In today’s world, an estimated quarter of a billion children under five live in environments that put their brains and bodies at risk of inhibited development. Inhibitors include extreme poverty and severe malnutrition that strain their cognitive, social, emotional, motor, and physical development, leading to lifelong consequences not just for themselves but societies as a whole.
Neuroscience is increasingly telling us that biology is not destiny. That it can be nurture with nature. That we can influence and even shape children’s futures by enriching and protecting their bodies, brains and environments, from the moment they are conceived until they reach five years old, a period of peak development. And new findings, published in The Lancet’s new Series, Advancing Early Childhood Development: from Science to Scale have revealed we can increase the chances of young children reaching their full potential with an additional 0.5USD per capita when we complement existing health services with nurturing care programmes for children and their families.
During the time it will take you to read this text, a young child’s brain could have made 300,000 neural connections. Connections that serve as the foundation of brain development. But for young children who aren’t experiencing adequate care, whether through a lack of nutrition, stimulation, or protection, their brain’s foundation and architecture are at risk of becoming limited and the opportunity to shape their development is lost forever. We know that maltreatment during childhood can lead to a reduced volume in regions of the brain that are responsible for learning and memory. We also know that children who receive inadequate care, especially in the first two years of life, are more sensitive to the effects of stress, and are more likely to experience behavioural problems than children who receive responsive love and nurturing care.
Inhibited growth in young children can lead to lower educational attainment, lower adult earnings and chronic disease. But it’s not only the individual child or family whose futures are forfeited by deprivation during early childhood. Children who do not experience care that ensures health, nutrition, responsive caregiving, safety, security, and early learning in the earliest years of life are potentially robbed of a quarter of their earning capacity as adults. When breastfeeding or the provision of micronutrients is delayed, the growth of babies’ bodies is not only slowed down, but the growth of their brains as well.
So why, when science has given us this incredible insight into how children’s lives can be influenced, are we not investing more? Where else is this relationship more important than during childhood, when the brain of a child under five has the capacity to develop neural connections at a speed of 1,000 connections per second, a speed that won’t be reached again for the rest of that child’s lifetime. Why are 43 per cent of children in this age group, living in low- and middle-income countries, at risk of not fulfilling their developmental potential?
The evidence presented in the Lancet papers indisputably demands action. Action from governments to urgently increase investments in early education, nutrition, child protection and health programmes. Action that should encourage others to follow the investments made by Uganda, which recently announced a new early childhood development policy that makes brain development a priority across government ministries countrywide. We need action from scientists, doctors, nurses and community health workers to expand the services they offer to families, and broaden the lens beyond health to include all of the different factors that together help shape and define young brains. And finally, we need action from those who hold the greatest stake in children’s development - parents and caregivers - to build an enriching an environment free from shouting and free from violence. An environment where caregivers use every opportunity they can to pay loving attention to their babies, or to read or sing whenever the moment arises. Because these early moments matter more than any others.
Let’s commit ourselves to breaking down the science, to use today’s evidence to invest in early childhood so we can truly promote healthy lives and learning, improve shared prosperity, reduce the inequities that create inter-generational cycles of poverty and deprivation, and build and maintain peaceful societies.