Repetition of experiences causes the connections between brain cells, the synapses, to strengthen, become stable and build your baby's brain.

Remember that moment when you first held your newborn child? Perhaps you even counted fingers and toes. You probably didn't give much thought to how many brain cells your child had. Babies are born with 100 billion neurons (nerve cells) in the brain, according to pediatrician Robin Blitz, M.D., of the Children's Health Center at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. A newborn has 500 trillion synapses-the parts of the brain that make it possible for nerve cells to communicate with one another-and 1,000 trillion by age one.

The numbers are staggering and have startling implications for parenting. The newborn brain is not yet completely organized or functional, observes Blitz. "It is the experiences after birth that strengthen the synapses and determine how the brain is wired." Blitz and other experts agree that children's experiences during the first three years of life will impact them-for better or worse-for a lifetime.

So what is the bottom line? Experts agree that quality time and exposure to a wide variety of positive experiences in the first three years of life give children a head start on success in everything from academics to relationships.

Our job as parents is to organize our homes and communities to be safe and nurturing places for children, Blitz says. (Boosting Your Child's Brain Power from "Raising Arizona Kids," August 2002)

Kindermusik class is one of those positive, safe and nurturing places.