The Importance of Early Experience

Both nature and nurture shape the individuals we become. With sufficient nutrition and
activities in an uncontaminated environment, human beings could lead a healthy life, learn new things,
and develop new skills throughout their lifespans. Because of the unpredictable potential and
astonishing resilience children have, every moment, person, and experience in their lives is important,
but not critical. The first few months or years should not be the only time to attribute all the blame or
credit for any failure or success which may occur in our later lives. People should not be anxious or
worry too much about their earlier experiences causing irreparable consequence in their later life. I
believe our early experience of life is not so critical for determining later development according to our
biological, cognitive, language, personality, and intelligence development tendencies expressed below.
First, our biological development takes place across different periods of time. Gross and fine
motor skills, sensory cortex maturation, axon myelination, body coordination, body growing, sexual
maturation, or dendrites pruning do not happen only in the first few months or years. Concern for wellbeing, physical exercise, and sufficient nutrition are needed no matter whether you are young or old.
Disease, stress, disorders, disabilities, or death can occur at any time in our lives. Your good health at
this moment could be just the result of intensive exercise and abundant fruits and vegetables for two
months. Your cancer right now might not be caused only by the malnutrition in the first few years of
early life.
Second, our cognitive development could be found even in the seniors. Neither Piagets stage
of cognitive development, nor Vygotskys social learning focuses exclusively on the first few months
or years. Children cannot understand transitive inference, logic, or deductive reasoning until school age,
even puberty. A new baby will have no understanding while you are talking about self-control with
him/her. The wisdom, and life philosophy I have found in adults and seniors does not exist in little
children. We gain all these through our life long experiences, not in our first few months or years.
Third, language development bursts in our first few years, but continually expands in school
years, even later in our life. From using holophrases, two-word sentences, to being able to perform
metaphors and abstractions while talking, it takes many years of exposure to the language. School

The Importance of Early Experience

children can even start handling their second or third language well through proper guidance. Even
within their first language, language code switching is a breeze to them.
Fourth, our personalities are both innate and shaped by years of life experience. Secure
attachment with parents at a young age, authoritative parenting and good friendships with peers in
school years, and an intimate relationship with your spouse or partner build a healthy personality in us.
Any part of it that goes wrong might result in some kind of mental problem. Also, personalities change
depending on the hormones in your body, the life style you have, and the environment you are
currently in. During emerging adulthood, we might engage in risk taking, and edgework. While raising
children, stable and secure ways of doing things will be preferable. Our personalities are not
attributable solely to the few months or years of our early life experience.
Finally, intelligence changes over time. According to information processing, strategy can be
taught. Vygotsgy notes we learn from playing. Behaviorism emphasizes reinforcement and social
learning. Most of these happen after a child is well developed. We will only see frustration if we try to
have a few-month or few-year old baby to learn all these. Also, the crystallized intelligence, pointed
out by Cattell, increases along with our age and life experience.
In conclusion, every moment or period in our life is important, not exclusively our first few
months or years. Other people might have different points of views depending on what cultural
background and observations their conclusions are drawn from. Piaget, Erikson, Watson, Vygotsky and
many others all make contributions with their own observations and theoretical conclusions. Their
conclusions may be alike in some ways, but also conflict in others. However, with the points I
mentioned above, I believe the first few months or years are not so critical that they should take all the
blames or credits for any failure or success later on in our lives. Also, people tend to live longer in this
high technology world. New findings, and new social phenomena, such as emerging adulthood, and a
population with a much larger proportion of seniors over 80, bombard us every moment. We all have
the potential to make our lives different. Even if the first few months or years of our lives have gone
wrong, we should still be positive about what we can still do, not be fatalistic about what has gone
wrong in the past and its impact on the future.