How Does A Child’s Atmosphere Mold Their Mind?

 

 

Verbal abuse from peers during the middle school years had the greatest impact, presumably because this is a sensitive period when these brain connections are developing and becoming protected with myelin.

The atmosphere that a child is raised in molds not only their mind, but also their brain. This is something many for very long had suspected, but now we scientific instruments show us how intensely a childhood experience changes the physical structure of the brain, and how sensitive a children is to these environmental effects. Words–verbal harassment–from peers (and, as a previous study from these researchers showed, verbal abuse from a child’s parents) can cause far more than emotional harm.

An early childhood experience can either nourish or stifle brain development, and the consequences are physical, personal, and societal. Childhood teasing and verbal bullying are a problem, but many feel that civility, courtesy, polite social interactions, have declined significantly from the environment that  adults today experienced as children. Many schools are more hostile places than years ago, and recent technology including the internet, offer more opportunities for taunting and humiliation of children. If this is accurate, conditions or attitudes that tolerate verbal abuse of children by their peers are an incubator for developing brains with abnormalities in the corpus callosum and an elevated risk of psychiatric problems. The critical concern for ridding our environment of neurotoxins must also include the neurotoxins which children are exposed to in their social environment.

Words are powerful, yes they are!

                                               

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