Neuroscientific research has found that the brain’s plasticity is lifelong, continuously reshaping one’s brain due to new experiences throughout their life.
1. Avoid verbal violence towards children
Studies show: Children who experience long-term verbal abuse may indeed become dull. Parents need to understand how a child’s brain reacts to verbal abuse: as children suffer from verbal violence, the gray matter volume of the left temporal auditory cortex increases, and there is a decrease in the integrity of the left arcuate fasciculus (responsible for connecting Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas). The left temporal auditory cortex is the region in our brain that processes sound, and the gray matter is mainly composed of neuronal cell bodies.
This may be because a child’s brain is constantly trying to process and deal with harmful speech.
Verbal violence towards children includes:
“You have such low grades, do you still have the face to come home?”
“Are you stupid? You’re just useless!”
“Why are you so dumb? Are you sick in the head?”
“Why can’t you do it when everyone else can?”
“What’s there for you to feel wronged about?”
“With such low scores, you still want to go out during the summer vacation?”
“If you continue like this, I won’t want you anymore.”
“You’re too sensitive, don’t overthink it.”
“Just focus on studying, and everything will be fine.”
“If you concentrate on real issues, you won’t have so many confusing thoughts.”
These are all phrases we often hear, but in reality, they are all forms of verbal violence.
If you have been a victim of parental verbal violence, you must believe: “Your brain has unlimited repair and healing power.” Because the human brain is constantly developing and changing, it is plastic, constantly changing neural network connections in response to external demands. “Its neural circuits can change.”
2. Emotions are the quickest tool to change the brain
“Children have a lifetime to learn, no need to rush them, but mishandling emotions can make children detest learning and even develop negative personalities,” Professor Hong Lan told us, expressing that emotions are the fastest tool to alter the brain.
When it comes to learning, active learning is effective, passive learning is not. Children learn fastest when they want to learn, even if they do it sneakily.
Sometimes, if you think a child has certain shortcomings, don’t rush to change them, especially do not let the child develop emotional obstacles.
Survivors’ brain structure images after the Wenchuan earthquake showed changes in the parts of the brain that govern emotions and memory within 25 days, leading to anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder.
If a person constantly dwells on negative thoughts, negative emotions will magnify.
The brain forms ideas, ideas influence behavior, behavior yields results, results alter the brain.
Famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s mother once said that Yo-Yo Ma was never beaten for playing the cello poorly. This mother understood that if a child is beaten, they will associate the cello with fear.
3. Home is the earliest learning environment, parents are the first teachers
Leading by example, why is this so important? The power of emulation is incredibly strong.
Children grow up watching their parents’ backs, the home is the earliest learning environment, and parents are the first teachers. Hence, parents must lead by example.
At the same time, parents must support and trust their children, but also discipline them. The rules and restrictions parents establish won’t make children uncomfortable; instead, it provides a sense of security.
What children fear most is when the rules set by parents today are different from tomorrow’s.
She said, “We learn to manage ourselves through being managed by others. Without external control initially, internal control won’t develop.”
What is the purpose of educating children? It is to make them useful individuals.
During a seminar, she shared a study result: an experiment traced 17,000 babies born in April 1970 until 2008. By the time these individuals reached the age of 38 in 2008, the study found that the factors with the highest influence on their happiness and life satisfaction were not IQ and GPA as commonly believed, but conscientiousness. Self-control, integrity, and perseverance determine one’s success more than intelligence and academic performance.
Successful people are not necessarily the smartest but the most persistent.
Do not worry or become anxious, do not stress excessively. Children are very sensitive, and if parents are anxious, the children will become even more anxious. Parents should approach them with a calm mind.
For example: A comparison between the brains of violin masters and beginners showed structural differences. The violin maestro achieved this through daily, repetitive practice.
Hence, practice makes perfect. The famous “10,000-hour rule” subscribes to this principle – after 10,000 hours of practice in a certain field, one becomes an expert.
4. Where you stumble, is where you pick yourself up
In traditional Chinese belief, “Where you stumble, there you should get up” seems to be an immutable rule.
Where you stumble, change your approach to rise. Why?
Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its life believing it’s stupid. —Albert Einstein
Adults often find fault with children because they compare their children with others. Do not compare your child with others; genetics and postnatal environments are different, therefore comparisons are unfair. Children can only compete with themselves; if they have progressed from the previous day, they deserve recognition.
God is fair, often those with good spatial abilities lack linguistic skills; those with good language skills may lack spatial abilities.
Meaning, the brain is a limited resource, rarely does someone excel in every aspect. Therefore, we should not demand too much from our children.
Even after Einstein’s brain was analyzed posthumously, it was found that his temporal-parietal junction—critical for spatial understanding—was 15% larger than average, and he had more brain cells than usual. However, Einstein only started speaking at the age of three; if he lived today, he would be considered slow in language development. After the publication of his personal letters and diaries, some even believed he had a reading disability.
His right brain was more developed, perhaps because his left brain function was not as dominant, leading to his natural inclination to use his strongest cognitive functions in processing information.
Therefore, parents should let things take their course, teaching children to acknowledge their strengths and accept their limitations.
What matters are the abilities someone possesses, not the ones they lack. Viewing children in an appreciative light reveals their strengths. Approaching situations with a positive attitude unveils solutions.
5. Allow children to make mistakes, enabling them to learn from their errors
Children should be allowed to make mistakes, but they should not repeat them. Einstein once said, “A person who has not made any mistakes has never tried anything new.”
Professor Hong Lan advises against scolding a child for doing something poorly.
Scolding instills fear in children, causing them to resist and drift farther away over time. Similarly, if parents berate children daily over their grades, will the children not develop a fear of learning? The answer is affirmative.
Why? Because setbacks generate negative emotions, yet a child’s growth is all about balance.
Today’s era provides everyone with more diversified choices, giving each individual their path to follow. Hence, we should not fixate on areas where a child’s abilities fall short; instead, we should nurture their intelligence by capitalizing on their strengths.
Good parents should not only know how to say “NO” but also, post saying “NO,” show their child an alternative path. “Allow children to make mistakes, enabling them to learn from their errors and avoid repeating the same ones.”
6. The three best methods to develop a child’s brain: exercise, play, and reading
So, what experiences can stimulate rapid brain activation and branching?
01. Exercise
Professor Hong Lan explains that during exercise, dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine—neurotransmitters vital for nerve connections—are released, critical for stimulating neural connectivity.
Exercise accelerates brain function. Experiments with rats have shown that rats with exercise have a hippocampus responsible for memory 15% larger and 9% heavier compared to rats without exercise, with a 25% boost in dendritic tree and synaptic connections.
Moreover, exercise keeps the brain youthful. Two-year-old rats with exercise have brains as youthful as six-month-old rats, possessing reduced oxidized fats and DNA breakdown in the brain.
02. Play
Regarding games, she asserts that games are not the enemy of learning; they complement learning and serve as nourishment for brain growth.
Games nurture children’s fundamental abilities, boosting their emotional intelligence, enabling them to learn interaction skills in group play and fostering their socialization.
During our childhood, returning home from school meant engaging in various games with friends, full of chasing and mischief. We, as children of the 80s and 90s, had our childhood games like jumping rope, playing with stones, hopscotch, and boys playing marbles, among others—a crowd always played each game.
Today, children return home and play with their fathers, mothers, grandparents, or toys alone, building blocks, toy cars, watching cartoons. They expend immense energy all day and then refuse to sleep at night, making life tough for the whole family.
Children who never play with others as kids grow up only playing video games because only a non-living companion like a video game can endure a child’s repetitive, illogical curses and attacks without leaving.
She provides experimental evidence: during children’s play, a unique substance is generated that, when extracted, fosters rapid neural growth.
03. Reading
Speaking is instinctive, reading is habitual. Reading can change the brain; it is the quickest way to absorb information, with the eyes processing 668 words per minute compared to speaking’s 250 words per minute, making reading three times faster.
Reading calms children and enables them to deeply explore the world, fostering infinite intellectual development.
Reading internalizes others’ experiences, transforming them into one’s own, utilizing a limited lifespan to acquire boundless knowledge.
How can reading ability be enhanced? She believes extensive reading of extracurricular material is the most effective method to boost reading skills.
Children should read a lot of extracurricular materials as every experience leaves a mark, and broad reading enhances one’s background knowledge, which determines how one perceives things.
