PROGRESS. Compounded Interest.

Progress. A loaded word. 

One that gives hope to our child's future. 

The good news is–Progress is compounded. 

It isn't just a linear addition of skills. It is an exponential strengthening of the brain’s architecture. When a child achieves a small skill, they aren't just gaining a new ability; they are paving a "high-speed highway" for every skill and goal that follows. Specifically the similar ones.

The "Compound Interest" of Learning

A child displays a little progress–say a nonverbal child learns one word. At first, it might take months of teaching and the back-and-forth engagement between a child and their therapist—to learn that one word and build the necessary neural pathways for that one word.

One month later, they learn another word. Now they learned 200% of what they knew a month earlier, before they had any words. Two weeks later, they learn another word, and a week later they've picked up yet another word. Soon, it’s one word a week, then one a day. Then multiple a day. Soon they are stringing words together. And then they are speaking in sentences, with back and forth conversation.

What happens here is that when the child learns his first word, he's worked very very hard to build neural pathways in the brain for language, paving the way for that first word. The second word can follow the neural path of the first word, making it a bit faster to acquire and strengthening the pathway for language acquisition. The third word is even faster to learn, since the neural pathways to learn it have become stronger. Hence, the beginning is very long and hard. Lots of work on the child's part and our part to get them to walk the first steps of the neural path. But once they do, the path becomes more and more familiar, easier and easier to walk and faster and faster to use. 

These learned neural pathways apply to all areas of learning and progress. 

They also apply to all areas of our lives.