Brainwave programme educates future parents

Wendy Nelson speaking to a year 9 class of boys at De La Salle College in Mangere about how to be good dads. Photo / Sarah Ivey

"If you give children lots of hugs and kisses, are you going to make them soft - true or false?" asked Brainwave Trust educator Wendy Nelson yesterday.

"False," replied the boy near the front of the Year 9 class at De La Salle College in Mangere East, the first mainstream school in the country to get Brainwave's education programme on how infants' brains develop in their first three years.

"That's right - false," said Mrs Nelson, throwing a Brainwave badge to the boy.

"We know, and there is lots of research about this, that children who feel loved and nurtured build up a picture of the world that is very safe and secure and are able to deal with lots of stresses in their lives.

"Those children grow up feeling very positive about themselves, very confident, and that makes them very, very strong human beings - so it's the opposite sometimes of what you'd think."

The Brainwave programme, developed for parents and other adults working with children, has been specially adapted for boys from Years 7 to 13 at De La Salle, a decile 1 Catholic school with an 86 per cent Pasifika roll.

Brainwave director Kim van Duiven said the Auckland Airport Community Trust gave Brainwave $14,250 for a pilot scheme reaching parents and senior students through schools and preschools in the area.

When she approached De La Salle, principal Brother Steve Hogan suggested adapting the programme to reach all the college's students from intermediate age upwards.

"We have 1000 boys here. That's 1000 homes. In the next 10 years these boys will be making their own homes," he said.

Ms van Duiven said: "We got really excited at that prospect. Our focus was early intervention and you can't get much earlier than that."

Mrs Nelson and other educators, including former Silver Ferns captain Bernice Mene, have developed three one-hour lessons for each age level at the school, complete with rugby balls representing a baby's inherited genes and slides of All Black Dan Carter in action to illustrate how the baby's development depends on its experiences.

Brother Hogan said most pupils looked after younger brothers, sisters and cousins and could apply what they learned immediately.

Asked to write down what difference the programme made, one boy wrote: "This will make a difference to me when I become a dad because I know now not to put him/her in front of a TV but play with him/her more and give him more interactive activities, eg books."

Ms van Duiven said Brainwave, which depends solely on charity, had applied to the ASB Trust to fund the programme for three more Auckland schools next year.

She also asked Education Minister Anne Tolley to incorporate it into the mainstream health curriculum in all schools, but was told that it was "extracurricular" and therefore up to each school board to decide on.

"Since it's been known in that area [Manukau], Ferguson Intermediate has expressed interest in having this delivered to Years 7 and 8, so three or four schools are saying, 'How do we get this'?" Ms van Duiven said.