Genius 'Oliiki App' for babys first 1000 days

Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man. Aristotle, The Philosophy of Aristotle

Well, it turns out that although Aristotle was absolutely right that the man is made in childhood, he might well have been wrong about how long he needed the child for! Rather than 7 years, he might just have needed that child for 1000 days to set them up for a lifetime of success! Isn’t that amazing?!

Science is showing us that the first 1000 days of life, the time from conception to two is the most important for a child’s development. It is a time when the brain is literally building itself and laying the foundations for all future learning for life. It’s also the time that you, the baby’s parents change from being a couple to becoming parents. There is a lot going on in that first 1000 days which is only 33 months!

What happens in the first 1000 days, what’s affected and how do we know?

A baby’s brain is doing amazing things really early on in pregnancy and it continues to develop throughout.

In a piece of brain tissue the size of a grain of rice, there are 10,000 nerve cells. Each one of those forms between 1 and 10,000 connections with other nerve cells. There are an estimated one hundred trillion connections in a human brain.

At only four weeks gestation, a baby is creating neurons. These neurons are ones that will be used for their whole lives, from the very beginning through to the end of life. By the time a woman is four weeks pregnant, 500,000 neurons are developing every minute. These neurons build the brain layer by layer like an onion. They travel along supporting cells called glia in waves of millions of neurons. No other cells migrate in this way. There is some evidence that neurons have some idea where they need to travel to in the brain and that they also know where abouts in the brain they are!

By the time a child is born their brain is about a quarter of the size of an average adult brain. Amazingly, it doubles in size in the first year of life and it keeps growing to about 80% of adult size by the age of 3 and by the time a child is 5 their brain is almost fully grown.

Their brain is formed in the womb, but the neural connections within that brain have yet to be connected. This happens through the experiences we give the child, even from before birth. At times during the first 1000 days of life, a child is developing 1 million synapse connections a second!

We know that the experiences and foundations that are laid down for a child in these first 1000 days affect their academic outcomes, their relationships, how much they will earn, what jobs they will do, how the adult they will become thinks and even their health.

So, the experiences that we give babies from conception onwards really do matter.

This book is all about Elimination Communication. Rebecca talks about communication both verbal and nonverbal, routine, play, success and independence. All of these skills are vital when teaching your child elimination communication, but they are also the foundation skills for many other areas in life.

All learning is done from the simple to the complex; we build a foundation of learning that we can build other skills on top of. Our babies need to learn everything, and they do this through play and the experiences that we give them. When we understand the impact that tiny activities we do have on our baby’s brain development, we naturally want to do more of it. Because we do more, we build our baby’s brain connections and help them become stronger which in turn helps our child reach their full potential. It’s really clever, it’s simple, but the impact it has on your child is massive.

Our children learn best in an environment of loving relationships. When we have secure relationships, our child feels secure and able to learn, grow and develop. Helping your child reach their full potential is about providing them with stimulating tiny activities every day that help them build one tiny skill on a previous skill. The activities you do with your baby may look simple to you, but to your baby they really are brain building.

Your journey in elimination communication is providing your baby with tiny experiences that will support their learning and brain building in so many other ways (such as their language development, their physical development, their independence, their problem solving and quite possibly even their mathematical understanding). As you take the time to watch your child, talk with them, hold them out etc, you are also building a really strong bond, you are learning more about your child and that will help them feel secure, loved and enable them to begin to develop in so many other ways. It will also help you understand them better, react to their needs better and respond appropriately.

This is a preview of the updated Oliiki APP releasing in late 2021.

It’s only 1000 days but they are 1000 days that last a lifetime!

Clare Stead, Founder and Director of Oliiki Ltd and mother of three is an e-learning specialist, education researcher and qualified primary school teacher. Clare built the Oliiki app to support parents through the most important days of a child’s development to help their child reach their full potential. The Oliiki app can be found in both the Apple and the Android app stores. Her website is www.oliiki.com

Video Testimonial for the Oliiki App

Her work in the brain development space and research into play, communication and bonding has helped her develop a genius must-have app, for new parents.

Elimination Communication shares many of the same concepts integrating communication, trust, routine and play into daily life around ordinary activities which form foundation skills for life.

Aristotle, The Philosophy of Aristotle Well, it turns out that although Aristotle was absolutely right that the man is made in childhood, he might well have been wrong about how long he needed the child for!

About Clare Stead Clare Stead, Founder and Director of Oliiki Ltd and mother of three is an e-learning specialist, education researcher and qualified primary school teacher.