Name: 5 Developmental Windows That Shape Your Life Forever
Uploaded: 2026-01-26T18:14:32.000Z
Duration: 4 min 12 s
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Adverbs of degree

When builders pour the foundation of a house, there is a brief moment when the concrete is soft enough to shape.

Brains work in much the same way throughout childhood.

There are critical periods during which certain experiences shape our minds in ways that are essential for healthy development.

The quality of your sleep, vision, hearing, language and trust in others were governed by such golden time windows.

Conrad Lawrence, a Nobel Prize winning zoologist, was the first to demonstrate the phenomenon in a famous 1939 experiment.

Goslings that first saw him rather than their mother imprinted on him and followed Lawrence everywhere.

But this bond only formed reliably within 12 to 17 hours after hatching.

In the 1960s, two neuroscientists discovered that when they sewed one eye of newborn kittens shut for several weeks and then reopened it, the previously closed eye was effectively blind.

The visual cortex had rewired itself to favor the open eye.

Their Nobel Prize winning work revealed that parts of the brain may operate on a use it or lose it deadline.

For us humans, five notable development Windows open and shut during early childhood Good sleep, it seems, is something we learn while we're still in the womb.

If a developing child's sleep wake cycle during pregnancy get disrupted because their mother regularly drinks alcohol, the child will likely experience sleep issues for the rest of their lives.

Within weeks after birth, full vision develops.

If a baby is born with a cataract and the cloudy lens gets removed, the child will see normally.

Delay surgery beyond the fifth birthday and the damage becomes permanent.

And if kids have too much screen time and primarily focus on things right in front of their eyes, their vision doesn't develop properly.

They instead develop myopia and will likely need glasses during the first 24 months of life.

Children need to be well nourished and receive lots of love to develop a trusting relationship with their primary caregiver, often the mother.

If they learn to question the person they most depend on, they become insecurely attached, can develop a lifelong mistrust of others, and

Children born deaf who receive a cochlear implant before the age of three tend to develop near typical speech, whereas those who have it implanted after the age of seven often face ongoing difficulties.

The tragic case of Jeanne Wylie, a girl deprived of speech until age 13, demonstrated how hard it is to learn language later in life.

Even with lots of help, she only learned to speak in short broken sentences like father hit arm, big wood, genie cry.

Studies of Chinese and Korean born immigrants found that grammar scores declined.

The later children arrived in the United States flattening out around puberty.

Most critical periods end by the age of seven, Although during puberty our brains remain highly sensitive to social feedback, risks, and

During this period, exposure to excessive amounts of drugs, alcohol, medications, or chronic stress can harm our brains for life.

Conrad Lorenz concluded, I consider early childhood events as most essential to a man's scientific and philosophical development.

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