Discover The Missing Year And Prepare Your Baby For Success In School

[Photo by dhendrix73]

It’s back-to-school time - a time filled with many tasks like getting backpacks in order, lining up new shoes, sharpening pencils and crayons, and playing peek-a-boo with baby.

Some parents may wonder what playing with their baby has to do with back to school. As it turns out, the activities are closely linked. Research shows that the foundations for school readiness start even before a baby is born and proceed at lightning speed through the first years. But many parents are not aware of just how early their babies’ brains are developing—taking in and responding to experiences in the world in their earliest months, with impacts into the long-term. This disconnect is what ZERO TO THREE refers to as the “missing first year.” Helping parents capture that missing year—to fully understand how much is going on in their babies’ brains and to make the everyday parenting choices that can add up to big differences in the early years —will ensure that all babies get a great start, long before they tie their shoes and grab their backpack for big kid school.