Babies are charming, adorable and often clumsy when first exploring their world. Behind every coo and babble, there is also some serious brain development happening. To help shape that development, psychologists say caregivers play an important role.
“We are understanding more and more about the impacts of neurodevelopment in those crucial first three years,” says Annie George-Puskar, an educational psychologist who specializes in early childhood intervention at the Fordham University Graduate School of Education. “The brain develops at a faster rate than any other time in our lives.”
George-Puskar notes that by age three, a child’s brain develops to about 80 percent of an adult size brain and by age five, their brain is 90 percent to almost fully grown.
