The implications of the brain research reviewed here, and of numerous other studies of psychological and behavioral aspects of development, are fairly straightforward. The first implication is that the early years of life are no less important for the child’s physical, social and emotional development than the school years. Profoundly important forms of learning occur long before the child enters school, and these learning experiences do more than simply shape the cognitive content of knowledge: they shape the very architecture of the brain which will later seek and absorb knowledge in school. Parents, researchers, and policy makers have long known intuitively about the importance of infancy and early childhood, but the new brain research puts a scientific framework around these intuitions, and suggests some of the reasons that kindergarten and first grade are far too late an age to begin our communities’ support for education and learning, and for the families in which much of early childhood education takes place. Brain research tells us that the lifelong process of development and learning is underway already at birth, and that we ignore the needs of families with young children at our peril. For example, literacy skills begin in an atmosphere in which parents interact regularly with their children over and around books, and those pre-literacy experiences are very likely to be shaping not just the mind and the imagination, but the connections between cells, and the architecture of the brain. Parents interacting with children around books are, quite directly, growing and shaping the brains of our future citizens.
A second implication is that, while brain research and related studies suggest that the early years are no less important than the school years for learning and development, the same research also offers tantalizing hints of how the first years may set the course for all future development. While neural and behavioral plasticity are present throughout life, the flexibility of the brain in the first years of life, and its adaptive capacity to grow and lay the groundwork for cognitive and emotional capacities in later life, is probably unmatched at any other time. It is quite possible that the developing human brain can be more efficiently and more profoundly supported and enriched in the first years of life than at any other stage. This possibility, still the subject of intensive research, is at the root of the current excitement about brain research. It is a possibility that is too important to be ignored by anyone, parents or policy makers.
A final and third profound implication of brain research is that early childhood presents itself as an investment opportunity for each community, and for our society as a whole. The investment opportunity includes the opportunity to assure that each child reaches his or her productive and creative potential. It also includes the opportunity to ensure that no child experiences deprivation that impairs brain development and imposes significant fiscal cost on school and health systems at a later date. To realize the human potential represented by infancy and early childhood, it will be increasingly important to understand the corresponding fiscal potential and costs associated with how we as a society address the needs of families with young children. It takes a well functioning family, supported by a community, to grow a brain. This simple truth about infancy and early childhood means everything for public policy.