The first 1000 days of a child’s life are the critical years of brain development’

By age two, the foundation, floor plan and architecture of an infant’s brain are in place.

That child’s brain is a two-room hut, or a two storey, five-bedroom house with study, … No amount of home-tutoring or private schooling can fix this later. 

During the nine months of a mother’s pregnancy, 15% of a newborn’s neural connections are formed. 

In the following two years, another 70% of their brain’s neural connections are formed. That child now has 85% of its brain function in place. This 85% foretells a child’s future!

This is well accepted, peer reviewed research. All prospective and new parents need to understand:

the primary influences that determine a child’s future success in life are set in the first 1000 days. 

If executive functions, such as planning, thinking, memory and emotional regulation don’t develop properly, there are life-long consequences; determining whether a child fails at school, has poor mental health, gets involved in crime…; and ultimately passes this onto the next generation.

This was one of the conclusions that came out of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (Dunedin Study), which first started back in 1972/73 and has been ongoing since.  This longitudinal study of the health, development and well-being of every child born in Dunedin Hospital that year has produced results quoted around the world; but unfortunately, has not influenced the way most New Zealand parents raise their children now-a-days.

Yet, given the rapidly deteriorating mental health statistics and decline in academic achievement of this current generation of young people, the Dunedin Study research outcomes should be informing us, on how to get back to raising our children in a way that enables them to live happy, well-balanced lives, while achieving to potential.

To illustrate how definitive the conclusions of this research were - as each child in the Dunedin Study cohort celebrated their second birthday, researchers predicted three life outcomes for that child, as an adult of age thirty: 

1.   highest academic achievement; 

2.   annual salary range; and

3.   likelihood of involvement in the criminal justice system.

And as these children turned thirty, the researchers checked outcomes against predictions, to find they were scarily accurate.  

The observations regarding food intake and lifestyle of the mother during pregnancy; followed by the detailed observations carried out regularly throughout the first two years of each child’s unique upbringing, were such that these researchers were able to make accurate predictions about the thirty-year-old adults.

This article looks at the well-established research, as well as the new peer-reviewed research that has been published in 2024/25, to pose and answer two questions.

Question 1: What is causing the decline in brain function of our children? So that now-a-days, by age five, 45.2% have development difficulties in:  language and cognitive skills, social competence, communication and general knowledge, emotional maturity, and physical disability. (These are Australian figures but will not be very different to ours.)

Question 2: What is causing the increased incidence of neurodivergence in children now-a-days?

Neurodivergent is a term that describes people whose brains function differently, leading to unique strengths and challenges; such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)…

The greatly increased number of these two types of children in classrooms around the country is impacting on the learning of all; as ongoing misbehaviour, disruption and defiance from a few, and now-a-days it is typically 5 or 6 students; destroys the learning of the rest of the class.  No matter how a teacher groups students, a child with no emotional self-regulation having a fight with an ADHD child in the corner, is far more interesting to the other students, than listening to the teacher. Especially when elsewhere in the room, an autistic child is having a disagreement with a child whose social competence is that of a two-year-old.

The research is pointing to two aspects of our western lifestyle that are to blame: parental cell phone use and diet.  

The next two articles will explain this in more detail.

P.S. In the meantime, I recommend that you look up Nathan Wallis online and listen to some of his talks.  Nathan Mikaere Wallis, is our top neuroscience educator. He uses the results of the Dunedin Study, as well as research from around the world, to advise on how to get back to helping our children live happy, well-balanced lives, while achieving to potential.