What makes some children intelligent? This is a tough question since some children are book-smart while others are street-smart. Some build wonders with wood and scrap metal, while others paint word pictures in poetry and prose. Some win the school election, while others know just what to say to win an argument easily.
Intelligence reflects the general ability to process information, which promotes learning, understanding, reasoning, and problem-solving. In reality, it affects many sorts of everyday behaviours.
Heredity accounts for more than 80% of the variation in adult intelligence, yet each successive generation appears smarter on IQ tests, highlighting the importance of environmental factors.
The environment affects IQ, and the IQ affects environment; it’s a virtuous or vicious cycle. However, the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding and early child education to boost IQ scores cannot be overrated.
In reality, infants, toddlers, and preschoolers who grow up in homes where talking, listening, and reading are common tend to have higher IQs and greater success in school.
“Research we did not too long ago showed that children in integrated Quranic schools read better than those in formal schools. And we have gone further to find out why. From childhood, they are exposed to repetitive reading of the holy book,” said Mrs Azuka Menkiti, an education specialist at UNICEF Nigeria.
She added, “They sent children to these classes as early as three years; this is helping to form the children’s brains. So, when they encounter the English language, they use that same skill, and they can read.”
Mrs. Menkiti spoke at 2-day regional stakeholders meeting on out-of-school children and retention, transition, and completion models for Southwestern states in Nigeria. It was organised by the Oyo State Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology in collaboration with UNICEF.
What is more, Menkiti declared that research has also stated that children who have gone through early childhood care education like kindergarten, daycare, and nursery school are more likely to stay in school than those who didn’t go through early childhood care education.
In the first five years of life, experiences playing in the mud or role-playing with peers and attending play-based school stimulate children’s development, creating millions of connections in their brains. Their brains develop connections faster in the first five years than at any other time in their lives. Brain connections enable us to move, think, communicate, and do just about everything.
The relationship between education and health is never a simple one. In particular, poor health not only results from lower educational attainment; it can also cause educational setbacks and interfere with schooling.
It is crucial to note, however, that preschool is only one component of the whole picture. Breastfeeding is one of the earliest such postnatal experiences. Breastfeeding helps brain development. A component of breast milk promotes how cells of the brain form connections in infants’ brains.
“It offers children unparalleled health and brain-building benefits and has the power to save the lives of women and children throughout the nation and to help our national economy grow through lower health care costs and smarter work forces,” said Daju Kachollom, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.
Kachollom spoke during the 2024 World Breastfeeding Week, which had 31,254 lactating mothers breastfeeding their babies simultaneously in Abuja.
The event was unique as the lactating women were drawn from across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and selected Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps to participate in the exercise.
Researchers found that the micronutrient, a sugar molecule called myo-inositol, was most prominent in human breast milk during the first months of lactation, when neuronal connections termed synapses are forming rapidly in the infant’s brain. It was published in PNAS.
Myo-inositol is a small cyclic sugar molecule in breast milk that is also found in a typical adult diet, including in fruits and grains.
The study, which emphasises the powerful role that what we eat plays in brain function, did a detailed analysis of milk samples donated by mothers at sites in Cincinnati, Mexico City, and Shanghai over the course of lactation.
The researchers wanted to study samples from three geographically diverse locations because they hypothesised that the micronutrients present across all samples—independent of diet, race, and location—may be of biological significance. They were especially interested in components that changed throughout lactation in the same way.
The team noticed that myo-inositol was present in all breast milk samples in high concentrations early on and gradually diminished throughout lactation.
Working with a research team at the Human Nutrition Research Centre on Ageing at Tufts University in Boston, they found that the sugar molecule boosted synapse abundance in the neurones and enhanced neuronal connectivity.
Breast milk is consistently associated with higher performance on intelligence tests among children and adolescents across all income levels. For example, one study found that breastfeeding for 12 months or more was associated with a three-point increase in IQ and both higher educational attainment and income.
Howbeit, like United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Country Representative, Cristian Munduate, stated, that there is a need to close the gap in breastfeeding inequalities in Nigeria by providing an enabling environment for breastfeeding mothers across the country given that breast milk is the foundation for lifelong health and well-being, among other proven benefits.
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