Tracks in the Brain

When I first started attending home school conferences, there was very little information about home educating a child with a developmental disability. I wanted a process to follow, curriculum ideas and a scope and sequence for educating a non-college bound student. Instead, I found just what I needed in two part lecture by Dr. Mary Ezzo entitled Your Child’s Mind. The title of Part II, Teenage Brain Development, intrigued me. After all, I was parenting a teenager. I went to Part I, Early Childhood Development, frankly because none of the other sessions in that time slot interested me in the least. I am glad I went to both. It was my job to repeatedly teach Marissa the things that were most important for her to know.

Despite all the classes on human development, physiology and pathophysiology that I took in college, I don’t remember a whole lot about brain development. Perhaps I wasn’t listening. More possible is that the instructor didn’t cover it. It seemed that every instructor spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the chemical and mechanical changes that end with a muscle contraction, and a great deal of time on heart, lungs and kidneys. By the time the class schedule got around to the central nervous system, the endocrine system and the reproductive system, the semester was almost over and we crammed 8 weeks worth of information in to 3 or 4 class periods. It is very likely that I dumped anything I did learn soon after passing my licensing exam. My career evolved into my specializing in caring for critically ill adults with cardiac and respiratory problems. All of my continuing education dealt with my area of expertise. Whatever the case, I didn’t understand how the brain developed. Knowing a little about the developing brain comes in kind of handy when parenting a child with fetal alcohol syndrome.

The nerve cells are specialized “messenger” cells which transmit Information from one neuron to another neuron across a synapse, a small gap separating the cells. It seems that when we are young children we have way more synapses than we need. Animal and human research has demonstrated that as we age we undergo massive pruning of excess synapses. If you believe in a Creator, you might suspect that synaptic pruning is not random. You would be right. It seems we keep the synapses we are using and prune those that are deemed unimportant.

The other thing that occurs during childhood is that the brain undergoes a process called myelinization. During myelinization a fatty substance covers and protects the nerve and acts like a conduit, ensuring that messages sent by the nerve aren’t lost en route. The brain continues to develop until a person is in their mid-twenties. Remember all those dumb things you did prior to your mid-twenties. Well, that is because your brain wasn’t done yet. The very last area of the brain to undergo myelinization is the prefrontal cortex. That is the part of the brain that sits right behind the forehead. It is one of the areas of the brain that seems most susceptible to damage from prenatal exposure to alcohol. The prefrontal cortex is important in judgment, critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, moral decision making, planning, impulse control and abstract reasoning. My near adult with FAS and a normal IQ has difficulty in each of these areas. But, that part of her brain is still developing and won’t be done for another ten years!

Somehow I had forgotten this wisdom. It was pushed to the back of my mind. I was concentrating on the problems of today and not remembering that Marissa’s future hasn’t been written yet. She is still under construction. My hope was renewed in the most unlikely source, my Creole Made Easy book. I hadn’t really done the reading exercises in the book. Creole seemed impossible to learn and I was counting on looking up single words and word phrases. Luigi, Beverly’s interpreter, taught me that all languages are easy as long as you need them. I know way more Creole than I ever thought I would. Anyway, I was flipping through the book recently and one of the reading lessons caught my eye. There is no author identified. I am not sure if this is a Haitian proverb or the original thoughts of Wally R. Turnbull.

Each time you do a thing, it leaves as it were a track in your brain. When you do the same thing many times, the track becomes deeper. It is for that reason every thing you are accustomed to do, you do more easily because that thing has its road all traced in your mind.

You are able to walk without your needing to think that you are walking. Why? Because you are accustomed to walking for so many years, your brain gives your members the order to walk without your knowing how, only you want to walk, and you see you are walking.

But, when you were a child, it was not the same thing. You did not have such tracks prepared in your brain. Wanting to walk was not sufficient. For each action which is in walking you were obliged to give your head an order.

Or, if you like a shorter version, Sandi of Titus2Woman writes in a recent Simple Woman’s Daybook, “I am thinking about how we become what we practice.” Sandi is very wise. 

It is my role to stay engaged and to help Marissa do the things that will create tracks that will lead her into a responsible adult life. Marissa’s brain isn’t finished yet. My Dad taught me that love is doing the right thing even when it is hard. Raising a teenager with FAS has been hard, harder than I ever imagined it would be. Love doesn’t give up hope. Love, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (I Corinthians 13:7, NAS)