBN Print Version: 978-1-7368734-2-7

ISBN Ebook: 978-1-7368734-3-4

Cover Design: James Clarke (United Kingdom) jclarke.net

Dedication

I dedicate this book first to my children, for they have helped me discover my inner child. I also dedicate the book to all the children of the world. I hope that each one will be touched by wonderful people. This book is also dedicated to all those people who work with children: the many amazing educators who passionately invest in children, the parents who want to see our children become future leaders, and government officials who hope to facilitate great childhoods. If we can all work together for the sake of the children, we will be better able to live at peace with ourselves.

Developing Healthy Childhood Brains

A Guide for Parent and Teacher Partnerships

Thalía Veintimilla

Introduction

What’s done to children, they will do to society.

Karl A. Menninger

The brain is a marvelous masterpiece. With the brain, we have created amazing machines; glasses to see better; computers to record our thoughts; and boats, trains, airplanes, and space shuttles to transport us around the world and beyond the atmosphere.

The human brain begins to develop early in pregnancy. What starts as wonderful cells soon becomes something ingenious, enabling a person to learn how to walk and speak. The brain makes us. In many ways, we are walking brains. Importantly, the brain is shaped and molded by our experiences from the time we are born, through childhood, and until we are adults.

Childhood experiences—perhaps created by the simplest parenting style or the toughest school system—affect what happens as the brain develops. These childhood experiences shape the brain to create a secure or insecure person, someone who either lives a thankful life or in resentment. What happens early in life influences what happens later in life. It is for this reason that I wrote this book. I had one simple motive: to help teachers and parents work together for the benefit of children, when their young brains are undergoing crucial phases of development.

Thanks to the brain’s ability to adapt later in life, the outcomes of negative childhood experiences are not set in stone. However, neuroscience has demonstrated that a poorly developed child’s brain can cause serious problems in adulthood. How do we prevent those problems from happening? I believe that part of the answer is to forge stronger partnerships between parents and teachers. Children typically grow up within two primary environments: home and school. It is in these two arenas that the brains of children are shaped—for better or worse. If parents and teachers work together to provide healthy environments, children will flourish.

Despite their crucial roles in childhood brain development, the adults who design home and school environments for children rarely have a common factual guide for designing environments that foster healthy brain development. Moreover, collaboration between parents and teachers is generally limited. This disconnection and lack of collaboration can have detrimental outcomes.

The relative lack of collaboration is understandable. Educators often have more training and knowledge about childhood brain development than parents, at least as it pertains to pedagogy. Therefore, the expertise of teachers might make parents feel like they have little to offer. Parents lacking knowledge and time (due to professional demands) might simply place all the responsibility for children on the shoulders of teachers.

This book provides a simple framework designed to give parents and teachers what they need to participate together in a child’s neurological development. I will address the primary factors that influence healthy brain development in the context of both schools and homes. The neurological facts have been verified by a Ph.D. neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology.

I hope the book will be used collaboratively by parents and teachers, so that there is alignment and unity between them. With everyone working together and using the same framework, we can prevent many problems during childhood and prevent tragic outcomes in adults.

Chapter 1

The Fragile and Amazing Brain

A mong its many functions, the brain is a recording machine. In children, the brain is extremely busy making connections and documenting information from daily experiences. Depending on the experience, such connections can play a role in helping the person survive future hardships, or they can make it harder to cope with difficult situations. In times of urgent need, the brain is usually wired to provide support.

When the brain has reached a certain stage of development, it has usually learned how to cope better with difficulties. However, if a child’s support system has been anemic and unsteady, connections through the neurotransmitters become debilitated. The chemical neurotransmitters either