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It is true that major trauma and extreme deprivation can cause lasting, sometimes insuperable damage in young children.
的确，重大挫折和极度匮乏可能会对幼儿造成持久的、有时是无法逾越的伤害。
It also turns out that positive early experiences – such as nurturing care – can mitigate that harm.
事实也表明，积极的早期经历——如养育照顾——可以减轻这种伤害。
But, despite the best efforts of millions of striver parents, it doesn’t seem to be the case that you can turn three-year-olds into geniuses by giving them plastic ukuleles for their birthdays, or even drilling them on their violin scales.
但是，尽管数百万父母奋力拼搏、尽了最大努力，似乎并不能通过给三岁孩子送塑料四弦琴当生日礼物，或是在小提琴音阶上训练他们，就能把他们变成天才。
(You may well be able to foster in those children a paralysing perfectionism and deep sense of inadequacy.)
(这些孩子很可能会被你培养出一种令人窒息的完美主义和深度匮乏感。)
Equally, you don’t have to grow up with hundreds of toys, or speaking three languages, in order to be extraordinarily bright.
同样，为了变得聪明绝顶，幼儿成长不需要伴着数百个玩具，也不需要会说三种语言。
(In fact, you can still learn several languages with a high degree of fluency in later childhood and beyond.)
(事实上，在童年后期或以后的时间，仍然可以高度流利地学会说几种语言。)
Not all of that nuance has broken through to parents.
并非所有的细微差别都能被父母们所理解。
Already in the mid 1980s, Brian Sutton-Smith, probably the most prolific play scholar in history, could write: “We have little compelling evidence of a connection between toys, all by themselves, and achievement. What is more obvious is that…we have steadily and progressively developed a belief that there is a connection between toys and achievement.”
早在20世纪80年代中期，布莱恩·萨顿-史密斯(可能是历史上产出最多的游戏学者)就写道: “我们几乎没有令人信服的证据证明玩具本身与成就之间存在联系。更明显的是……我们已经逐渐形成了一种观念，即玩具和成就之间存在联系。”
By the late 1990s, when the myth of the first three years was fully permeating American culture, the educational toy segment grew faster than any other part of the industry, and at more than twice the rate of the US economy as a whole.
到20世纪90年代末，当前三年的荒诞观点完全渗透到美国文化时，益智玩具领域的增速超过了玩具行业的其他领域，且增速是美国整体经济增速的两倍多。
Buying educational toys had become “a form of ritual magic whose practice is believed to ensure optimal development of that fecund site, the infant brain,” the communications scholar Majia Nadesan wrote in the early 2000s.
传播学学者马甲·纳德桑在21世纪初写道，购买益智玩具已成为 “一种魔法仪式，人们相信这种做法能确保婴儿大脑这个肥沃的部位得到最佳发展。”
By that time, the myth had taken hold of society at almost every level, from government policy down to the Toys “R” Us aisle.
到那时，这种荒诞观点几乎已经占据了从政府政策到玩具反斗城货架通道的社会各层面。
