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Professor Dr. Selçuk Şirin Attended the Interview in Belek

Selçuk R. Sirin, Ph.D. is Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University. He gave a speech in The Land of Legends on topic "From Childhood to Adolescence / Perfect Parenting".

In his interview, Selçuk Şirin told to participant parents what to do at home with a newborn.


Commenting to the reporters before the program, Şirin said that his purpose is to prepare children for the future in the most beautiful and correct way.

"I'm going to tell parents what we need to do at home since the birth of the child. The most important point in this sense is that 90% of brain growth happens in the first 3 years. And early brain development has a lasting impact on a child’s ability to learn and succeed in school and life. The quality of a child’s experiences in the first few years of life – positive or negative – helps shape how their brain develops. So, read to your newborn babies, play and talk to them" said Selçuk Şirin.


About Selçuk Şirin: 

As an applied psychologist, he uses empirical research methods to better understand the needs of children and families, and to arm professionals and policy makers with this knowledge so as to better address the needs of the most vulnerable. As summarized in Figure 1, the goal, that unites all of his work, is to enhance the lives of marginalized children using development in context as a general framework. He focuses on immigrant children in New York, Muslim youth in the US, refugees in Turkey and Norway, and students at risk in US schools.

His works has been published in top journals, such as Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Review of Educational Research, and Pediatrics, in an effort to inform scholars, practitioners, and policy makers about marginalized children. He has also made a concerted effort to get his work to a wider audience both locally and globally, as he believes strongly in “giving scientific knowledge away.” He has served on several policy committees such as the National Academy of Sciences, the Urban Institute, and the Migration Policy Institute. He has collaborated with UNESCO and Save the Children, in their efforts to improve the lives of refugee children. In 2019 he started The Book Project to bring 1 million books to children.