A week ago we started a topic in which we explained that parents can influence the development of babies' brains if we understand how they work.
We talk about how immature it is a baby's brain at the time it is born and we explain that immaturity is an opportunity for parents to help babies grow in a healthy, balanced way, adapted to the environment and responsible, but at the same time a double-edged sword if adults do not They understand the functioning of babies' brains and the importance of satisfying their needs, especially in the earliest stages.
As we are halfway with this issue, we continue today with this entry intended to explain how to help the correct development of the baby's brain.
While the rational brain develops, the reptilian and mammalian brains are sent
One of the most important discoveries about the brains of babies and children is that in the early years, while the superior or rational brain develops, they send the mammalian and reptilian brains.
This means that on many occasions emotions and instincts will dominate their actions. All parents agree that babies often ask for things to "already", without waiting, with crying. They can't wait because they don't know how to wait.
Their requests come from the need to survive, to eat, to feel at ease and therefore they are mediated by the lower brains.
Sometimes they will need, and this is something that seems to be difficult to understand, the warmth and smell of their mother and they will not know how to wait because they are not able to understand the wait (I say that it is difficult to understand because parents often explain that they do not understand by what your child cries if it is clean, if he has eaten or if there is a pleasant room temperature, forgetting that affection and contact are also things that people need).
In older children tantrums appear, authentic emotional explosions that they do not know how to control. There are even children who beat their parents or other children to show their anger.
All this is the result of the immaturity of the rational brain and its inability to control intense emotions or to express anger in a less hurtful way.
This does not mean that we should allow them to act that way because it is normal for them to do so. What we have to do is understand that they act like this because they are not yet able to control those impulses and try to show alternatives to channel those emotions.
Anger, fear and separation anguish
When a baby is born, his brain is ready to feel anger, fear and separation anguish. Each of these feelings or emotions activates a certain area of the brain and it has been seen that, artificially stimulating the specific areas of each of them, these emotions can be activated.
Babies born today carry these systems in their genetic code to help them survive. The baby who feels fear and feels alone cries for someone to come to his aid, since the baby who really is alone is the one who would be eaten by predators.
Now there are no predators, there are no wolves or dangers, since the baby is at home, however there is no reason in it and various events in our daily lives can serve as stimuli to feel threatened.
He fear It can appear when you use a plastic bag, when you crush an empty water bottle, when you slam the door, etc. The go to It can appear when you are undressed to bathe it or when you are dressed or when you are about to fall asleep and something awakens you. The separation anguish It can appear at the moment you feel alone, simply, because Mom has left the room for a moment.
There is no real danger, but they don't know it.
We must activate the control responses that they do not know how to carry out
"If your child cries, leave him, so he will learn to calm himself down." This phrase has been heard by all parents and even now, despite all that is known about the brains of babies, it is still said.
It makes sense in a way, if we see it from the point of view of “if you do it, he will never do it,” however, like everything in this life, controlling emotions requires learning, and many things that a person learns must assimilate them from someone.
When reptilian and mammalian brains are activated and intense emotions are triggered, we must be the ones who help them calm the storm so that the brain begins to create connections that help you, later, to control stressful situations.
If this does not happen, if the baby does not create those connections, he could grow up with difficulties to understand, control and reflect on his own emotions.
Brain scans performed on violent adults show that there are impulses of anger, fear and defense that come from the mammalian and reptilian regions of the brain, detecting little activity in the parts of the rational brain that should regulate and modify these feelings.
In other words, as they were not helped enough to create neural connections in the area of the rational brain that regulates and controls intense emotions, they are not able, being adults, to control themselves.
Photos | Flickr - rumpleteaser, salimfadhley, shoothead In Babies and more | The baby's brain: how to help its correct development (I), The baby's brain, Documentary: The baby's brain by Eduardo Punset (I), (II) and (III), Punset: Five tips to make a baby A capable and happy adult, Child stress could damage the brain
