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First, the amount of lead in the environment anymore is way overrated. Unless junior is actively eating square feet of pre1970 paint off the walls, or chewing on circuit boards, there isn't that much freely floating around. Not in the amounts needed to be responsible for that kind of brain lack of development. Now, if you want to talk about the neurotoxin pesticides sprayed like fairy dust here in the valley, ok maybe I will listen.
I've been in education 25 years. I've attended 11 classes on brain research and development in youths after the big stink of how Finland turned around their education. I highly doubted that paying teachers more, and teaching less was the real reason behind it, no matter what my idiotic union says.
Before I start, remember any info brought into the brain from its senses first goes through the emotional core before it can be processed. If there is something wrong with the core, then anything beyond there is a result of the filter being damaged.
So here it is summed up in long form. First, the brain as it is develop long builds itself in response to stimuli. The animal core of the brain, the amygdala and the hippocampus are set to process how you respond to stimuli within the first two years of birth. This is one of the reasons that you can usually tell why children raised around abuse continue to have long term damage from it. With help and a good environment they can learn to adapt, but that initial response is always processed first. For example, touch my wife's neck without her knowing it beforehand. There will be a flash of fear that runs through her eyes before her brain catches up with the fact that her abuse hasn't happened for 35 years. It's still there. That's just one single poor example though.
I could link but just search this term. language delay due to abuse there are numerous articles that show huge delays due to abuse or simply watching it. This is due to a very young child in an abusive home learning very quickly that it is best to not cause any action to provoke. So therefore all of the possible connections for love, caring and all that are not being made. Also, kids in that situation don't talk because the children know that if they say something then the chances of causing violence or emotional abuse go way up. So in the first 2 years (the most important time in brain growth) the child's brain isn't taking chances to speak, or express itself because of fear of abuse. The brain customizes itself to the environment it is in. The more nurturing, caring, stimulating a childhood the denser with more connections a person's brain is. It also continues through life. If you stay educated, still read, still learn, still challenge yourself, your brain decays much less and can continue to improve throughout life as compared to someone who doesn't.
Also, the brain is putting up barriers to retaining memory because this little kid is doing everything they can do to forget and survive in that poor environment. Once someone makes this connection it is pretty easy to see why some children do not do well in school. They don't learn to take those chances, in many cases are actively encouraged not to. Learn to read or write is almost impossible because it requires a skill set for constantly taking risks to be wrong when the brain is either lacking that developmental area, or has even been conditioned to not do it.
So you take a child that has had little quality stimuli, whose brain has had very limited stimuli to grow and develop a good neural net, and many times the situation encourages the brain not to do so, and then they go to school. Tell me this isn't a recipe for disaster. While my kid is sitting there excited to learn, knows that taking chances is a good thing because that cycle of try/mistake/try/succeed is good, and there will be positives, smiles, hugs, communication, rewards involved, a kid from a background of abuse's brain is constantly worried if they will disappoint the person of power, the teacher, or if the other kids will hurt them as they are constantly stuck in the basic safety loop as that is all they have learned and developed.
It is actually fascinating how much of who we are is set so early in life. Also, how sad it is that in many cases because the brain is screwed up and lacking development at the critical times how the problems associated are really almost impossible to solve without a massive effort in the next generation.
It is also why Finland and Norway have a totally different view on prisons than we do. We put criminals, who generally grew up in bad situations (not all of course) and house then where they fear for their safety and have little stimuli other than basic survival, which is simply reinforcing what they already have as a problem. Those two countries give them an apartment, safety, put them in settings to learn to care and empathize with others. They learn to work together and build trust, get an education, learn skills, give the exposure to a life they never knew. Basically trying to remap the brain so that when they are released they have a solution to the organic brain issues that got them started down a path of being a criminal to begin with. Is it perfect, no, but their success rate is much better than ours.
I do encourage you if you doubt what I am saying to do some research and reading. The stuff that is being learned about brain development right now is incredible. I haven't even touched on diet which also plays a massive part.
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