NPR

5 Simple Ways To Encourage Brain Development In Your Little One

According to a team of Harvard researchers, the key to addressing the achievement gap lies in connecting parents' natural instincts with what we know about developmental science.
Two babies play during Tara Register's Saturday group for teen moms. "Don't worry if they make noise or cry," she says. "That's OK. They're just being babies!"

Ron Ferguson, an economist at Harvard, has made a career out of studying the achievement gap — the well-documented learning gap that exists between kids of different races and socio-economic statuses.

But even he was surprised to discover that gap visible with "stark differences" by just age 2, meaning, "kids aren't halfway to kindergarten and they're already well behind their peers."

And yet, there's a whole body of research on how caregivers can encourage brain development before a child

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