There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come. We say that often these days at The Urban Child Institute, because it seems that everywhere we look people are talking about the importance and impact of early brain development.
Parents often ask us what matters most in the raising of their young children. Our answer: Everything. And the best child-rearing begins before the baby is even born. A lot of parents believe that their children are born hard-wired for life, but the truth is that it's the parents themselves that largely hard-wire their children.
Memphis Mayor A C Wharton recently talked to Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam about toxic stress, brain development, and epigenetics. The mayor may not have used those actual words, but in asking for the state's help to fight Memphis' intractable poverty, he was discussing them nonetheless.
One of the first decisions a new mother is called on to make can also be her smartest. It's the decision to breastfeed. A smart decision is to breastfeed for six months. A smarter decision is to breastfeed for a year. The longer a mother breastfeeds, the healthier it is for both the mother and the baby. Fortunately, for Shelby County babies, the number of mothers making the decision to breastfeed is increasing – up 41% overall between 2004 and 2010.
We have just published our seventh annual Data Book: The State of Children in Memphis and Shelby County, and it's available online now. Over these seven years, the Data Book has become the definitive source of facts about the forces, trends, and factors affecting the healthy brain, social, and physical development of our youngest children. More than anything, the data over these years have confirmed that the focus on optimal brain development for children – particularly from birth to age 3 – was right on target.
It's a simple statement of fact, backed by the findings by hundreds of researchers over many years and the experiences of tens of thousands of educators. They are two words that should be at the top of the list of priorities for the U.S. government, Tennessee government, and our local governments. Those two words are also the title of a new infographic that makes the case for the importance of Pre-K and the dramatic returns on investments that it delivers.