Author: Matthew Lynch

It’s true that DNA is first formed in the womb, but did you know that DNA can change even after a person is born? And did you know that DNA changes can be caused by chronic stress and trauma, especially in early childhood? This article will explore the effects of stress on the brain, especially when the stress is experienced in early childhood.

Childhood experiences change DNA

Although it is widely accepted that humans cannot remember much from our first few years of life, our brains still know what happens to us when we are very young. Our first few years of life can be crucial to how our brains are wired, and our experiences in childhood can even change our DNA.

As explained in this article, a study conducted in 2018 revealed that when baby mice were neglected by their mother it altered the genes in their brain cells. It is likely that humans undergo similar processes and this could be at least partially responsible for some neurological disorders. 

Stress alters the brain 

Chronic stress and cortisol can alter and permanently damage the brain, according to this study conducted by neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley. Because of this, scientists believe that when a baby, child, or young adult is exposed to a great deal of stress or trauma they are likely to developmental and emotional issues like depression, anxiety, mood disorders, and learning disabilities later in life. 

Part of the issue is that cortisol, the hormone associated with stress, can over time cause the brain to be in a continual state of “fight or flight” mode. If you have ever been in a minor car accident, think about the adrenaline rush you experienced when your car has hit something. If that happens over and over again, your brain can get stuck in this fight or flight mode of high adrenaline. 

Chronic stress can make stem cells morph into a type of cell that blocks connections to the part of the brain associated with memory and learning, the prefrontal cortex of the brain, while at the same time assisting the development of anxiety, PTSD, and depression. Studies also show that the type of stress is important in terms of the effects on the brain. “Good” stress, such as the stress of studying for a test or training for an athletic competition, can actually help the brain develop resiliency. “Bad” stress, which is chronic stress or stress caused by trauma or other negative events, is the kind of stress that is damaging to the brain. 

The damage is reversible 

The good news is that there is evidence to suggest that since the brain can change in a negative way that causes mental, emotional, and learning problems, it can also change for the better, even in adulthood. The brain is more vulnerable and able to change in youth, but adults can still retrain their brains to create new neural pathways to fight anxiety and depression. 

Some of the popular, easy, and freeways to lower cortisol levels are regular exercise, yoga, and meditation. A healthy diet, certain supplements, and proper sleep habits can also help the brain heal and retrain. For some, these methods alone work to retrain the brain. Many others need medication, talk therapy, or even technological developments like TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) to help create new neural pathways and reduce stress. 

The takeaway

Scientists agree that the brain and its DNA can change throughout life, and are especially susceptible to change in early childhood. Stress and trauma can alter the brain’s DNA and neural pathways so much that they can lead to serious mental and emotional problems. Although we cannot control what happens to us in childhood, as adults we can work to retrain our brains and our response to stress. 

When thinking about the goal of childhood education, the word success comes to mind. But how do we define success in our children? Many parents cite good grades as a marker of success in their child’s education. But the reason grades signify success is that they allow students to get accepted into high-performing universities. 

And what is the point of forking over thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of dollars for a fancy piece of paper with the word “Degree” on it? Well, this would be to get a high-paying job, of course. But to what end? Is financial stability the only thing we wish our education system to produce in our children? Is this all there is?

What makes children happy in the long run?

Schools are, rightfully, geared towards academic success. But this seems to be the only kind of success they strive for. We must ask ourselves: Is academic success the end-all-be-all of life? Have we even stopped to consider what makes our children happy?

Of course, parents want their children to be happy. But, as studies have found, and as we have certainly all observed at some point, academic success is oftentimes pursued in place of happiness. A United Nations survey asked U.S. children if they liked school- 78 percent said they do not. 

In addition, a recent Associated Press survey found that school is the most common source of stress among people ages 12-17. Dr. Kate McReynolds, a therapist in New York City, recounts her experience in helping one child:

“The parents kept their son in kindergarten and paid me to meet with him weekly, despite my insistence that he did not need therapy — only more time to play! As the months wore on, his unhappiness grew, and his behavior deteriorated. He developed nightmares and stomach aches. What stunned me though was that no one in the room responded to this young boy’s unhappiness.”

Academic-related success is not a bad thing, but when it is so overemphasized in our culture that parents are enrolling their children in school before they are developmentally ready so that they can “get ahead”, something needs to change.

Is college the right choice for every child?

Many well-intentioned parents often push their students academically for the purpose of helping them get into a good college. However, many students are not well-suited for college, either because they are not academically inclined or because they have no desire, and thus little motivation, to attend college. 

One option that is seldom introduced to students is the option of attending a trade school, as opposed to a traditional four-year university. While four-year universities do in general lead to jobs with higher salaries than those from trade schools, trade schools can be an excellent, financially stable option suited for students who prefer hands-on tasks.

In addition, trade schools have lower drop-out rates than four-year universities, possibly because universities may admit students that are not inclined towards a life of academia. Trade schools also cost less, saving graduates from a lifetime of student debt payments. Many students would end up happier overall by attending a trade school rather than going the traditional college route.

Changing the definition of “success”

In considering the overall happiness of a child as a metric of success, many early childhood education programs are now offering a more comprehensive approach to student goals. Some cities and programs are already making headway in this area. Nurse-Family Partnership is addressing the concern of child nutrition, which often has a significant impact on both the academic success and the happiness of children. 

The Abecedarian Project in North Carolina focuses on a play-based learning environment for children, and Lumin Education in Dallas is providing emotional and behavioral therapy to students who need extra support at school.

One organization’s efforts alone are not going to change the goals of childhood education. Rather, this will require a steady process of step-by-step progress towards re-structuring the American education system for the betterment of our children and their well-being.

Around 25 years ago, Betty Hart and Todd Risley put together an influential study which quantified a stunning 30 million word gap between the number of words a wealthy child hears before the age of three and the number of words heard by a poor child within the same span. The findings of this study shocked many early childhood advocates into action, with multiple research initiatives and initiatives at the school/community level being funded in hopes of educating low-income parents on how to expose their children to richer language and what communication styles work best to increase vocabulary potential in their children.

Hart and Risley’s study has been cited a staggering 8,000 times and has served as the impetus for initiatives such as Clinton Foundation’s Too Small to Fail and funding increases to Head Start and Early Head Start. However, the study now finds itself at the center of controversy after a new study conducted last April attempted and failed to reach the same conclusions. 

Is there really a stratified word gap?

The new study, Reexamining the Verbal Environments of Children from Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds by Sperry, Sperry and Miller observed children in households of differing socioeconomic statuses and their interactions with family members. Rather than coming to the conclusion of a direct 30 million word deficit between children of high-income households and children of low-income households, the study found that when multiple caregivers were brought into the equation (which is a high-probability situation in a household of working-class parents), the gap narrowed and sometimes disappeared.

One of the key criticisms of the Hart and Risley study is that their narrow sample of 42 families eliminated the nuance and idiosyncratic variance that a larger study would have shed light on. The study’s lack of scope not only misidentified a problem in terms too simple, but it also opened the door for racial, cultural, and linguistic bias. In short, language quality and types of communication were earmarked for high quality if they coincided with white middle-class ways of speaking. Variances based on differences in race and culture were often written off as inferior through the lens of the Hart and Risley study.

Did the original study still do some good?

Those who still attribute merit to the 30 million word gap believe the new study wasn’t actually a replication of the original at all. Advocates point out that the original study compared families from “professional” backgrounds and those within the “welfare” system, while the new study stratified high-income families and low-income families. Believers in the Hart and Risley methodology still contend that the home is the crucial space for early language development and that low-income children remain on the wrong end of things regardless of racial or cultural backgrounds.

Regardless, both studies come to a middle ground when it comes to the importance of facilitating proper and complex language development in early childhood. Both studies stress the importance of building a dialogue with children from an early age, regardless of socioeconomic status, in hopes of getting them to think critically about language and employ it on their own accord. However, it’s the type and tenor of support for low-income families in regards to early childhood language development which is now under scrutiny from both sides.

The memory of former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan reverberates some 16 years after his passing, especially when it comes to his sometimes provocative but always impassioned stances on the systemic barriers and disadvantages for poor and underserved communities within the United States. Furthermore, his explicit warning of the risks associated with placing government programs over government policy has contextual weight in many areas, especially when it comes to our country’s current adherence to a program-first public policy in the area of government-sponsored early childhood policy.

The bulk of United States early childhood policy tends to fragment early childhood policy into silos based upon the aims and reach of each program, rather than coalescing things into a coordinated approach which strengthens all of the programs in hopes of reaching a common goal of serving children better across the board. If we could reshape and rethink early childhood policy in the relative image of the Employment Act of 1946 which broadened the scope to ensure the government had the leeway and ability to promote maximum employment in a variety of ways over a wide swath of programs, we might be able to neutralize the silo effect.

Building a comprehensive approach to early childhood policy

The sheer number of early childhood programs across the public and private sectors is daunting and unwieldy, making coordination of these program’s aims towards a common good impossible without a comprehensive and complete rethink of our overall public policy approach. The right sweeping public policy agenda would help to earmark limited public resources for the most crucial and effective programs to the overall agenda of early childhood development. 

Multiple studies have reinforced that the first five years of a child’s life serve as the most crucial when it comes to potential economic success for that child during their adult years, but there is no current comprehensive public policy approach which takes the weight of this into account to better serve our nation’s children. A fragmented approach has only served to exacerbate the problem at hand, leaving the children most in need of help out in the cold in favor of the diminished wealth of a large amount of unorganized early childhood programs.

What would a change to early childhood policy look like?

The first charge of a sea change in early childhood policy would be the acceptance of the benchmark claims of the science of early childhood development, adversity, and resilience. Promoting healthy relationships between children, their caregivers and the community at large is critical while tailoring programs to help build those healthy relationships would be a prime objective.

Other key aspects of a sweeping change to early childhood policy in the United States should include a broader overall policy approach which allows leeway to alter course and types of programs to serve the shifting needs of the early childhood populace, an interdisciplinary approach which shuttles all types of early childhood programs towards the same greater good, a full acknowledgment and rethink of the limitations of current United States social policy, and a spotlight on the interconnections between systems and policies which highlights the importance of strengthening those interconnections to help support families with young children in need.

One of the growing concerns of the education system, from parents, teachers, and students alike, is the increasing amount of mandated testing. While standardized tests have been used for decades, the passage of 2002 NCLB (No Child Left Behind) and 2009’s RTTT (Race to the Top) legislation connected to the Common Core Curriculum, has led to a skyrocketed usage of them as it became mandated that all 50 states need to use them. 

The National Center for Education Statistics released a study showing the drop of the United States from 18th in the world to 40th in math, 14th to 25th in science, and 15th to 24th in reading from 2000 to 2015. While these results are worrying, there is an often underlooked at issue; the detrimental effect it has on kids being continually and incessantly tested from elementary school through high school.

The Decline in Creativity

Dr. Kim of the School of Education at The College of William and Mary conducted a study called  The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance Tests of CreativeThinking which found that while test scores at increasing on assessments such as the SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) general creativity decreased especially between kindergartners through third graders and fourth through sixth graders.

It isn’t until adulthood is reached that some amount of creative thoughts and originality begin to climb back up. This connects back to the NCLB and RTTT as school funding becomes increasingly connected to test scores which, in turn, are focused primarily on reading, writing, math, science, etc. Creative programs such as music, band, and visual arts become the first ones on the chopping block. 

Cutting Creativity

NPR released an article using data from Oklahoma’s State Department of Education that in the span of 4 years (2014-2018) over 1,000 fine arts classes were cut and almost 30% of students in public schools are at schools without any fine arts classes. This approach is mirrored across the country as reported by the U.S Department of Education as, for example, music and visual arts in elementary and secondary schools being offered in only 4% of schools. 

The effects of this reduced creativity couldn’t be better outlined than by Sir Ken Robinson who was the Director of the Arts in Schools Project and Professor of Arts Education at the University of Warwick in his 2006 TedTalk titled Do School Kill Creativity? He brought up the example of Gillian Lynee, a now-famous choreographer, and her education experience growing up:

“…she went to see this specialist. […] she sat on her hands for 20 minutes, while this man talked to her mother about all the problems Gillian was having at school. But as they went out of the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk. And when they got out of the room, he said to her mother, “Just stand and watch her.” And the minute they left the room, she was on her feet, moving to the music. […] and he turned to her mother and said, “Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn’t sick. She’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.”

Kids naturally have an instinct towards creativity, drawing, movement, and many other outlets but that instinct gets suppressed as testing, testing, and more testing take priority. The main question becomes what is gained and is it worth the cost?