⏰The Ticking Clock of Children's Brains: Use It or Lose It Forever

How Early Brain Training Shapes Your Child’s Future Forever

Mar 21, 2025

Let me explain.

To learn something new as an adult, you must rely on brain connections you made as a child. Children, though, have an incredible capacity to grow brand new connections!

Think of it this way. You are standing with your child looking out across a lake. On the other side is this incredible new experience you want to try → a new language, book, trail, instrument. As an adult to get there, you’ll have to walk around the entire lake using roads you made before you were interested in that new experience. Your child though, they’ll just start building a new road straight across the middle exactly to where they want to go.

A real life example of this is the lack of language transfer across Eastern and Western languages.

I have a very good friend from Korea. She spent her entire formative years there all the way through college. Even after decades in the U.S. and special linguistic training, she still has an accent; something she finds incredibly frustrating. Why? Because her brain didn’t develop the ability to hear the full complexity of the English language; the same way your brain can’t hear the full complexity of Korean.

If you grow up hearing only English, your brain is tuned only to those sounds; there’s no reason for it to learn other sounds. My friend, despite decades in the U.S., literally can’t hear certain differences in pronunciation. She will always speak with an accent. If you learned Korean as an adult, you’d have the same struggle.

But here’s a fun story.

My brother learned Mandarin in his 20s and spoke it without an accent, making him surprisingly popular in China.

How did he do this? Simple → Tibetan throat singing.

As a child, my brother was fascinated by unique vocalizations, especially Tibetan throat singing. Hours of practice trained his brain to detect subtle intonations and refined his auditory and speech centers to be able to generate complex sounds. Mandarin is a tonal language. Most languages use additional syllables to add complexity to words. Mandarin instead adds unique intonations or sounds to the same single-syllable words. Thus, my brother’s unique training in Tibetan throat singing where he learned how to hear and produce an incredible range of tones prepared his brain to be able to speak Mandarin later in life.

A “useless” childhood hobby enabled my brother to speak Mandarin as an adult.

✨Too often, we’ve discarded “outdated” skills in the classroom—only to realize later they were essential.

We eliminated cursive, classic literature, unstructured play, & poetry memorization. These seem pretty “useless” in our modern life.

But these “useless” tasks train the brain in unique and important ways.

Memorizing Shakespeare → Tunes the ear and auditory system to beautiful language
Reading Classics → Develops linguistic grammar, vocabulary, and complex text comprehension
Cursive → Links language centers of the brain to fine motor control and builds whole-body coordination (also reduces letter flipping in children with and without dyslexia)
Fine Art Drawing → Trains three-dimensional thinking, visuospatial mapping (which is linked to enhanced math skills), and sharpens observation critical to any field but especially science

Education, especially for young children should focus on stacking cognitive skills builds flexibility, adaptability, and creativity.

These examples highlight a key truth about education 👉 Our goal should be to create as many unique brain connections as possible.

Because the brain doesn’t continue to grow forever. Indeed, it reaches peak cortical thickness between the ages of 8-11.

I get it—this might feel overwhelming.

But even small exposure makes a big impact. My brother wasn’t a trained throat singer—just a hobbyist.

If a connection is formed early, the adult brain can strengthen it. It’s like building a rope bridge across that lake as a child and then reinforcing it into a steel one as an adult.

The more we cognitively stack, the more flexible, adaptable, and creative the brain becomes.

Because when the world changes—as it always does—it won’t be the narrowly trained specialists who thrive. It will be those whose minds were shaped for adaptability, creativity, and deep thinking.

So give your child the widest possible foundation. Let them memorize, create, explore, and build.

✨The brain you shape today is the one they’ll rely on for a lifetime.

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If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy → Teach Your 9 Year Old To Think Like Einstein

~Dr. Claire Honeycutt