Mind Boggling Discoveres - Issue 1

Here are some things you might not have known.Did you know that when you are born you have all the neural maps set up in your brain? There are general locations like downtown (emotions), communities (senses) and urban areas (behaviour and body functions). They move if there is damage - say if you're in a war and someone bombs downtown. It's not quite the same but it functions.Since there aren't any street signs yet you get to name as you need them. So the first time you are touched, as a baby, you KNOW you are touched. You haven't quite figured out where. You now have an address called "Body Touch". The 2nd and 3rd touch leads you to stick an address right on the house - Let's call it "I was touched on my hand". Every touch thereafter is networked around the first time you were touched. Not only where, but how often, HOW you were touched, the temperature and trillions of other little things you associate with touch.Up until the age of 4 when children suffers strokes or brain injury, which results in physically changing the brain, a child can almost completely recover and re-route almost everything to another section of the brain. Suburbia look out. Some children have been known to lose half their brain and still function.After that age it becomes less agile and easier to do the re-routing. But it is still possible.Another reason they call kids brains "sponges". The child is constantly adding addresses to their neural maps and making interconnections. It comes very easily to them and they don't have to even think about it. Ha Ha - get it?These maps, once created are almost - yes I said almost - impossible to remove. The most effective way to change behaviour is to just change the map. So does it works to keep saying "NO! Don't do that!" Nope. But it is very effective to offer the child something else to do or divert them. You are creating a new map.Groups like La Leche League have always been huge believers in this type of "discipline" or whatever you want to call it. They also believe that offering choices as a diversion is incredibly powerful.And this feeds into the next step of neural maps. These maps REALLY WORK WELL, if the individual has created the new map. This means, they take what they know or what is in front of them and decide what will work best for them. That is why diversion by choice is so effective. Instead of TELLING a child what to do they are given a choice, think about which will interest and excite.