Josette Sheeran Quotes

When food prices surge, poor families suddenly find themselves unable to afford enough nutritious food. If this happens during the first thousand days of a child's life, the damage to his or her body and mind can be permanent.

A life cycle approach to food security will imply attention to the nutritional needs of a human being from conception to cremation. The most vulnerable but neglected segment is the first 1,000 days in a child's life - the period from conception to the age of two, when much of the brain development takes place.

For lack of a few pinches of ordinary iodised table salt in the diet of a third world pregnant mother, a child can lose up to ten IQ (Intelligence Quotient) points.

What happens when corn and wheat prices rise is that we see real increases in malnutrition and under-nutrition. And when children are malnourished, their brain development actually slows down and is affected. So this is not just a short-term impact.

Centuries ago it may have been difficult for pregnant women and their children to get proper nourishment, probably leading to smaller - and therefore shorter-lived - adults.

Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence.

Undernourished, intelligence becomes like the bloated belly of a starving child: swollen, filled with nothing the body can use.

Early childhood education begins early, even before birth.

Taking pre-natal vitamins can minimise birth defects and can lower the chances both of morning sickness and premature delivery.

The first thousand days of a baby's life are likely to determine the rest of her life - whether she grows up to be healthy or not, both physically and emotionally.

Iodine has an incredible effect on the development of a child, during pregnancy and afterwards as well. Iodine is one of the micronutrients that the body does not produce or retain. Therefore we need to have iodize salt.

The development of the child during the first three years after birth is unequaled in intensity and importance by any period that precedes or follows in the whole life of the child.

In Burma, we need to improve education in the country - not only primary education, but secondary and tertiary education. Our education system is very very bad. But, of course, if you look at primary education, we have to think in terms of early childhood development that's going back to before the child is born - making sure the mother is well nourished and the child is properly nurtured.

Reading to children at night, responding to their smiles with a smile, returning their vocalizations with one of your own, touching them, holding them - all of these further a child's brain development and future potential, even in the earliest months.

The most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six.

One of the best investments we can make is to give our kids the ingredients they need to develop in the first five years of life.

The first years of life are not just important; they are more crucial to shaping children than any other time. Even before they speak, children are extremely sensitive to the messages adults send them.

We've got to understand that the ages of zero to three are the most formative years of a person's life, the time they learn the concept of reward and punishment and develop a conscience, and that 50 percent of all learned human response is learned in the first year of life.

Kids watch their parents, right? And when kids are three, four, five-years-old, that's when they're like a sponge, and who they are is really developed by the time they are seven.

Both the quantity and quality of the words children hear during their first three years of life make an enormous difference in how prepared they are to start school, and ultimately, their long-term achievement.

I went to my local Sure Start centre, and they put me on a parenting course. I learned things that might seem simple - that it was important to hug and love your child, and read to them. This might seem obvious, but it wasn't to me at the time.

There is nothing that compares to the bonding between parent and child in that first year of life. Study after study shows how both parents being involved in the early weeks and months of a child's life is good for the child's development.

The period from conception to two is about the development of a baby's emotional capacities. Mum saying, 'Oh, darling, I love you,' and singing baby songs and pulling faces literally stimulates the synapses in the brain.

I want to tell everyone out there that there is no reason for you to sit at home when you are pregnant. Make your child ready for life, make him/her feel special.

I did not walk for the first four years of my life.