Micronutrient Intake during Pregnancy and a Thriving Habitat Ensure Smarter Kids

Socio-environmental Factors Affect a Child’s Cognitive Skills

Children nowadays are intelligent, smart and brainy with speedy learning abilities. Thanks to all the micronutrient supplements and doctor prescriptions that suggest these nutrients. A new study has found that pregnant mothers who consume multi-micronutrient supplements during pregnancy can add up to one year of schooling to a child’s cognitive abilities at age 9-12. The study further states that, a child’s nurturing environment dominates a child’s brain functioning, intelligence, declarative memory, academic achievement, fine motor dexterity and socio-emotional health.

The study involved around 3,000 children between the age group of 9 and 12 years whose moms had participated in an earlier study that involved finding the effects of consuming either multiple micronutrient (MMN) supplements or standard iron-folic acid (IFA) supplements during pregnancy.

The study that involved 3000 children of these mothers found better procedural memory and other advantages in children whose mothers took MMN supplements. Procedural memory is pivotal to a child’s academic performance which is dependent of perceptual, motor and cognitive skills. It also helps in the child’s daily life activities including typing, driving, reading, arithmetic, speaking and language fluency.

The surprising part here is that biological factors such as maternal nutritional status, low-birth weight infants, premature birth and poor infant growth were not as important as socio-environmental factors such as education level of parents, maternal depression, home environment and socio-economic status in influencing the cognitive skills of a kid.

Although nature has a role in defining an infant’s talent, it is more of nurture that comes into prominence as the infant grows. The society, the infant’s exposure to the things around, interaction with people in the surrounding and the things that he/she observes play a critical role in forming an infant’s cognitive skills. But, academic excellence and physical health is possible only when the growing kid is fed with a well-balanced diet satisfying the nutritional needs. Meet a nutritionist/dietitian at www.firsteatright.com to plan a healthy diet for your growing kid.