we’ve all seen pictures of a newborn
baby unborn baby sucking its thumb in
the womb so why does it take the average
newborn baby about eight weeks before it
can do the same in our lab we have been
studying our movements in newborns and
we find that babies are very capable of
moving their arms in a sophisticated way
actually our newborns are born with very
unfortunate body proportions that make
the coordination of movements difficult
first of all to accommodate the large
human brain babies are born with a head
a quarter of their total body size so
imagine having to go around your daily
business with the head the size and
weight of a watermelon on your shoulders
secondly to make up for the fact that we
don’t have any fur to keep us warm our
newborns are born quite chubby and add
to this the fact that we all have been
floating in a watery environment for the
past nine months and you end up and
without being capable of producing
muscles strong enough that can cope with
gravity and you end up with the recipe
for disaster when it comes to the
controlled coordination of movements so
although our babies look clumsy that
doesn’t necessarily mean that they that
their movements can be dismissed as just
excited thrashing of the limbs like I
said before in our lab we’ve been
studying our movements from newborn
babies and we find that they actually
can control these are movements quite
precisely and that these and that they
are under visual control from the start
and that is very important for the later
development of I hand coordination so we
have seen that newborns move their arms
more when they can see them and when we
attach small weights around their wrists
effectively pulling the arms away in the
direction of the toes away from the face
then they resist the weights and keep
their arms moving in front of their face
to be able to see them also when we put
the newborns in a dark room only
allowing them to see their own arms in a
narrow beam of light we see that the
babies find this spot within half a
minute and keep their arms there showing
that newborn babies learn extremely fast
and these findings actually have
implications for the way we treat our
newborn babies all outdated theories
dictate the view of the newborn baby as
helpless uncommunicative little
creatures incapable of producing
anything more than involuntary reflexive
and purposeless movements an
unresponsive baby endless trying
sleepless nights for hourly feeds no
wonder that many parents new parents
become desperate and find the first few
months of their baby’s life hard and
undeserved work and then it’s good to
know that newborn babies are very
interested in watching colorful high
contrast pictures that they are
fascinated by the human face that they
can swipe a toy suspended from their
coat and that they can recognize both
sounds smells tastes voices and songs
even from the fetal period and realizing
that your very own newborn baby is a
cape
individual that you can relate to and
play with from day one should make those
early weeks less of a strain many new
parents are warned not to interfere in
their baby’s development and they’re
told that they shouldn’t try to speed up
the baby’s development and this mindset
dates from the late 1800s where most
people believed that our genes determine
who we are and that child development
occurs independently of the amount of
simulation a baby receives even today in
our part of the world we are told that
it’s harmful to hasten development and
that child development will and shall
occur naturally
so our babies have to learn to roll over
by themselves and they’re not supposed
to support their own weight before they
can sit or stand on their own this is to
avoid back problems and Oh legs or bow
legs like a cowboy meanwhile in other
parts of the world in most other parts
of the world early stimulation is
considered essential for development and
they practice early stimulation in the
mothers in Kenya Cameroon Mali India and
Pakistan are convinced that they have to
teach their babies all the motor
milestones as well as how to use a spoon
and go to the toilet and as a result
babies who grow up in these cultures
where early stimulation is thought to be
so important they are much ahead in
their development than our babies and
usually the
babies are fully potty-trained by the
time their one year of age the brains of
young children are very malleable which
means that they easily adapt to what is
happening around them modern research
shows that early decision also speeds up
developed brain development we use EEG
technology which allows us to pick up
electrical activity from the brain
baby’s scalp and we find that the
neurons and especially the connections
between between neurons increase in
number and become more specialized as
the baby develops new skills and becomes
more mobile initially babies are only
capable of lying flat on their backs
staring up at the ceiling and during
those early few months they are they
don’t need to be able to perceive
direction and speed of motion however we
see that only after a few weeks of
crawling experience babies are processed
this kind of information much faster and
they’re able to differentiate between
different visual motion so changes in
local motor abilities trigger brain and
cognitive behavior so travel really
seems to be broadening the mind but this
means that we need to stimulate our
babies and challenge them from the day
they are born they need to get the
opportunity to explore the world using
their bodies and all of their senses
indoors and outdoors and in all kinds of
weather the brains of young babies are
very malleable which means that they is
we adapt to things that are happening
around them and when the networks are
research in language development shows
this very clearly babies across the
world are when they’re very young
sensitive to all the sounds produced in
all the languages all over the world but
by the time they’re eight months of age
they’ve lost this ability so Chinese
babies for example they hear the
difference between the sound and the
whole sound when they’re four months of
age but by the time they get older they
have lost this ability so the and this
is what we mean when we say that you use
it or lose it principle the neural
networks in the brain stay when they are
used but when they’re not used they
disappear to make place for other
networks that are being used since so
much is happening in the brain during
the first three years of life it’s
easier to promote learning and to
prevent problems when children are very
young toddlers can’t be held responsible
for their own learning so it’s up to us
adults to see to it it’s actually quite
easy to teach a two-year-old both to
swim and to read but they need to have
access to water or letters and potential
problems are likely to manifest
themselves in the rapid development
during the first two years of life and
then it’s very important to deal with
these problems immediately rather than
hoping rather than to wait and see to
cross our fingers and to hope that the
child will grow
it’s very very important that all our
babies and young children have access to
as many and as varied experiences as
possible so that they can explore the
world around them and everything in it
using their whole bodies all of their
senses language and through
relationships with meaningful people in
that context many people worry about the
time toddlers spend behind the screen in
my opinion it’s not so much about what
the children are doing during screen
time it’s more about all the things they
should be doing instead during the first
three years of life the brains
infrastructure is formed the neural
networks in the brain go from faint and
windy trails in the forest to high-speed
motorways instead of under estimating
our babies we should treat them as
competent individuals with a huge
potential for learning thank you [Applause]
baby unborn baby sucking its thumb in
the womb so why does it take the average
newborn baby about eight weeks before it
can do the same in our lab we have been
studying our movements in newborns and
we find that babies are very capable of
moving their arms in a sophisticated way
actually our newborns are born with very
unfortunate body proportions that make
the coordination of movements difficult
first of all to accommodate the large
human brain babies are born with a head
a quarter of their total body size so
imagine having to go around your daily
business with the head the size and
weight of a watermelon on your shoulders
secondly to make up for the fact that we
don’t have any fur to keep us warm our
newborns are born quite chubby and add
to this the fact that we all have been
floating in a watery environment for the
past nine months and you end up and
without being capable of producing
muscles strong enough that can cope with
gravity and you end up with the recipe
for disaster when it comes to the
controlled coordination of movements so
although our babies look clumsy that
doesn’t necessarily mean that they that
their movements can be dismissed as just
excited thrashing of the limbs like I
said before in our lab we’ve been
studying our movements from newborn
babies and we find that they actually
can control these are movements quite
precisely and that these and that they
are under visual control from the start
and that is very important for the later
development of I hand coordination so we
have seen that newborns move their arms
more when they can see them and when we
attach small weights around their wrists
effectively pulling the arms away in the
direction of the toes away from the face
then they resist the weights and keep
their arms moving in front of their face
to be able to see them also when we put
the newborns in a dark room only
allowing them to see their own arms in a
narrow beam of light we see that the
babies find this spot within half a
minute and keep their arms there showing
that newborn babies learn extremely fast
and these findings actually have
implications for the way we treat our
newborn babies all outdated theories
dictate the view of the newborn baby as
helpless uncommunicative little
creatures incapable of producing
anything more than involuntary reflexive
and purposeless movements an
unresponsive baby endless trying
sleepless nights for hourly feeds no
wonder that many parents new parents
become desperate and find the first few
months of their baby’s life hard and
undeserved work and then it’s good to
know that newborn babies are very
interested in watching colorful high
contrast pictures that they are
fascinated by the human face that they
can swipe a toy suspended from their
coat and that they can recognize both
sounds smells tastes voices and songs
even from the fetal period and realizing
that your very own newborn baby is a
cape
individual that you can relate to and
play with from day one should make those
early weeks less of a strain many new
parents are warned not to interfere in
their baby’s development and they’re
told that they shouldn’t try to speed up
the baby’s development and this mindset
dates from the late 1800s where most
people believed that our genes determine
who we are and that child development
occurs independently of the amount of
simulation a baby receives even today in
our part of the world we are told that
it’s harmful to hasten development and
that child development will and shall
occur naturally
so our babies have to learn to roll over
by themselves and they’re not supposed
to support their own weight before they
can sit or stand on their own this is to
avoid back problems and Oh legs or bow
legs like a cowboy meanwhile in other
parts of the world in most other parts
of the world early stimulation is
considered essential for development and
they practice early stimulation in the
mothers in Kenya Cameroon Mali India and
Pakistan are convinced that they have to
teach their babies all the motor
milestones as well as how to use a spoon
and go to the toilet and as a result
babies who grow up in these cultures
where early stimulation is thought to be
so important they are much ahead in
their development than our babies and
usually the
babies are fully potty-trained by the
time their one year of age the brains of
young children are very malleable which
means that they easily adapt to what is
happening around them modern research
shows that early decision also speeds up
developed brain development we use EEG
technology which allows us to pick up
electrical activity from the brain
baby’s scalp and we find that the
neurons and especially the connections
between between neurons increase in
number and become more specialized as
the baby develops new skills and becomes
more mobile initially babies are only
capable of lying flat on their backs
staring up at the ceiling and during
those early few months they are they
don’t need to be able to perceive
direction and speed of motion however we
see that only after a few weeks of
crawling experience babies are processed
this kind of information much faster and
they’re able to differentiate between
different visual motion so changes in
local motor abilities trigger brain and
cognitive behavior so travel really
seems to be broadening the mind but this
means that we need to stimulate our
babies and challenge them from the day
they are born they need to get the
opportunity to explore the world using
their bodies and all of their senses
indoors and outdoors and in all kinds of
weather the brains of young babies are
very malleable which means that they is
we adapt to things that are happening
around them and when the networks are
research in language development shows
this very clearly babies across the
world are when they’re very young
sensitive to all the sounds produced in
all the languages all over the world but
by the time they’re eight months of age
they’ve lost this ability so Chinese
babies for example they hear the
difference between the sound and the
whole sound when they’re four months of
age but by the time they get older they
have lost this ability so the and this
is what we mean when we say that you use
it or lose it principle the neural
networks in the brain stay when they are
used but when they’re not used they
disappear to make place for other
networks that are being used since so
much is happening in the brain during
the first three years of life it’s
easier to promote learning and to
prevent problems when children are very
young toddlers can’t be held responsible
for their own learning so it’s up to us
adults to see to it it’s actually quite
easy to teach a two-year-old both to
swim and to read but they need to have
access to water or letters and potential
problems are likely to manifest
themselves in the rapid development
during the first two years of life and
then it’s very important to deal with
these problems immediately rather than
hoping rather than to wait and see to
cross our fingers and to hope that the
child will grow
it’s very very important that all our
babies and young children have access to
as many and as varied experiences as
possible so that they can explore the
world around them and everything in it
using their whole bodies all of their
senses language and through
relationships with meaningful people in
that context many people worry about the
time toddlers spend behind the screen in
my opinion it’s not so much about what
the children are doing during screen
time it’s more about all the things they
should be doing instead during the first
three years of life the brains
infrastructure is formed the neural
networks in the brain go from faint and
windy trails in the forest to high-speed
motorways instead of under estimating
our babies we should treat them as
competent individuals with a huge
potential for learning thank you [Applause]
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