Childhood Brain Development - Part 1 The Early Childhood Brain

No other organ in our body is as complex as the human brain. This is where the body's signals converge, are processed and used for future behavior or body reactions. You can read about how the child's brain develops here.

Important stages in a child's brain development

• The connection between the two halves of the brain strengthens around the age of one or two. The exchange of information that this enables improves language development and motor skills.
• At the age of four you can see another leap here. Communication between the analytical and the intuitive side increases. Appearance and reality can increasingly be differentiated, the child learns what a lie is but also that not everyone thinks and feels the same. The empathy increases.
• From around the age of three or four, the child can also make full use of their memory. Anything before this period is called infantile amnesia because there are few long-term memories about it.
• The child reaches a further stage of intellectual maturity at around six years of age. Now the frontal lobe matures and enables logic, strategy and arithmetic. Self-control increases, acting out of affect fades into the background. The child can, within certain limits, better and better control himself emotionally and adapt his behavior.

Accompany brain development with the right toys

If you look at the development of the brain, you will quickly see that toys fulfill different tasks, depending on their age.

A puzzle can be an interesting object for babies to feel with their mouth and hands. The puzzle with its different colors and shapes is interesting for toddlers. After all, the kindergarten child has friends solving the puzzle. 

So use toys in a way that suits your child's current stage of development. Incidentally, your child is the best yardstick here.

Read in our second part: Brain Development from Elementary School to Teenagers